Swiss authorities say it is now safe for children under the age of 10 to hug their grandparents, in a revision to official advice on coronavirus.
The health ministry’s infectious diseases chief Daniel Koch said scientists had concluded that young children did not transmit the virus.
This week, garden centres and hairdressers have been allowed to open their doors. Schools and shops selling items other than food will be allowed to reopen in two weeks’ time.
Dr Koch told a news conference this week that the original advice to keep distance between children and their grandparents was made when less was known about how the coronavirus was transmitted.
“Young children are not infected and do not transmit the virus,” he said. “They just don’t have the receptors to catch the disease.”
So they have known for a while that there was no way that children could be involved in coronaplague transmission, but the teachers still needed at least two more weeks of vacation!
Related:
I think the notion that kids can’t get infected with coronaplague is patently absurd given we have recorded cases of kids dying and presenting with unusal illnesses after being infected [1]. We have a situation where, to get the R_0 number below zero, we have a set of interventions we can use which vary in effectiveness, but we can’t predict a priori which interventions are going to be the most effective. Successful control of the virus is almost certainly going to involve having done some things that ended up not being very effective. In actuality, we have the opposite problem in the US, which is that our interventions aren’t effective enough (and shamefully, I don’t think we have good data why; Governor Cuomo came dangerously close to implying that people “staying home” are getting infected through 5G signals despite supposedly practicing social distancing).
[1] https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/73-ny-children-sick-with-rare-covid-related-illness-state-finds-with-one-death/2408285/
“kids can’t get infected with coronaplague is patently absurd”
Not so fast with “absurd”. Koch did not say that “kids can’t get infected”. He stated that “young children did not transmit” which is rather different from the strawman you criticize.
Humble people use the word “uncertain”, not “absurd”. Evidence does point in the direction of children under 10 not being virus transmitters, perhaps due to very low viral load.
“The case of a nine-year-old boy who contracted Covid-19 in the French Alps but did not transmit the disease, despite having contact with over 170 people, led experts who investigated his case to conclude that children probably don’t play an important role in virus transmission.”
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/fact-check_true-or-false–children-are-not-the-drivers-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic/45710550
Ivan: I think what you’re missing is that if even one infected child can be found anywhere among the 7.7 billion humans on Planet Earth THEN we have to shut down schools #AbundanceOfCaution. If we can save even one human life, which is priceless by definition, from either Covid-19 or influenza, with a 50-year school shutdown, that’s worth doing under the currently applicable logic of public officialdom.
> Not so fast with “absurd”. Koch did not say that “kids can’t get infected”.
The direct quote from the article is “Young children are not infected and do not transmit the virus,” which is a blanket statement we know for certain to be false. As far as we can tell right now, they get infected at the same rate but are less likely to become sick. What is uncertain is how much they would contribute to spreading the virus if we opened the schools and how many of their parents they would kill as a result. My personal belief is that the kids weren’t really learning anything anyway and their parents are instead mostly bothered by having to take care of their kids all day.
This is not about “one human life.” NYC has reported roughly 20,000 coronavirus deaths so far [1]. If you divide that by the population of 8.4 million (before nearly everyone who could left the city). That means the virus has killed about 0.24% of the population already (and still increasing); if you extrapolate that to the population of the US, that’s about 780,000 deaths. People in many parts of the US think NYC is a uniquely horrible place, which is true, but that’s also what NYC thought about Wuhan and then Italy. You tell me how we can have somewhere in the neighborhood of 780,000 deaths, disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups (e.g. poor people and racial minorities) without causing massive social unrest and economic harm. If that number of people actually die, that means 9 out of 10 Americans who will die of coronavirus have not died yet: the bulk of the problem is still ahead of us. As bad as it’s been so far, it will get much worse.
I think the economy is unlikely to see any sort of recovery (perhaps we could see an extremely slow one where we employ millions of people to make N95 masks, do contact tracing, and extract corn ethanol out of gasoline to make hand sanitizer) unless we can get the virus under control. Most consumer experiences are not good enough to justify risking weeks of illness (if you believe you’re young and healthy) or perhaps death. How many retired consumers with large amounts of disposable income are going to risk their lives to see a crappy movie in a theater instead of staying home and streaming it on Netflix?
There’s perhaps some tradeoff between economic harm and how many people are going to die, but realistically the US is on a path where we’re going to both destroy the economy and also kill hundreds of thousands of people.
[1] https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-deaths-cases-confirmed-new-york-city-20200508-btpbgm6qovdnfg4fym2xc46zxq-story.html
Anonymous wrote: “The direct quote from the article is “Young children are not infected and do not transmit the virus,” which is a blanket statement we know for certain to be false.”
