5 ms·

Data shows schools aren’t super-spreaders

32 points by bcaulfield 6y ago

novia 6y ago
The author is an economist. I'd like to see a similar article but written by an epidemiologist.
- irq11 6y ago
  The author is an economist who has spent her career researching public health. There is no such thing as an “epidemiologist”. The field is filled with people who trained in other areas, and turned their attention to health. For example, Neil Ferguson - the man behind the UCL models that politicians were using to claim that there would be millions of deaths in the US alone - is a physicist by training.
  - alphabettsy 6y ago
    “There is no such thing as an “epidemiologist”, is not a true statement at all. It’s a strange assertion. Surgeons often study many different things, they don’t specifically go to Surgery school. Epidemiology is another specialty of medicine focused on communicable disease.
    - irq11 6y ago
      “There is such a thing as an ‘epidemiologist’,” is not a true statement at all. It’s a strange assertion, given that I just proved otherwise. Epidemiology is not one thing, it’s a bunch of practitioners of different disciplines who broadly work in the area of human disease. Dismissing an expert because they are not “an epidemiologist” is like dismissing a physicist‘s opinion on math, because they are “not a mathematician”. It’s a lowbrow dismissal.
      - alphabettsy 6y ago
        You stated there’s no such thing as an epidemiologist which is objectively false. I didn’t say that their opinion should be dismissed because they’re not titled as an epidemiologist, I’m just pointing out that your assertion is false. You can’t be a physicist without understanding advanced math, but there is no similar qualification to be an economist that requires you to understand biology, medicine or epidemiology.
        irq11 6y ago
        Saying something is “objectively false” doesn’t make it so. You actually have to, you know...provide some evidence. There is no such thing as an epidemiologist. The “field“ consists of a number of diverse sub-disciplines (ranging from population molecular biology to the sociology of disease interventions) and in fact, a great many “economists” publish in epidemiology journals. The author of TFA is one of them. You can absolutely be an epidemiologist without understanding medicine, and again, there’s no such thing as “epidemiology”, to be “understood”. If you apply the tools of chemistry (or cooking, or anything else!) to the study of communicable disease, then - surprise! - you’re an epidemiologist. Some things that fall in the world of “epidemiology”, that require none of the things you’ve said: * research into the economics of treatment A vs B for HIV. * studies into communication strategies for convincing people to wear condoms. * examining the relationship between school closures and child nutrition. * investigating food preparation methods that lead to greater incidence of Hepatitis C transmission. In fact, a great many of the loudest voices in the Covid-19 debate have been from people doing this kind of work, and referring to themselves as epidemiologists. The real problem is not the categorization, but the identity of the originator of the speech, and dismissing people for not being “epidemiologists” (as the OP was doing) is just a lowbrow dismissal dressed in a labcoat. I’ve now explained why this is a fact (twice), and you counter with...a repetition that I’m wrong. Compelling rebuttal.
        alphabettsy 6y ago
        You said, “You can absolutely be an epidemiologist without understanding medicine”. Which is strange because you said they don’t exist. It’s also not something I refuted.
castillar76 6y ago
> Our data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September revealed an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff. That’s about 1.3 infections over two weeks in a school of 1,000 kids, or 2.2 infections over two weeks in a group of 1,000 staff. If they genuinely aren’t acting as Petri dishes then yay. But I don’t understand how looking at a two-week window for a disease with a known incubation as long as two weeks can paint an effective picture. Surely you would need to look at least twice the incubation period to be able to render a realistic interpretation of the data?
- rimliu 6y ago
  Two weeks incubation is an extreme outlier. It is 4-5 days for most.
- rbecker 6y ago
  And that two-week window is from very near the start of schools opening.
- judge2020 6y ago
  This is also data on kids that actually got tested - kids often won't test since they have no reason to believe they have the virus when they're just asymptomatic.
  - irq11 6y ago
    Many schools are doing mandatory testing programs. That’s largely why we’re seeing school-linked “surges” in the first place.
- rurban 6y ago
  The known incubation period is 2 days, known infection period is 7-10 days. 2 two week windows are good enough.
tchock23 6y ago
There is potentially a sampling bias in who is reporting data. The author links to a NYT article they wrote that says it is volunteers for the study. It could well be districts without problems that willingly choose to share data.
dogsgobork 6y ago
Statements like "But zero was never a realistic expectation." might hold a bit more water if there weren't places like New Zealand.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  False, the US received 100,000 airline passengers per week from Wuhan and Shanghai. No chance.
monocasa 6y ago
I mean, you have things like the Iowa department of health defining an exposure as 15 consecutive minutes in close proximity, so Iowa schools have been asking children to get up and randomly change seats every 14 minutes. Boom, no exposures via school, right? https://iowastartingline.com/2020/09/09/musical-chairs-iowa-school-districts-new-way-to-skirt-covid-rules/ https://iowastartingline.com/2020/09/09/musical-chairs-iowa-... The data is being incredibly gamed, so it's hard to say they aren't spreading.
- fsagx 6y ago
  After seven weeks, masks plus hand washing seem to be effective, at least at the high school level. At my child's school (a large high school) they have had a handful of infections. As they began the year, each student who sat adjacent to an infected person was quarantined for two weeks. Reportedly, those quarantined students were not testing positive. They have, in the last week, ceased to quarantine the adjacent students as it is now in line with the state guidelines. Seems encouraging, if true. https://www.wdmcs.org/2020/10/quarantine-rule-changes-wdmcs/ https://www.wdmcs.org/2020/10/quarantine-rule-changes-wdmcs/
stillbourne 6y ago
Except for colleges.
redis_mlc 6y ago
We need a lot more super-spreaders to get to herd immunity, and the sooner the better. Do your part - cough harder!
buffaloo 6y ago
Every media outlet seems so tainted with one political agenda or another, I have no faith in anything reported on this topic.
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  The thing about good reporting is they provide sources.
  - buffaloo 6y ago
    Does the professor/reporter economically benefit from students acting based upon her reporting?
paul_f 6y ago
This is great news, with detailed data and sources, but I will patiently watch as the HN community explains why it is not. Because it does not meet the narrative. Go for it guys.
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
I assume the numbers they are reporting are positive cases per total students, not percent of tests that are positive. Are they testing everybody, or only kids who are symptomatic? If most cases are asymptomatic, I don’t know what this data actually tells us.

