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Over 70% of US household Covid spread started with a child
- nico 3y agoAnecdotal data point of 1 Me and my wife would rarely get sick before kids, and even then before they started school Once they started going to daycare, then preschool, or when switching schools… we all get sick at home now
- bediger4000 3y agoI had the same experience. I found that bring-home illnesses eases off about 5th grade, and almost disappears when kids are in high school.
- BooneJS 3y agoOur kids are 17 & 19, and this fits what I remember. Little kid hands always seemed moist and sticky, making for perfect vectors.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoNow that I don’t work from an office, I rarely get sick.
- moron4hire 3y agoWhile it's obvious that people send their sick kids to daycare--because what are you gonna do, gotta go to work--there is probably at least some small part at play that people with young chicken are also sleep deprived and stressed the fuck out. Written from my back porch as the two children scream at each other inside.
- throw9away6 3y agoIt’s a prisoner’s dilemma. I don’t want to send sick kid to child care but if the other parents do then I have no choice because I’ll run out of sick leave
- HWR_14 3y agoAssuming you cannot work from home and have finite sick leave. Both of which are reasonable assumptions for most people, but it would be great if more people didn't have those assumptions work for them.
- ceejayoz 3y agoYep. Two years of respite from cold/flu was one of the few bright spots.
- dangwhy 3y agoIf you don't mind me asking, are you overweight and/or sedentary or prediabetic ( fasting > 100) ? My doctor told me that being metabolically unhealthy weakens immune system and excersing and eating healthy will protect from frequent infections. I don't know what to make of this.
- nico 3y agoNo one in my family is overweight or has any sort of health issues As you are aware, it is kind of a rude question, but also a weird one Not sure why you’d ask that given my anecdote Pretty much all parents I know describe the same situation of not getting sick very often before kids, and that completely changing once their kids start going to daycare/school
- atlantic 3y ago[flagged]
- nico 3y agoNot really what? I’m giving my personal experience and explicitly calling them anecdotes It’s perfectly alright for you to have a different life experience But don’t deny mine because yours is different
- Izkata 3y ago> No one in my family is overweight or has any sort of health issues > As you are aware, it is kind of a rude question, but also a weird one The (US) media drilled into us for years that being overweight/obese may as well be a covid death sentence, doing things like stating how many covid hospitalizations/deaths were overweight/obese without context. So it's become very easy for people to jump on that. The missing context was that if you actually compared like-for-like, using the real rates in the general US population... overweight/obesity has (almost) no effect. They just left that part out so the number sounded high, or compared "obese" in the population to "overweight or obese" in hospitalizations.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoYep, it's a constant onslaught until they to about 9 or 10 we found. It gets better once they creep up on teenage years. Not sure if it's just their immune systems improving or if it's a product of better hygiene once they get older. Do not miss those years. And in fact I wonder how much of a toll the constant virus fighting had on me (combined with poor sleep and generally getting older, etc.)
- satya71 3y agoWFH parents with kids can confirm that ~100% diseases come in via kids. The scientific community was focused on the danger to kids from COVID, which is not zero, but not that high. But the real danger was that the parents/caregivers would not be able to take care of them.
- mint2 3y ago“ scientific community was focused on the danger to kids” Is that accurate? One of the main stated reasons for school closures was to prevent spread from kids to older household members and teachers.
- cm2187 3y agoI think the OP is likely refering to mandatory vaccination campaigns of kids.
- wccrawford 3y agoI can't speak for "the scientific community", but most of what I heard was that kids are largely unaffected by Covid 19, except for some cold symptoms, and it was the adults that were in any real danger.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agokids are walking petri dishes and should be classed as biological weapons.
- deafpolygon 3y agoyes, i have two teenagers in the same room with me. send help.
- qup 3y agoOrder a pizza to the back porch.
- scarface74 3y ago
- rossdavidh 3y ago"The researchers said the finding that pediatric COVID-19 transmission was negatively correlated with new community cases during most of the pandemic is consistent with that of a previous study." They kind of incoherently try to explain away this, but it seems to run directly counter to their basic thesis. I mean, everyone who has worked in daycare or grade school knows that kids can get each other sick, so it would be surprising if it were different for covid-19, but this seems like the a significant issue with their data that is the more interesting finding, and they sort of shrug it off. I may be a bit biased because I live in Texas, and we actually had the highest covid-19 rates when it was hottest, i.e. when schools were not in session, just like most of the Sun Belt.
