Our school district looks like they will offer the choice of online or in person. Parents will need to make that choice by a certain date, and it's for the year. Doesn't sound like bouncing back and forth.... want to go in person? You're going all year.... and vice versa.

I think I like it... let the families who are certain their kids won't spread it send their kids to school all year. Those who aren't sure, or who have high risk kids/family members, can opt out.

Another issue with the study is the odd gap between the household and non-household rates for the 10-19 bin.

If they were transmitting more, why no similar bump in the non-household rate?




That uncharacteristic bump likely means one of a few things:

* Teenagers really do transmit intra-household more than both younger and much older cohorts, but mysteriously do not do so outside the home.

* There is an influence of chance in the small sample.

* The direction of transmission is backwards, and teenagers were incorrectly identified as "index cases" for households.

The UK'S s top pediatrician sees similar flaws.

A professor at the Harvard School of Public Health? Likewise.

It's not that Bergstrom was wrong. It's the lack of professionalism and mocking tone. Without thoughtful and respectful consideration, he publicly tsk-tsk'd Levitt's work and publicly implied that a Nobel Prize Winner was stupid.

Age is a continuous variable, so I think we need to define "teenagers".

Risk of infection and transmission increases with age. That's pretty well understood, I think?

The primary issue with the Korean paper is, as stated above, the indication that the 10-19 age bin transmits with the same efficacy as the 70-79 age bin. And they only do so in the home. Their rates of community transmission are smoothly in line with surrounding age cohorts. That points to a significant error.


I'll see if I can find the Icelandic study. Stefansson has made public statements about confirmed transmission direction from the sequencing.

Both the Icelandic prevalence data and the Korean transmission data indicate lower risks for the 0-10 age range. I agree with that, and that seems to be good news for day car and elementary schooling.

Age is continuous, but there is no real reason to assume that the risk of infection is linear. It could look quite a bit like a step function. I don't think we have have enough data to known the shape of the function that maps age to risk of transmission for people in the 10-20 age range.

I agree that it seems somewhat unlikely that viral load and transmissability spikes in the teenage years and then again later in life. The confidence intervals for the transmission rate for 10-20 year olds in the Korean paper are fairly wide. I think it is plausible that for after some age (12?, 11? I don't claim to know), they basically transmit like adults. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I haven't seen much evidence (e.g. the supplemental figure from the Icelandic paper doesn't make it look like the teenagers are much different from the 20-30 year olds). But I certainly haven't read many COVID papers, so I'm not claiming that "if the evidence exists, I'd know about it"

TBH, my guess (and it is not much firmer than a guess) would be that the high point estimate of transmission for the 10-20 age range in the Korean study is a combination of (1) sampling error, and (2) the fact that a lot of those folks spend a lot more time indoors in multi-person homes compared to the 20-29 year olds. That would increase their chance of transmitting to household members, but no difference in transmission outside the home.

Edit: missing word corrected. "after age" -> "after some age"

deadbq03 said:

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fat girlfriend said:

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What I think is hard to figure:

closing schools but leaving restaurants open and playing youth sports and having daycare.

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I'm probably skinning this from the opposite side, but yeah the inconsistency is brutal.

Another one: Masks are mandatory in public, but you can take it off and sit in a confined space sharing circulated AC with others if it's inside a restaurant.

It was even dumber in CA - mandatory masks but bars open.

Regardless of what someone thinks about Covid, these mixed-measures are confusing and frustrating. If Covid is a big deal, the restaurants and bars ought to be closed; if it's not, then there's no need for masks... you can't really have it both ways.

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I don't completely disagree with you but the reality is, if you are pre symptomatically contagious and wear a mask half the places you go, you are spreading fewer germs half the time. It's not the all in we need but it's better then nothing. Personally I think we bungled this terribly. We got pretty close to a decent outcome but reopened far to quickly so we ended up with shutting down in April/May for basically nothing and now have a ruinous problem As we can't commit to Re open or shut down.

it's as if there wasn't an economic imperative driving the reopening

I agree something is better than nothing and politicians have to take what they can get. It's just frustrating. Pardon my venting.

What cone said. Shutting down until the virus was gone was never an option. If anything we shut down far too long.

deadbq03 said:

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fat girlfriend said:

---

What I think is hard to figure:

closing schools but leaving restaurants open and playing youth sports and having daycare.

---

I'm probably skinning this from the opposite side, but yeah the inconsistency is brutal.

Another one: Masks are mandatory in public, but you can take it off and sit in a confined space sharing circulated AC with others if it's inside a restaurant.

It was even dumber in CA - mandatory masks but bars open.

Regardless of what someone thinks about Covid, these mixed-measures are confusing and frustrating. If Covid is a big deal, the restaurants and bars ought to be closed; if it's not, then there's no need for masks... you can't really have it both ways.

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Bars are all closed again.


A better example would be when using California (there are so many to be honest) - mandatory masks but "protesting" and rioting outside is still allowed. Thankfully, now inside protesting is no longer allowed, so this should allow us to flatten the curve effectively.

The fact that people here are blaming EVERYTHING except the protests is amazing to me. I just don't get how they can defend this with a straight face.

GAC06 said:

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What cone said. Shutting down until the virus was gone was never an option. If anything we shut down far too long.

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I agree. In fact, I don't think we needed a full shutdown at all.

But we did need a commitment and plan much earlier than we got one. The full shutdown was a lazy overreaction after waiting too long.

And then the full reopen was a lazy overreaction to the full shutdown.

Now the pendulum is swinging the other way...

We didn't have a full reopen. Restaurants were at 75% and bars at 25% before we went backwards right? Still no sports or large gatherings

the early shutdown bought time and the ability to learn more during that time

but it was always going to have a ticking clock attached to it

we decided to use it early and everywhere. but it's not something that really can be prolonged or repeated