Something that I heard from an epidemiologist the other day is how shutting down schools and daycares can be incredibly counterproductive, because such a high percentage of health care workers have children which suddenly are at home and need to be supervised, pulling these workers out of their duties.
I suppose its ok early on, but seems problematic if enough people eventually get infected.
Understood that schools are primary transmission vectors.
I disagree here. Denmark is acting proactively and shutting down schools for 2 weeks. This is a "rip the band aid off early" type of move. By shutting down everything for 2 weeks, they effectively self-quarantine during the entire incubation period and will dramatically slow the rate of the virus.
China, on the other hand, did not do this, and they were forced to shut down schools for 6 months.
These moves are HARD and painful, but the key to stopping a pandemic is acting overly aggressive and far-reaching. The USA is not doing nearly enough. We're going to be Italy in about 2 weeks.
I live in Denmark and have been following this way too closely. I think we will be Italy within the next two weeks. Until today people have been completely unconcerned. But in the last three days the number of detected cases has jumped from 37 to 92 to 264 to 516. Nobody was taking this seriously until today, and there's just no way this hasn't already spread across the country undetected.
The number of "detected" cases is influenced by the testing capability of those performing the tests. In a few days the real average "growth" rate will be clearer, but until the effects of some strong enough measures start to affect the numbers nobody can expect anything much better than what we see in Italy -- the curves across the Europe have "similar" growth:
Sorry for not being clear. The point I'm making is exactly that people have been complacent due to the low numbers, primarily sure to inadequate testing.
for the two weeks as of day one of the changes. What if the virus shows up on day 15, the day after things return to normal? Will they stay shutdown for another two weeks?
The virus will show up afterwards but could already be slowed by then combined with fewer infections from people returning from abroad. But they will have to see simply.
>China, on the other hand, did not do this, and they were forced to shut down schools for 6 months.
where did you get that 6 months number from? considering Virus started in January and its March now.
>These moves are HARD and painful, but the key to stopping a pandemic is acting overly aggressive and far-reaching.
there is nothing aggressive or far-reaching in those moves, Poland enacted similar measures yesterday and every expert agrees its not enough and too late.
> Understood that schools are primary transmission vectors.
Are they? There seems to be limited transmission from children (to other children or even adults), in part because they generally aren't getting symptomatic when exposed.
. "For COVID-19 virus, initial data indicates that children are less affected than adults and that clinical attack rates in the 0-19 age group are low. Further preliminary data from household transmission studies in China suggest that children are infected from adults, rather than vice versa."
I don't deny kids can transmit it to other kids, just that the odds are low. In fact, the only school I could find that was a cluster (Suyeong-gu Kindergarten in Korea) was 5 infected adults, 1 infected kid, and 160 negatives (which I assume were dominated by children).
Does anyone know of school clusters that have emerged?
I saw the Joe Rogan clip[1] and I agree that Michael Osterholm's analysis of this seems correct when it comes to the United States.
Denmark however has a completely different structure socially. All private sector employees who can work from home are urged to work from home. All public sector employees who are not working in any matter-of-life-and-death function are forced to stay at home. The public sector employees will still get paid despite not working. Practically this means very, very few cases of health care workers with children needs to be home supervising the children.
Wait, how would this prevent health care workers with children from needing to be home? Who is going to be watching those kids while the parents are working at a hospital?
There might be some cases where watching the kids for them is difficult, but most likely the local hospitals already have an idea for this for the minority of employees whose single parent or both parents work in healthcare. Usually their partner can help out.
How about keeping the daycares open for the children of those in healthcare and only for them? Still a big spread reduction, zero healthcare side-effects. It would be very difficult to enforce because so many others would think that they deserve an exception as well...
Most children have two parents. The few cases where both parents work in health care they most likely have immediate family and/or friends who are either public workers or private sector workers who can work from home.
Probably best to shut them down too early or not at all. Grandparents tend to be relied upon as babysitters in time of need, so if you wait until transmission among school children is widespread your actions just delivered the virus to some of the most vulnerable populations.
