Thread by @drsanjaygupta

One of the questions I am getting more than any other: Am I going to send my children back to school? My three teen/pre-teen girls want to go back to school and miss their friends like many others. But there is a lot to consider when making this decision. (1/20)

At least 63 of 101 of the largest school districts in the country have decided to start the year with virtual learning, but our school is offering both in-person and virtual options, which leaves the decision to us. (2/20)

On one hand, our school has taken major steps to follow the CDC recommendations and is even offering testing for students. I personally visited the school to understand every safety precaution. But, all of this only works if students are diligent. (3/20)
cnn.it/2CqKWbS

And on the other, there's the data. If you look at our state of Georgia, we haven’t seen a constant 14-day downward trajectory, one of the key White House Coronavirus Task Force criteria to move into Phase 2 - the phase where schools would reopen. (4/20)
bit.ly/322ti7p

If we look at our testing numbers, Georgia’s positivity rate is around 11% over the past 7 days which means we still aren’t testing enough. The Surgeon General said he would like to see positivity rates at less than 10% in communities before schools consider reopening. (5/20)

Then we still have to think about the health of our children. A study by the CDC found that 90% of kids with Covid-19 develop mild or moderate systems, but we have seen more severe instances like with the patients who have developed MIS-C. (6/20)
cnn.it/2Wx1Z3x

And while children are far less likely to get sick from Covid-19 than adults, this doesn’t mean they are immune. In fact, it seems they can spread it quickly. (7/20)

There was a widely cited study out of South Korea that showed kids 10 to 19 spread the virus just as much as adults. (8/20)
bit.ly/3gV1FTI

In that same study, it said children under 10 didn’t account for a lot of viral spread. This was surprising since another study out of JAMA concluded younger kids may carry higher amounts of the virus in their nose and mouths than adults. (9/20)
bit.ly/31LLlyh

Looking more closely at the South Korea study, I realized that it included fewer 30 positive cases younger than 10 years old. Of the nearly 60,000 contacts that were traced in that study, only 237 of them were from children under 10. (10/20)

What does that mean? They had come into contact with fewer people, not that they don't spread the virus. (11/20)

So, a big part of what we know about kids and transmission could hinge on the fact that children have largely been at home since mid March. Now that they are increasingly mobile, we are seeing cases start to rise.(12/20)

One analysis found cases in children have increased by 90% to more than 380,000 in the last 4 weeks. While some of that increase may be due to increased testing, a significant % is because they're emerging from their homes for the first time. (13/20)
cnn.it/31QAtz5

We also can’t talk about reopening schools without talking about the risk to teachers and other staff. One analysis found nearly a quarter of US teachers are at higher risk of serious illness from Covid-19. (14/20)
cnn.it/3gZYtGI

And we are hearing heartbreaking stories of worried teachers who said they were writing out their wills in anticipation of returning to school. (15/20)
cnn.it/3fYTxAp

Finally, we can look at the schools that have already decided to open. One in Dallas, Georgia opened and then shut down after six students and three faculty became infected. (16/20)
cnn.it/2PLQW2b

Sure, you can disinfect and reopen, but without mask mandates, a single sneeze can recontaminate an entire classroom. (17/20)

And just think when we originally started to pull kids out of school mid march, there were fewer than 5,000 known cases in the US and confirmed deaths were in the double digits. (18/20)

Now, as schools are reopening, there are more than 5 million cases and 166,000 deaths. You have to ask yourself: does that make sense? (19/20)

Ultimately, we decided not to send our three girls back to school, at least not yet. I know the decision will be different for every family and there’s no easy answer. Here’s more of how we made our choice: (20/20)
cnn.it/3fSNygx