In our strange times, we do not know whether the BBC is unable to translate from German properly (rather bizarre because English is a Germanic language), or whether they mistranslated intentionally, or even whether the original German quote is correct ! Here’s what he said in German:
“Es ist so, dass Kinder praktisch nicht infiziert werden und vor allem das Virus nicht weitergeben”.
“praktisch” miraculously vanished from the BBC translation.
The Telegraph apparently has someone on their staff who understands German (or they are more honest): “Children are very rarely infected and do not pass on the virus”.
Yeah its obviously possible to change transmission rate based on change in behavior, the question is what are the most effective behaviors to lower transmission, and what are the cost/benefits?
Personally, I hate crowds, and would be happy not to go to any event with more than 50 people ever again. I really hate sports stadiums and associated big sporting events, I don’t see how they are any benefit whatsoever to society. They certainly do a great job at creating traffic jams though.
It would be nice if the economics of transportation favored small vehicles instead of large ones. I also really hate being stuffed in a big airplane with 300 other people. Unfortunately I also like cheap airplane tickets.
Henry: There is a ton of fresh air that comes into an airliner. If that 300-seat aircraft were occupied by only 200 people due to middle seats being left vacant, I don’t think that flights would be huge sources of infection. https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/03/23/coronavirus-will-breathe-life-into-my-two-thirds-full-airline-idea/
Consider people who fly all the time for business all winter. They aren’t so much more likely to get colds than the general population that you find a study (at least I couldn’t) on the extra disease burden suffered by frequent flyers.
One theory of cold transmission is that there are a handful of viruses that circulate around but produce only weak immunity (probably due to the mildness of the illness), and the schedule at which people get colds is basically governed by the speed at which immunity wears off. If that model is correct, it might actually be beneficial to be re-exposed while you have some level of immunity. None of this applies to a novel virus though.
We do have a study showing how SARS was transmitted on airplanes (I’m not sure if there are any for COVID-19):
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa031349
Figure 2 has a seating map. Spoiler alert: taking out the middle seats is not sufficient. Wearing masks probably helps.
What did New York do after finding their first known coronavirus patient in the state of New York? They planned to contact everyone on her flight…and then didn’t do it because it was too much work:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html
> “Out of an abundance of caution we will be contacting the people who were on the flight with her from Iran to New York,” he said.
> But no one ever did that work. Local officials could only request an investigation from the C.D.C., and the agency did not perform one because they believed at the time she had not been contagious during the flight, officials said. Neither Mr. Cuomo nor Mr. de Blasio publicly mentioned finding the plane passengers again.
They didn’t even bother to give journalists the flight number so the passengers could read about it in the news. Maybe because the politicians were still thinking they could protect New York’s economy by sweeping the problem under the rug and pretending it didn’t exist (this is basically our national strategy right now; the outcome for New York is that it might be forever ruined as a city now).
To be very clear, these are not 780,000 (or however many) deaths that were impossible to prevent: these are 780,000 people who will die because our government is not as competent as the governments of e.g. China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, or Singapore. What message does this send to businesses choosing where to hire employees or high-skill workers who have the ability to move to other countries?
Can Swiss children not spread the virus around my touching contaminated surfaces? Are all Swiss children made of copper and anti-microbial detergent?
Bash teachers all you want, because they are so often your enemy, is one thing, but be careful what you wish for….Many teachers are in higher CV-19 risk category because of age and underlying medical and other conditions, some related to the job…..I know, I know, they ALL have cushy gigs with endless pensions, and other defined/negotiated benefits, that they don’t deserve…..Putting their lives, and the lives of many teacher’s families at risk, might be mitigated if we assess reopening of schools by traced cases and other demographics such as age of teachers by State, district, or school…..this information can also be handy to target teachers over say 50, for buyout incentives, hire less qualified but cheaper replacements, something that was quite popular during last economic downturn.
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass1112_2013314_t1s_002.asp
Shouldn’t teachers be a low-risk group to begin with, being predominantly white and female? https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919901&bcid=25919901&rssid=25919891&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Few%2F%3Fuuid%3DBACA151A-8131-11E7-8291-8B98B3743667
Also, unlike a lot of American workers, teachers aren’t desk-bound for 40+ hours per week. They do a range of activities in the classroom and then have every afternoon and summer free for physical activity. Even if the Swiss scientists are wrong and it is possible for children to transmit the virus to teachers, I would think this is actually a lower risk group than almost any other group of non-military workers.
Perhaps, however, inner-city schools, where most public school teachers work are unmonitored petri dishes at best: water fountain lead and high level of germ contamination in large majority of schools. CoVid contamination control will be laughable.