32 points by bcaulfield 6y ago

novia 6y ago

The author is an economist. I'd like to see a similar article but written by an epidemiologist.

irq11 6y ago
The author is an economist who has spent her career researching public health. There is no such thing as an “epidemiologist”. The field is filled with people who trained in other areas, and turned their attention to health. For example, Neil Ferguson - the man behind the UCL models that politicians were using to claim that there would be millions of deaths in the US alone - is a physicist by training.
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  “There is no such thing as an “epidemiologist”, is not a true statement at all. It’s a strange assertion. Surgeons often study many different things, they don’t specifically go to Surgery school. Epidemiology is another specialty of medicine focused on communicable disease.
  - irq11 6y ago
    “There is such a thing as an ‘epidemiologist’,” is not a true statement at all. It’s a strange assertion, given that I just proved otherwise. Epidemiology is not one thing, it’s a bunch of practitioners of different disciplines who broadly work in the area of human disease. Dismissing an expert because they are not “an epidemiologist” is like dismissing a physicist‘s opinion on math, because they are “not a mathematician”. It’s a lowbrow dismissal.
    - alphabettsy 6y ago
      You stated there’s no such thing as an epidemiologist which is objectively false. I didn’t say that their opinion should be dismissed because they’re not titled as an epidemiologist, I’m just pointing out that your assertion is false. You can’t be a physicist without understanding advanced math, but there is no similar qualification to be an economist that requires you to understand biology, medicine or epidemiology.
      - irq11 6y ago
        Saying something is “objectively false” doesn’t make it so. You actually have to, you know...provide some evidence. There is no such thing as an epidemiologist. The “field“ consists of a number of diverse sub-disciplines (ranging from population molecular biology to the sociology of disease interventions) and in fact, a great many “economists” publish in epidemiology journals. The author of TFA is one of them. You can absolutely be an epidemiologist without understanding medicine, and again, there’s no such thing as “epidemiology”, to be “understood”. If you apply the tools of chemistry (or cooking, or anything else!) to the study of communicable disease, then - surprise! - you’re an epidemiologist. Some things that fall in the world of “epidemiology”, that require none of the things you’ve said: * research into the economics of treatment A vs B for HIV. * studies into communication strategies for convincing people to wear condoms. * examining the relationship between school closures and child nutrition. * investigating food preparation methods that lead to greater incidence of Hepatitis C transmission. In fact, a great many of the loudest voices in the Covid-19 debate have been from people doing this kind of work, and referring to themselves as epidemiologists. The real problem is not the categorization, but the identity of the originator of the speech, and dismissing people for not being “epidemiologists” (as the OP was doing) is just a lowbrow dismissal dressed in a labcoat. I’ve now explained why this is a fact (twice), and you counter with...a repetition that I’m wrong. Compelling rebuttal.
        alphabettsy 6y ago
        You said, “You can absolutely be an epidemiologist without understanding medicine”. Which is strange because you said they don’t exist. It’s also not something I refuted.

