A very calm thread🧵
Waiting for data before frightening kids, parents and the general public about variants, children and schools is important. They deserve this.
It has not been well practiced across the board - and given todays @ONS data, it is particularly disappointing
1/
Many will remember (feels like a lifetime ago) a lot of concern about the Alpha variant (prev known as B1.1.7) being very transmissible or more severe in children, disproportionate to its effects in adults
As it turns out, that was not the case
2/
When schools were about to open in March, some people were very clear this would be a catastrophe
This led to a lot of anxiety among children, parents and teachers
Fortunately, it was not a catastrophe
In fact, it was completely fine
3/
ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
Now we have a new variant, Delta
It is more transmissible by everyone (including children) and may cause more severe disease
But once more, very early on we heard lots of stories on THIS variant being worse and more transmissible *particularly* in children, and schools
4/
Despite lots of anecdotes, there was no real data to support this issue
There were conspiracy theories about cover ups of terrifying data, accusations of public health officials, letters written galore, and general furore
5/
When PHE released some data, the analysts themselves were *very clear* that it could not point to the precise role of schools in wider community transmission due to the nature of how the data is collected
This has often been dismissed or ignored
6/
Time has passed, and it is quite clear now that as for Delta, as for all #SARSCoV2 before it
-Young adults transmission highest
-Teens transmission a bit more due to more mixing, but to a lesser extent
-Younger children transmission surprisingly low
7/
In fact, let's just take a moment to admire the primary school aged data
This is the least vaccinated group, with among the highest amount of social mixing, in school with no facemasks for 3 months, whilst other respiratory viruses have run rampant
It is quite extraordinary
8/
Anyway, this is an issue because the horse has bolted
Most people will never hear that it turned out there was nothing special about kids and this variant
They'll just remember the scare stories
It's very easy to terrify parents
It is very difficult to un-terrify them
9/
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