My parents are elderly and my partner's parents live 150 miles away, and both work; We have no family that is able or willing to watch our child so we pay for care (and it's hugely expensive, over $2500/mo for center based care)
My partner works as an RN, and I'm in software development. I've always taken the days off when our child is ill, it's logistically simpler, but I make 2X the salary so we have always said my job is the priority if we lose child care long term.
If our daycare closes for a long period that means my partner needs to stop going to work and there's one less RN at that hospital.
To make things worse, our daycare has already stated that the current "24 hours fever free" policy of your child returning is now "14 days fever free, or a physician's note indicating it's safe to return" -- and you must keep paying while they are out, that's the existing policy when it's a day or so and apparently will continue even when it's two+ weeks... no relief expected.
If daycares are forced to shutdown, but still require payment from parents, that will be absolutely egregious and infuriating.
Denmark is geographically a relatively small country, and it is not uncommon for children to travel alone across the country in dedicated trains[1] for the children during the weekends.
That said, its really not uncommon for other family members besides grandparents and even friends of the family to take care of your children in Denmark.
It is a war and calculation should be done in a different way.
1. Healthcare system is the TOP priority and keeps its resource adequate is critical.
2. If workers need to take care of their children, try to seek more ways to staff the hospital: (1) recruiting volunteers for non-specialized roles (2) adjusting shifts (3) concentrate resources, even move resources geographically.
Basically this is what China has done to bend the curve and what Italy is currently doing. You have to think this as a whole.
The prime minister said schools and daycares would stay open to serve those. Also that the school itself is not the problem, only the amount of people.
Denmark has a substantial safety net with generous parental leave policies. Accordingly, it would expected that one parent or relative could help out without impacting their own income and job security.
No they wont, schools will shut fully down. For ppl that rely on child care, and cant do it themselves, something will be provided. But the schools are not it.
Well, let’s think about what might happen: people still need to work, and children want to play. Hey let’s meet all at one parent’s home today and tomorrow at the next...
I really doubt it is as effective as many think unless there is a general lock down and people are expected not to visit other people.
There's a big difference between putting 500 kids in a building for eight hours a day and a bunch of small, clustered groups of kids forming for playdates.
This is an analysis if you just shutdown schools, if you send all but critical for food/power/utilities workers home and pay them, then the assumptions are completely different.
I wonder what basically a 2-4 week vacation for an entire nation looks like.
Our kindergarten is currently preparing for just that. Which parents have other options of day care, who can have kids at home, who can take additional kids. I understood that to be something city wide. I have no problem having three instead of two kids at home, I working from home anyway, so if I have my own kids or an additional one doesn't make much of a difference for me. But it does for other parents.
PM said that people in critical functions who could find a care solution for their kids should show up to school -- and a solution would be worked out.
She admitted that the specifics of such solutions are not known at this time.
I'm surprised they don't just provide a day care service for the children of healthcare workers, considering those children are more likely to get infected by their parent anyways just preemptively treat them as patients with some shared curriculum and oversight.
A virologist mentioned that kids up until 19 basically don't get sick from this virus, something like 0.2%, and even if they do its not as hard on them as on adult in their 40ies or older. So indeed very counter productive
0.2% is the mortality rate up to 19, not the risk of getting sick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Morta...). The disease can be serious even if it's not fatal, and children can easily spread the virus to their families. It's even possible for someone to become infected and spread the virus without showing any symptoms at all.
Isn't it both? Kids get it less often then adults, if they do they have a lower mortality rate (0% in fact for kids < 12), and don't seem to transmit it significantly to adults. (it's adults infecting them)
I haven't heard any authoritative sources talk about that. Do you have a cite?
The world is in crisis. Arguing against public attempts to contain a virus based on "Something that I heard" is more than a little irresponsible right now. Surely the point is valid as a debate subject, but it needs numbers and it needs analysis. Prima facie, social isolation works, and at this stage is our only remaining hope at containment.
I suppose its ok early on, but seems problematic if enough people eventually get infected.
Understood that schools are primary transmission vectors.