Children Are Not the Disease Vectors
Excerpted from Challenging the Pandemic Narrative.
How about children in schools? In Sweden, where schools were never closed, researchers found that staff members at day cares and primary schools were no more likely than people working in other professions to contract the virus. In Finland, when public health researchers combed through test results of children under 16, they found no evidence of school spread and no change in the rate of infection for that age cohort after schools closed in March or reopened in May. In fact, Finland’s infection rate among children was similar to Sweden’s. According to Otto Helve, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, “It really starts to add up to the fact that the risk of transmission, the number of outbreaks in which the index is a child, is very low, and this seems to be the picture everywhere else.”[1] A May 2020 study in Ireland also found there is no evidence of secondary transmission from children.[2] Two Australian studies support these findings for their schools, which were open and operating normally.[3] UK infectious disease expert Mark Woolhouse stated in late July that there is not a single confirmed case of infection of a teacher by a pupil worldwide.[4]
Iceland, which undertook a massive contract tracing effort immediately after the outbreak began, found not a even single case where a child under 10 infected their parents.[5] A German study concluded that “children are more like to act as a brake on the infection,” meaning that they rarely pass along the disease once they contract it.[6] In the two months since schools reopened the US, even in areas where cases numbers were high and on the increase, evidence shows that students are not major spreaders of the virus.[7]
We have also been hearing of a massive case increase after the opening of universities, but as with other narratives pushing fear, the data do not support the claims. Out of nearly 70,000 positive COVID cases reported at universities by October 5, there were only 3 hospitalizations and zero deaths.[8]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/schools-reopening-coronavirus/2020/07/10/865fb3e6-c122-11ea-8908-68a2b9eae9e0_story.html
[2] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.21.2000903
[3] http://ncirs.org.au/reports
[4] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8607961/No-cases-school-pupils-passing-coronavirus-teacher-exist-expert-says.html
[5] https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covid-19/
[6] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/corona-studie-an-schulen-kinder-eher-bremskloetze-der-infektion-16858827.html (English translation here: https://bit.ly/3dzgkTI)
[7] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/schools-arent-superspreaders/616669/
[8] https://twitter.com/drsimonegold/status/1313199258393145344?s=20