- ed25519FUUU 3y agoAt the rate covid studies are being retracted, I’m hesitant to make ANY conclusions related to covid 19 spread for at least another few years. We still need time to let the dust settle. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/gone-but-not-forgotten-retracted-covid-19-papers-still-cited-70232 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/gone-but-not-forg...
- wesleywt 3y agoThe link you provided does not discuss retraction rates. Rather its about papers citing retracted papers. I hesitate to make conclusions about your bias at this point.
- ed25519FUUU 3y agoWhat exactly is my bias?
- qup 3y agoHe hesitates to make conclusions.
- cm2187 3y agoIn the UK, several peaks happened during the summer (July 2021, July 2022 [1]). I am sure kids contribute, like they typically spread many other contagious diseases, but they are far from being the only way covid spreaded. And given the educational cost of school closures, I hope people won't start concluding that closing schools is a good way to stop diseases. [1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=natio...
- jarym 3y agoSo what next 'ban all kids'? I say this sarcastically of course.
- superooled 3y agoAt least here in the UK, the official advice if a family member caught Covid was to isolate them in a separate room, with no allowances made for children. Sounds like we already tried this!
- ProAm 3y agore-enact Roe v Wade
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scarface74 3y agoWhile you joke… https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisited/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisite... No the author is not some homicidal maniac. In interviews he emphasizes that no policy should be made based on his findings. But if policy were made, he would focus on universal healthcare, pre-school, government funded maternal leave, etc to support women.
- fullshark 3y agoWhat's next is 20 years of debate, and a lot of people carving out careers as apologists for the lockdowns.
- kornhole 3y agoPour a bottle of bleach over them before they are allowed to come into the house.
- kelseyfrog 3y agoI mean, another version of the headline is "Children responsible for 791k US Covid deaths."
- superooled 3y ago[flagged]
- throw9away6 3y agoIt’s not the kids it’s how we manage them. They interact with 100s of other kids daily in small boxes with poor ventilation. Obviously airborne diseases are going to be a problem
- bilsbie 3y agoOn the contrary early exposure to germs can be very beneficial. Here’s one study but I’d encourage you to review the research if you’re interested. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/137/5/e20153356/51981/First-year-Daycare-and-Incidence-of-Acute?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/137...
- superooled 3y agoPre-Covid, it was generally accepted that downsides such as this were worthwhile for the benefits of mass education. What do you propose instead?
- csense 3y agoNot surprising in the least. - Kids are younger than average so they have less exposure-based immunity - Kids have higher-degree more-connected physical proximity graphs than adults, they're usually in classes with a group of 20-30-ish other kids. Multiply that by a factor of 5 or more if they switch classes over 6-10 periods. Then they get on a school bus with yet another group of kids. - Kids (especially young ones) don't always keep the same social boundaries as adults, more likely to sneeze / cough on each other, share food / plates, etc.
- georgeplusplus 3y agoYou know how many times I've heard "not surprised at the least" during this whole covid fiasco? Especially, from the people who slurped down whatever "science" reporting the media pushed and was taken as the gospel after just months of studying a complex virus. it's baffling how cocksure you are. We don't know and if anyone claims they do with a good accuracy theyre full of it. You should be surprised, it was and still is a novel virus. We didnt know and still don't know the long term effects since we don't have enough data to make a long term analysis. Get your head out your ass this kind of thinking led to bad government decisions by afraid citizens that enabled their governments to make poor decisions
- jraph 3y ago> - Kids are younger than average so they have less exposure-based immunity Did adults do better than children against SARS-Cov-2 immunity-wise? I would agree in general but I was under the impression that SARS-CoV-2 was a new virus nobody / few people were immune to. Or did some people have for some reason an immune system prepared against SARS-Cov-2? How? Were there viruses similar enough before?
- HideousKojima 3y agoIIRC exposure to the common cold helped with COVID immunity. Something like 15% of colds are caused by various forms of Coronavirus (forms of Rhinovirus cause the majority) so this makes some level of sense.
- jeroenhd 3y agoThis was a major reason governments decided to close schools. People seemed to think it was to protect kids (and it was, in part, especially in the beginning while the impact wasn't clear yet) but kids excellent carriers and superspreaders for all kinds of viruses and bacteria. Not just for COVID, but also for many other outbreaks such as the flu.
