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We’re so used to thinking that young brats are germ propagators. But that’s not how Covid-19 works.
By Naomi Bardach
Dr. Bardach is a pediatrician.
As a pediatrician, I love to worry about children, but I’m well aware that the emergency care clinic where I paint is not germ-free. Inevitably, I catch the insect of a dripping and coughing child.
When the coronavirus pandemic began, I was afraid to treat asymptomatic or un healthy youth (“just a cold”), then contract the virus myself and pass it on to my circle of family or friends. Many teachers who are about to return to school have the same concerns.
But we’ve known for months that coronavirus doesn’t act as the general cough and bloodless viruses we occasionally contract in young people. To the astonishment of pediatricians, fathers and mothers, the virus behaves the contrary to what we are used to. Children and adolescents do not appear to have Covid-19 in adulthood. And young people, especially school-age youth number one, do not seem to be transmitted well to each other or to adults.
This has been documented in countries around the world, adding Greece, Switzerland and Australia. Even when schools are open, most sick young people have become inflamed through a family member and not through contact with the school.
This knowledge provides the context for a recent study of 145 youth and adults in Chicago in March and April that was widely reported. He revealed that symptomatic youth had more viruses in their noses than adults. Some have speculated that this means that young people can spread it as easily as adults. But the test was small and did not measure the transmission; We are getting much more useful data from global knowledge, which shows that a higher viral load is unlikely to result in greater infectiousness.
We perceive that; We’ve heard it before. And yet it is still difficult to replace this deep-rooted concept of the brat child as a germ propagator.
When reopening schools, and elementary schools in particular, we want to rethink this intellectual model. The real threat of transmission in primary schools is not children; it’s adults.
Why is this important? This means that we have much more about transmission than with any other type of virus, because teachers and other school workers can change their behavior in a way that young people can’t.
We know much more about coronavirus than in March, when many schools first closed. Our guiding principles to prevent its spread are mask changing, physical distance, hand washing, small patios and smart ventilation (open windows of recycled air). Adults can ensure that these principles are respected.
There is also a human error based on herbs that we make when we assume that children are our greatest threat of infection. Constant surveillance of masking and distance is exhausting. It is understandable that teachers will do everything imaginable to stick to the most productive practices when interacting with young people, and then let their guard down with their trusted colleagues, with whom they aspire to have general social interactions.
I observed this behavior among the staff of the camps of the interior this summer, the studies on Covid-19 and in my own workplace, and I heard from others. Adults enter the bathrooms, take off their masks and spend time dining and talking to co-workers: 10 minutes, part one hour. This is when the virus has the potential to spread.
Understanding that adults, not children, are the highest and highest transmission vectors, will help teachers and other staff stay masked when they spend time together.
Finally, in our pre-Covid-19 intellectual model, we believe that the best academics in the school are a smaller source of germs than elementary school children. Adolescents have a tendency to be less healthy and are better able to develop nasal secretions and coughs.
However, global knowledge shows that outbreaks are more severe in better schools than in primary schools, and that maximum transmission probably occurs only among adults in those schools, but also among students.
This is demonstrated through two studies in the Oise, one of the most affected regions of France, where about 10 percent of the community’s population was inflamed. The multi-school exam found that 9% of students and 7% of teachers were inflamed (and knowledge indicated that the youth had contracted Covid-19 by contact from the family circle, not the school). But the exam of a high school at the moment found that 43% of teachers and 38% of academics had become inflamed.
An Israeli school and one of the best schools experienced an epidemic in May, shortly after schools reopened. More than 150 academics and staff were infected. But here’s a lesson: a heat wave happened, when the windows closed and the air conditioners were turned on, and the school did not apply masking or physical distance.
It is not a question of ruling out the threat of young people getting inflamed; this happens in an obvious way. Approximately 100,000 young people and young adults tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks of July in the United States.
Taken together, knowledge tells us that the best schools deserve to be treated more as workplaces for adults; many examine at home for a great deal of time. Hybrid curricula are also likely to be a vital component of school life; more data on Covid-19 is still needed among the best students in schools.
But when it comes to school number one, there are tactics to safely reopen schools for face-to-face teaching. We deserve to differentiate the spectrum from the 6-year-old viral vector that is still looking to figure out how to wear a handkerchief and genuinely that we can convey if we stick to the principles of public aptitude described above, on masking, distance and more. This will require genuine cash to be spent on our chronically underfunded schools. But it can be done.
Naomi Bardach is a professor of pediatrics and politics at the University of California, San Francisco.
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