castillar76 6y ago

> Our data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September revealed an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff. That’s about 1.3 infections over two weeks in a school of 1,000 kids, or 2.2 infections over two weeks in a group of 1,000 staff. If they genuinely aren’t acting as Petri dishes then yay. But I don’t understand how looking at a two-week window for a disease with a known incubation as long as two weeks can paint an effective picture. Surely you would need to look at least twice the incubation period to be able to render a realistic interpretation of the data?

rimliu 6y ago
Two weeks incubation is an extreme outlier. It is 4-5 days for most.
rbecker 6y ago
And that two-week window is from very near the start of schools opening.
judge2020 6y ago
This is also data on kids that actually got tested - kids often won't test since they have no reason to believe they have the virus when they're just asymptomatic.
- irq11 6y ago
  Many schools are doing mandatory testing programs. That’s largely why we’re seeing school-linked “surges” in the first place.
rurban 6y ago
The known incubation period is 2 days, known infection period is 7-10 days. 2 two week windows are good enough.

tchock23 6y ago

There is potentially a sampling bias in who is reporting data. The author links to a NYT article they wrote that says it is volunteers for the study. It could well be districts without problems that willingly choose to share data.

dogsgobork 6y ago

Statements like "But zero was never a realistic expectation." might hold a bit more water if there weren't places like New Zealand.

redis_mlc 6y ago
False, the US received 100,000 airline passengers per week from Wuhan and Shanghai. No chance.

monocasa 6y ago

I mean, you have things like the Iowa department of health defining an exposure as 15 consecutive minutes in close proximity, so Iowa schools have been asking children to get up and randomly change seats every 14 minutes. Boom, no exposures via school, right? https://iowastartingline.com/2020/09/09/musical-chairs-iowa-school-districts-new-way-to-skirt-covid-rules/ https://iowastartingline.com/2020/09/09/musical-chairs-iowa-... The data is being incredibly gamed, so it's hard to say they aren't spreading.

fsagx 6y ago
After seven weeks, masks plus hand washing seem to be effective, at least at the high school level. At my child's school (a large high school) they have had a handful of infections. As they began the year, each student who sat adjacent to an infected person was quarantined for two weeks. Reportedly, those quarantined students were not testing positive. They have, in the last week, ceased to quarantine the adjacent students as it is now in line with the state guidelines. Seems encouraging, if true. https://www.wdmcs.org/2020/10/quarantine-rule-changes-wdmcs/ https://www.wdmcs.org/2020/10/quarantine-rule-changes-wdmcs/

stillbourne 6y ago

Except for colleges.

redis_mlc 6y ago

We need a lot more super-spreaders to get to herd immunity, and the sooner the better. Do your part - cough harder!

buffaloo 6y ago

Every media outlet seems so tainted with one political agenda or another, I have no faith in anything reported on this topic.

alphabettsy 6y ago
The thing about good reporting is they provide sources.
- buffaloo 6y ago
  Does the professor/reporter economically benefit from students acting based upon her reporting?

paul_f 6y ago

This is great news, with detailed data and sources, but I will patiently watch as the HN community explains why it is not. Because it does not meet the narrative. Go for it guys.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago

I assume the numbers they are reporting are positive cases per total students, not percent of tests that are positive. Are they testing everybody, or only kids who are symptomatic? If most cases are asymptomatic, I don’t know what this data actually tells us.