Read on Twitter
Subtle arguments on Twitter are a losing battle, but going to try to address schools and #Covid19 with nuance: It's been really hard to get good data on children and coronavirus because they are less likely to have symptoms, and therefore undercounted.
Detection bias is also a problem. When a parent and child both get sick, did they share an initial contact or infect each other? To draw conclusions, you really need comprehensive testing, and ideally genetic sequencing, on thousands of people.
Recently, several meta-analyses—statistical models that combine the results of multiple studies—have come out suggesting children under the age of 10-12 are less likely to get infected. ( https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1825/6024998#.X821iNvCv-E.twitter + https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa691/5943164 + https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2771181)
That's supported by forthcoming research on 40,000-people in Iceland, which found that children under 15 were about half as likely as adults to be infected—and only half as likely as adults to transmit the virus to others. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/12/we-now-know-how-much-children-spread-coronavirus/
But schools are mirrors of their community. Emerging data suggests they reflect, rather than drive infections. That's good news! Still, whenever we lose control of containing the pandemic, there may be significant cases in schools.
Kari Stefansson, the Iceland study's author, says if everything but schools are closed, children will become one of the primary sources of spread. Their individual risk might be lower than adults—but if there's high community transmission, schools will still have outbreaks.
With U.S. case surges, American K-12 schools have reported more than 313,000 COVID-19 cases as of December 10. ( https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/fb52d598982f41faac714b5ebe32e7d1) Black and Latino families are far more likely to have been impacted, and are more likely to have children in remote learning.
Being real about the unequal risks of the virus based on race and income is an essential part of the school conversation: As @DrKYSR told me, "Black and brown families don’t have the luxury of choosing to put our children's lives at risk.”
More on both the science and the impacts of policy on children @NatGeo: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/12/we-now-know-how-much-children-spread-coronavirus/
