COVID OUTBREAKS IN SCHOOL CHILDREN
As I noted last week the likelihood of children under 14 contracting coronavirus infection is nearly negligible.
Secondly, the potential that children in this age group will transmit the virus to their contemporaries is also similarly low.
Regardless of these facts Montgomery County Pennsylvania closed all schools for 2 weeks. I believe that perhaps we all need to question such decisions which seem to be arbitrary and perhaps not based on current research, and the science we are told we should be following.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania is NOT publishing the number of school outbreaks. New Jersey is publishing the number and out of the 580 school districts there have been 36 documented “school outbreaks”. I am not sure exactly how “school outbreaks” is defined by the state of New Jersey.
The study I referenced was published in JAMA, however I have seen other studies published in other referenced journals which had similar findings.
Let us hope that in the future we can base our decisions on the current body of research and the science, and not on emotion and anecdotal evidence.