- hammock 3y ago[flagged]
- georgeplusplus 3y ago[flagged]
- tomrod 3y agoAlternatively, rational discussions assessing events and consequences from COVID-19 policy are finally starting to happen, and people who were against the authoritative advice (at the time) are saying comments like "it's hopeless to talk about COVID because you get downvoted for stating my pet theories which were clearly right." Unfortunately, that thought process was the same one as the Texas government officials opening up way too early, sacrificing both economy and health instead of just economy. In my opinion, what you're calling "challenges the covid status quo" is just reheated retreads, and downvotes come because folks are just tired of contrarians muddling any feasible approach to assessment and evaluation.
- bilsbie 3y agoHere’s a critique of the study if anyone is interested: (https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/1664916036351852551 https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/16649160363518525...) > It assumes that if a kid gets a fever first and then an adult in the house 1 to 7 days later, then the kid got covid and passed it to the adult. This is a bad way to infer the direction of transmission. It's possible that parents had a fever, but didn't bother to check themselves until after their kid developed a fever and they checked them. The paper does not even test a single participant for covid, so the fever might not represent covid at all. Nor does it check for other contacts the adult or kid may have had outside the house Additionally, the sample is self-selected: it consists of people who opt into a fever reporting app -- not representative of the population as a whole. The result is at odds with more careful contact tracing studies, like the Icelandic study from early 2020, which concludes the opposite. The paper is not a reliable guide to the relative risk that kids pose for disease spreading. More broadly, the paper has no policy import. Would closing schools have protected anyone from getting covid? The evidence from studies comparing places that closed them vs. places that opened them suggests no. I That closing schools is bad for the health of children is out of the scope of the ideas considered by this study.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y agoIt's worth noting that Bhattacharya was one of the originators of the "Great Barrington Declaration," which advocated dropping almost all measures to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, with the aim of quickly achieving herd immunity through widespread infection. This was in mid-2020, before any vaccine was available. This strategy would likely have doubled the death rate in the United States, had it been implemented. That is to say, this study goes strongly against Bhattacharya's oft-expressed views on how the pandemic should have been handled, and one should approach Bhattacharya's criticisms with a good dose of skepticism.
- flybrand 3y agoThis is a misrepresentation of ‘focused protection’ and Bhattacharya supported - and still supports - a vaccine strategy, which you insinuate he did not.
- frank_bb 3y ago[dead]
- ctime 3y agoAvoided Covid until about three weeks ago. Kid brought it home from preschool. 4x Moderna. Symptoms were sore throat, persistent cough, mild fever and sweats. No loss of taste or smell. Edit: not sure why this was downvoted, I’m not complaining at all about my vaccine assisted recovery. I’m also immune compromised (in the last 6 months) and fairly happy with how well things worked out. I didn’t really even need to take time off and went to (remote) meetings. Covid was nothing compared to some bad drug interactions I had a few months prior. I thought not losing any sense of smell or taste was most interesting and it was likely due to some combination of the specific variant, the Moderna vaccines and paxlovid that prevented that class of symptoms.
- bequanna 3y agoThe current variants seem to be much less severe. Depending on age and health, it really makes it difficult to say if getting vaxxed was the “smart” move when weighing the risk of contraction vs the unknowns of any potential side effects.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lockhouse 3y agoUnless you had several co-morbidities, even the original variants of COVID weren't all that severe for most people. Per the CDC: > 146.6 Million Estimated Total Infections > 7.5 Million Estimated Hospitalizations > 921,000 Estimated Total Deaths https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... If memory serves, most of the panic in the early stages was really about the risk of overloading hospitals (which mostly didn't happen) and a lack of ventilators (which it turned out that ventilators made things worse for most COVID patients). COVID-19 itself wasn't extremely lethal at any point.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago> COVID-19 itself wasn't extremely lethal at any point. On a population level, it's the most lethal virus in the last 100 years. A virus that infects everyone and that kills 0.5-1% of those it infects is almost a worst-case scenario for public health.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoThat's how I caught it the second time. Daughter came home from school with a note telling us that a kid at the school had spent 3 days in class with a positive test, but the parents sent her anyway because they had nobody to watch her and because kids didn't "have bad reactions." A few days later, I noticed that I lost all sense of smell and I've had long covid ever since. I miss being able to enjoy citrus and peppers and days where I'm not completely exhausted by 5pm.
