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
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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
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
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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
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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
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
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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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
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