Study from the New England Journal of Medicine Shows the Only Reason for Keeping Children Home from School is Politics
The results from a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine show that the only reason children are being kept from school due to the China coronavirus is politics.
The New England Journal of Medicine released the results of a study on the China coronavirus that are shocking. Children have a very low risk of catching the China coronavirus.
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The New England Journal of Medicine, the senior author concluded that:
“[E]ven 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.“
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Let’s get our children back in school.
The results from a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine show that the only reason children are being kept from school due to the China coronavirus is politics.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Guys, guys, guys...
You're killing me with these crappy "Free Republic" articles. Don't you understand they are FAKE NEWS?
Did you even read the NEJoM article? I did. It DOES NOT say what Free Republic says it says.
Free Republic doesn't even cite the actual journal article, because Free Republic is not journalism. It's just a repeater mouthpiece for a propaganda machine. It gets a lot of its content from sources like The Gateway Pundit, which is where this particular article came from. The Pundit is like a weed that casts its seeds upon the wind hoping they will land in a pile of fertilizer and grow. Go to the Gateway Pundit article (
here ). It sounds perfectly reasonable:
"The New England Journal of Medicine released the results of a study on the China coronavirus that are shocking. Children have a very low risk of catching the China coronavirus. " " and "“[E]ven 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.“ "'
Now, anytime you see "China coronavirus" you should be suspicious of an agenda; the disease is called COVID-19 and the virus is called SARS-CoV-2. Yes, we all know it came from China, but it has a name; let's use it.
Anyway, they DO cite the original NEJoM article (
here ). The title of the article is: "Spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Icelandic Population " PLEASE READ IT before suggesting it has significant relevance about opening US schools or that the decision is strictly political.
Published a month ago, it's a very thorough dive into testing and contact tracing in an isolated population, with detailed analysis of symptoms and clusters of cases and different viral haplotypes (mutation strains). However, you will quickly see that the data is all from MARCH with analysis into early April. So, early on in the pandemic. Yes, kids are less likely to contract the virus (we have better data, now), and they are likely less prone to spreading it to others on a PER-CONTACT basis. More on this later. One reason kids were less likely to show up in the Iceland data is that most of the infections particularly early on came from travel and work, which was mostly adults. Toward the end of the cycle family exposure dominated.
So, this article has very little to say that is relevant to opening US schools.
The article doesn't mention school transmission EVEN ONCE; it lumps schools into Work for purposes of analysis above.
Now, back to child transmissions: sure: take a COVID-19 sick adult, and have a kid hang out with that person for say 15 minutes. The kid is less likely to contract the disease than an adult would be. Similarly, take an infected kid, and have them spend 15 minutes with a healthy parent. The parent is less likely to get the disease from the kid than they would be if they were in the presence of a sick adult. Kid-to-kid transmission is probably also relatively low PER EVENT. This remains true, so The Gateway Pundit cherry picked an actual fact from the journal article.
But in schools full of kids, any one kid probably is "significantly exposed" to many dozens of kids during the course of the day. So, while the risk of contraction PER EXPOSURE is low, the NUMBER OF EXPOSURES per day is high, day after day. And once a kid is infected, though his/her chance of transmitting it to a family member is low PER EXPOSURE, the number of kid-parent exposures is going to be high. Just sitting around a dinner table for half an hour is more cumulative risk (for the parents) than they probably get in a week otherwise.
Proper analysis of the risk profile for sending kids back to school needs to look not just at the risk per exposure, but the number of exposures. There is a lot of this being considered and we will see how it goes. I remain on the fence. I'm leaning to letting my 13 year old play soccer (outdoors); I consider the incremental risk low. As to sending him back to school, I'm on the fence. My older son does better at home (variety of issues; he's very distracted at school but can focus at home) so if we have the option to keep him home (given his classes including a language) we will, but some of his stuff may need to be in person.
Anyway, back to the original article posted at Free Republic/Gateway Pundit: They took one actual fact, and spun it into a juicy headline that school opening is political, attributing it to NEJoM findings. This was a FALSE ATTRIBUTION and highly unethical. No portion of the Journal article supported the story spun by the Pundit; they used facts completely out of context, and the Icelandic data bears little relevance to the on-the-ground situation in the US at present.
Please, do some research before posting this crap.