- throw9away6 3y agoPublic shaming needs to be an option again
- giardini 3y agoLong covid may be tied to the high levels of COVID spike protein (i.e., body never clears out the virus). It is also known that ivermectin binds to Covid spike protein. I might put two and two together at this point and do something about it were I ill with long covid and "completely exhausted by 5pm". But since I am exposed to IVM every now and then (treating cattle) I'll likely never know!8-))
- shri_krishna 3y agoIf you actually click the study link in this article and go to the actual study itself (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2805468 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...) you have this para: "Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Ms Bloch reported employment with stock options at Kinsa Inc during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported."
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoGlad to see we finally have some justification for harming children to reduce adult risk.
- eggy 3y agoQuite the opposite in my household. I gave COVID to my older and younger children and wife. I wouldn't have known, but I went for a COVID test because I was going to do an inspection at an elder care facility's structure. I would have thought they gave it to me if they called me with their positive test days later, so I think the study may not have filtered on this type of occurrence.
- saiya-jin 3y agoNah, 5-7 out of 6-8 (2 times questionable, mild and not tested). Fast spreading viruses have careless, often coughing, sneezing, unhygienic kids as infection centers. But I still dont think it was a good idea to close schools, we saved possibly few additional grannies or other frail people, but fucked up non-trivial amount of kids for life. Many grandmas worth their salt would gladly take the extra risk given the options
- DonHopkins 3y agoCovid is spread a lot by people who act like children.
- throwaway5326 3y agoWe had our elementary school kid wear a KN95 mask in school this year, except during meals of course, and he got sick only once or twice whereas all of his friends in class were sick every few weeks and having to miss school and miss sports. Wearing a mask is easy and works, and I never understood the fuss.
- dadjoker 3y agoWow, where to start, whether it's the well documented inhibition of language development in young kids who are learning to speak and are unable to see mouth movement, to the demonstrated health problems caused by breathing in your exhalation all day, to the fact that masks made zero difference in "controlling" the spread of an aerosolized virus (something that was well known and even documented by CDC and WHO well before 2020).
- spookthesunset 3y agoKids need faces. That is the fuss. It requires absolutely no further debate. It’s almost criminal abuse to force kids to wear masks for something they aren’t even at risk for. You are free to force your kids to hide their face and treat others as nothing more than disease vectors… but pre-2020 most would rightly consider that child abuse.
- irrational 3y agoI still haven’t gotten Covid yet, but if/when I do get it, it will surely come through one of my four kids in public schools.
- irrational 3y agoI still haven’t gotten Covid yet, but if/when I do get it, it will surely come through one of my four kids in public schools. I work from home and rarely go to stores. They are pretty much the only infection vector for me.
- thenerdhead 3y agoThe title of the study is more reflective than this article title. > Smart Thermometer–Based Participatory Surveillance to Discern the Role of Children in Household Viral Transmission During the COVID-19 Pandemic https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2805468 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... Additionally, the methodology is questionable, but the conflict of interest/CDC funding is even more so. Especially if participatory surveillance becomes mandatory in a future pandemic with these types of studies trying to back common sense. > Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Ms Bloch reported employment with stock options at Kinsa Inc during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.
- johnnyo 3y agoI wonder if the whole family sharing a thermometer increased transmission. I doubt it was fully sterilized between uses.
- atlgator 3y agoI knew it. I went years without getting covid. It wasn't until I stood in a hotel lobby with some children sitting nearby that I caught it.
- disambiguation 3y agoSure, but what they don't tell you in the title is that the number of household transmissions is incredibly low in the first place (39k of 780k cases | ~5%) and most of that transmission is child-to-child (16k cases), child-to-adult made up (12k) of those cases. Further, it's telling that most of the transmission was reported during Omicron and beyond, long after vaccines were widely available and adopted. Policy makers want really badly to justify what they did to kids during the pandemic, but even with this report's poor methodology, the data just doesn't back up the narrative that kids were "killing grandma" by bringing covid home from school.
- RecycledEle 3y agoIs the spread of diseases in our schools an indictment of the schools? If so, is the problem overcrowding, the design of the buildings (e.g., no windows can open per Clinton-era energy saving policies,) or something else?