And remember this study ON THE SAME DATA which corrected for shared exposure (the index case and suspected secondary case both exposed to same original infection source) and found extraordinarily low rates of confirmed secondary infections?
This study has the same methodology, and suffers from the same massive source of bias
Children (particularly young children) do not travel alone, especially during lock down in a pandemic
They are getting exposed at the same time as their close contacts (usually family)
6/10
The infected close contacts around same age are likely to be siblings who would be going wherever the index case is going, being exposed to the same sources of infection
It is impossible to tease out who the index case infected and who got infected at the same time as them
7/10
We can see from the graph that the older the children (and more mobile/independent) the lower the rate of associated positive close contacts were around the same age
Reduced "infectiousness" seems unlikely to be the cause
8/10
Now it may be the case that infected children are just as infectious; it has been difficult to determine
Indirect evidence from schools/family clusters with known direction of transmission has suggested not, but we can't be certain
This study doesn't get us closer
9/10
What we should have learnt by now is;
-These studies have massive bias for children which cannot be overlooked
-Single studies (no matter how big) should not influence policy without context of previous evidence
-In contact tracing, small and detailed beats big and dirty
10/10
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Here is a totally uncontroversial thread about immunity to common pathogens as influenced by the pandemic
I will simply state facts
1. Rates of many commonly circulating pathogens almost completely vanished during the first 1 - 2y of the pandemic (eg Group A Strep)
1/
2. The reason these pathogens almost vanished was because transmission was reduced by the measures which were introduced around the world to reduce transmission of #SARSCoV2
This coincidently also reduced transmission of other pathogens, often even more successfully
2/
3. Because these pathogens commonly circulate, there is usually a relatively stable amount of population immunity to them, acquired by infection
4. Vastly reduced rates of infection will therefore result in lower levels of population immunity than prior to the pandemic
3/