[ryankemper]

Actually, what you're saying is untrue. The overwhelming evidence shows that children spread COVID less than adults do.

My favorite is this: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?articleTo...

The study isolated SARS-CoV-2 samples from every positive case, sequenced genome of virus, and tracked the mutation patterns. So, that will avoid a lot of the errors that improper qPCR usage can result in.

First things first, age and viral susceptibility:

> Of the 564 children under the age of 10 years in the targeted testing group, 38 (6.7%) tested positive, in contrast to positive test result in 1183 of 8635 persons who were 10 years of age or older (13.7%). In analyses involving participants up to 20 years of age, we observed a gradual increase with older age in the percentage who tested positive (Fig. S5).

That's more about who got it, but there's some discussion of transmission here where the senior author talks about it: https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covi...

> Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill. What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.

> There is an amazing diversity in the way in which we react to the virus.

---

(I recognize I only presented one study here - there's only so much time in the day :P - but the other high-quality studies I've seen confirm this. Mechanistically it makes sense if you look at the enormous T-cell cross-reactivity in those age groups. And BTW, data on school closures for Influenza (which children seem to transmit much more readily) showed that school closures were ineffective anyway because they would just spread it more outside of school)

[SamBam]

Interesting that this was getting downvoted. Obviously relates to what the poster above was saying about it being "politically incorrect."

We may disagree on what the science implies, but downvoting someone for sharing research means that people are refusing to listen to anything that disagrees with their preconceived notions.

(I guess perhaps the implicit assumption is that anyone pushing articles that show that kids are at less risk, or that kids don't spread Covid as well, must also be pushing for all kids to be running free and socializing?)

Edit: And now this comment is getting downvoted. Folks who disagree, why not speak up about what's wrong with the study, instead of just downvoting?

[taeric]

To be fair, that implicit assumption is pretty strong. There is an absurd bias to push kids back in schools so parents can get back to work.

Still, your points stand that there are some good studies showing kids are not necessarily the major spreaders. It is somewhat surprising to me, but it is data.

[thom]

I think it’s entirely reasonable to believe that individual kids are more resistant to spreading COVID, but closing schools is a powerful intervention. Schools have _lots_ of kids in them, in close proximity, and _every_ child lives in a household with at least one, but on average more than one, other person.

This is not the only study implying closing schools was a sensible step:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0

[bostik]

I'm going to lift one part of your quoted material, because this should get more eyeballs:

> We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.

That is a really strong claim. It also goes against common logic.

Children are more likely to be asymptomatic. Fine. They tend to resist the virus better, and avoid severe cases even when they do get it. Yup, all good so far. They are less likely to infect others around them. Still makes sense.[ß]

What doesn't make sense is that transmission probabilities in the list are all above zero. From a purely mathematical perspective, transmission probability of "infected child -> parent" should not be zero. I am not stupid enough to dispute scientific finds, but I strongly suspect there are more factors in play.

Also the cynic in me notes that "infected child -> parent" is NOT the same as "infected child -> adult".

ß: Recent news indicates that the latest variants do spread more aggressively among children and teens, and are more likely to show up with symptoms in them. I haven't seen anything about increased mortality among the same groups, though.

[taeric]

Focusing the "child" cutoff at ten seems dubious. Why not set it at an age that includes school extra curricular activities? :(

[dwiel]

As a parent of a 6 year old and 8 year old, I'm thankful for this cutoff. Many studies define child as <= 18 or < 20, and I'm not sure how relevant they are for our particular situation.