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"Children are silent spreaders of COVID-19" Topic


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Martin From Canada20 Aug 2020 6:00 a.m. PST

BOSTON – In the most comprehensive study of COVID-19 pediatric patients to date, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Mass General Hospital for Children (MGHfC) researchers provide critical data showing that children play a larger role in the community spread of COVID-19 than previously thought. In a study of 192 children ages 0-22, 49 children tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and an additional 18 children had late-onset, COVID-19-related illness. The infected children were shown to have a significantly higher level of virus in their airways than hospitalized adults in ICUs for COVID-19 treatment.

"I was surprised by the high levels of virus we found in children of all ages, especially in the first two days of infection," says Lael Yonker, MD, director of the MGH Cystic Fibrosis Center and lead author of the study, "Pediatric SARS-CoV-2: Clinical Presentation, Infectivity, and Immune Reponses," published in the Journal of Pediatrics. "I was not expecting the viral load to be so high. You think of a hospital, and of all of the precautions taken to treat severely ill adults, but the viral loads of these hospitalized patients are significantly lower than a 'healthy child' who is walking around with a high SARS-CoV-2 viral load."

Transmissibility or risk of contagion is greater with a high viral load. And even when children exhibit symptoms typical of COVID-19, like fever, runny nose and cough, they often overlap with common childhood illnesses, including influenza and the common cold. This confounds an accurate diagnosis of COVID-19, the illness derived from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, says Yonker. Along with viral load, researchers examined expression of the viral receptor and antibody response in healthy children, children with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and a smaller number of children with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C). […]

link

Basically, children are the Typhoid Mary of COVID-19.
How does back to school sound now?

Journal article: link

Cheers,
Martin from Canada

Asteroid X20 Aug 2020 7:04 a.m. PST

Yes, let's target children!

Because everyone else is such a non-silent (what does that even mean with a virus?!) viral spreader …

Get the pitchforks and torches because we must have an identifiable group to focus our fears and paranoia on.

Martin From Canada20 Aug 2020 8:41 a.m. PST

Because everyone else is such a non-silent (what does that even mean with a virus?!) viral spreader …

Silent spreader means that the individual has the virus, is shedding the virus (thus can infect others), yet isn't symptomatic. The clinical term is asymptomatic transmission.

Get the pitchforks and torches because we must have an identifiable group to focus our fears and paranoia on.


What? No, this paper demonstrates that the evidence at hand suggests that while children as a group aren't as vulnerable to COVID-19 virus as the elderly, they are probably a very capable spreader of the virus since they have a high viral load (and high viral load exposure is correlated with worse health outcomes – hence the need for everybody to mask-up in public), but don't show the same symptoms that are typical in more elderly patients.

This is an important consideration for when and how to re-open schools. 3 months ago it was theorized that children were immune to largely unaffected by COVID-19, but this shows that while they may not have the symptoms, they can still be efficient spreaders. The consequence of this is that once the virus enters the school, it can probably spread quite easily. And that's not even factoring the spread between households that have children attending the school. The word wildfire comes to mind.

Asteroid X20 Aug 2020 9:35 a.m. PST

What?

It's the over-exaggerated fear-mongering.

Basically, children are the Typhoid Mary of COVID-19.
How does back to school sound now?

John the OFM20 Aug 2020 1:05 p.m. PST

If I were to engineer this virus in a lab, that would be a wonderful attribute.
It keeps getting better and better!
Whoever designed it deserves a medal. Or a bullet in the back of the head. We wouldn't want him to be bragging down at the bar, would we?

Dn Jackson Supporting Member of TMP22 Aug 2020 8:01 p.m. PST

"How does back to school sound now?"

Like a great idea. I live in The Commonwealth of Virginia. We've had 112,000 cases out a population of 8.52 million. I may be wrong, and often am, but I believe that means 1.3 percent of our population has contracted the disease. The 2,443 deaths amounts to .028 percent of the population has died from it. It also means 2.18 percent of those who caught it died.

Considering the damage to my kids by not having them in school, yes, I want them back in school.

Whatisitgood4atwork22 Aug 2020 9:42 p.m. PST

Children are silent spreaders? Mine are not silent anythings.

14Bore04 Sep 2020 3:10 p.m. PST

Not 1 report has made that claim I heard of. Not every virus attacks the same age or grouping.

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