Thread by @DrEricDing

⚠️KIDS <12 are “CRITICAL HIDDEN SPREADERS”—New 226-person study found 2 school kids <12 set off a #COVID19 outbreak. ➡️”Activities of children in the school🏫 spread the virus to their classmates (G2)”, then classmates’ families (G3) & factories (G4). #Vaccinate school-kids! 🧵

2) Apparently two young kids (G1) had been infected by their dad. ➡️ How did we know who in school were infected by which kid? Well genomics 🧬 sequencing showed one kid infected 11 classmates & other infected 12 classmates. (Yes, you can use 🧬 to know)
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

3) Also super frustrating — the middle age father of the 2 G1 kids brought it back from outside of China 🇨🇳— and then caught the virus “during quarantine” after entry into China. Oy—this quarantine cross contamination transmission has been seen before in many places.

4) So in children age <12, there were 0% vaccinated. In those age >=12, 88.6% were fully vaccinated. This shows you that even with high vaccination, the #DeltaVariant (this outbreak variant type) can still spread incredibly fast! This is why we need kids & adults to #MaskUp!

5) To be clear - vaccines do tremendously lower both cases and deaths. But they are not fool proof. That’s why we need to adopt multilayered strategies of both vaccines and mitigations like masks and ventilation and air disinfection and testing and quarantines.

6) China is now beginning to experience public panic over the new #COVID19 surge. At this rate—its Beijing Winter Olympics are in trouble. It’s only a few months away.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1457845337482219523

7) Another reason to still #MaskUp until the pandemic is over is that both reinfections and breakthroughs possible. But reinfections (among those previously infected) is much much more common than breakthroughs.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1454152775777103874

8) So, do masks work? Oh hell yes. Ignore the misinfo and disinfo on masks. See thread 🧵 below 👇

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1456188127916306434

9) key sidenote— We should not just say natural vs artificial immunity. Vaccines stimulate your own natural immunity to fight #SARSCoV2 & other viruses—its natural. What the “natural immunity” folks really want to say is “let’s mass infect everyone” for expediency. 👀 #vaccinate

10) Let’s reiterate the Conclusion from the key study: “Children aged < 12y may be critical hidden spreaders, which indicates an urgent need of vaccination for this particular population.”

11) beware of disinfo on vaccines out there. Don’t fall for it.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1457770744268480514

12) this is me banging my head about school safety. We need ventilation and air disinfection on top of masks and vaccines.

https://twitter.com/HuffmanLabDU/status/1458277939716317197