Consider too, in many suburban school districts where property taxes cover a large percentage of local and nearby impoverished district costs, maintenance cut backs were instituted to pay for ridiculous remote random shooter possibility. Oh yeah, couple that with the nuclear impact of SALT tax cuts forcing many to flea to cheaper cities and states.
tl:dr Many school districts employ teachers and administrators who, because of age, underlying medical conditions and risky environments, are at greater risk of getting CoVid and dying, and bringing it home to their families and community…..Your turn 🙂
Professor K: It is certainly sad that teachers have to live on a diet consisting primarily of lead, but maybe it is good that they can retire from this lead-based diet when they’re in their 50s and then start the healing process on their way to their 90th birthdays, which the typical female schoolteacher will be able to celebrate:
Teachers live the longest, with general public employees the next, and safety personnel come in last. That’s the result of a study by the Society of Actuaries, which created the first mortality tables that track the life expectancies of public pensioners.
After reviewing 46 million life-years and 580,000 deaths from 78 public plans and 35 public pension systems in the US between 2008 and 2013, the actuaries found that teachers have the longest life expectancy at age 87.7 in men, 90.03 for women. General employees live an average of 85.49 (male) and 88.48 (female), while safety professionals usually die at ages 85.27 (male) and 87.68 (female).
These numbers also mean larger pension obligations for teachers’ pension plan officials.
Source: https://www.ai-cio.com/news/long-retired-public-employees-live/
> I would think this is actually a lower risk group than almost any other group of non-military workers.
I’ll interject here for just a second: regardless of which “side” one’s on in this debate, we’re going to have an interesting opportunity to see what the petri dish of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt tells us about herd immunity after all the sailors get back aboard and the ship sets sail again. The Navy isn’t going to be reporting the numbers on a daily basis, the information is quarantined going forward, but they have tested 100% of the crew.
Hey Phil, I see I touched the center of one of your bruises….sorry about that.
Hindsight is a great thing….an argument could be made that perhaps only the hardest and most populated areas should have been totally shutdown. However, a government that no rational person can disagree, waited too long to act, made virus causing pronouncements and then took questionable steps, at best that were too little too late, needed to finally scare people to stay home. That’s what happens when we wait so long to meet a war head on.
Why negotiate a contract that you and your many minions will regret later? Better yet, why didn’t you choose teaching as a career so you too can rip off the system instead of complaining? Free choice, no?
Perhaps your anger and displeasure towards teachers would be better placed on those responsible for the bailout: Mnuchin, Kudlow and members of Congress responsible for printing more money to pay for workers to stay “on the couch” instead of it being used elsewhere?
Professor K: Maybe we need Bill Burr to do a video on how being a public school teacher is the hardest job in America! https://youtu.be/L-gbacsUKpc
(I’m not sure where you get the idea that a workforce that has the opportunity to retire with a government-guaranteed inflation-protected pension for members in their 50s is exceptionally old. The U.S. workforce starts with 14-year-olds (https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/hiring/workersunder18 ), but teachers need to have a college degree and a certificate from regulators so the youngest teachers should be around 22 or 23. I would expect teachers to have an average age that is lower than the average age of workers in all jobs that require a college degree (active physicians average 51 years of age, for example: https://www.mdlinx.com/internal-medicine/article/1445 ).)
Professor K: So… you are probably correct that, given prevailing American attitudes toward acceptable personal risk, the risk of teachers contracting coronavirus infection from their students is an unacceptably high one and therefore teachers cannot go to work. But, since their risk is much lower than that faced by the typical American worker, that also means that almost nobody in the U.S. can feel safe enough to get off the couch and go to work.
> But, since their risk is much lower than that faced by the typical American worker, that also means that almost nobody in the U.S. can feel safe enough to get off the couch and go to work.
This is true and it’s going to become much more true. As of today, Fauci (Director, NIAID) Redfield (Director, CDC) and Hahn (FDA Commissioner) are all self-quarantining after exposure to people who tested positive. They’re all negative, so far. Pence’s press secretary has tested positive. Fauci is 79, Redfield is 68 and Pence and Hahn are the whippersnappers, both aged 60. Sooner or later someone someone at the center of this in Washington is going to test positive and die. At that point, how does the administration plan to adjust its messaging to tell anyone to go back to work, particularly those who have limited access to testing unlike all of the aforementioned? I can see the press conference now:
“Mr. President, [insert name here] is now in Johns Hopkins Hospital on a respirator with COVID-19 and he was one of the most tested people in the United States. How can you tell teachers or anyone else to leave their homes and go back to work, especially if they still can’t get tested?”
“Redfield sought to use the exposure as a teachable moment.”
https://apnews.com/6e683d94fb99e0f66a12b8446f4b62ad
Professor K: I am not sure why you think the original post was motivated by anger at schoolteachers. I am not a taxpayer in Switzerland nor do I send children to school there so the lengthy gap between concluding that schools are not a coronavirus risk and reopening the schools is not a matter of personal concern for me, just an amusing observation.
I have no idea when or if American schoolteachers will return to work!
Alex: You raise some good points. Just as lifestyle at home for the decision-makers and richer Americans bears no relationship to what below-median-income Americans experience (https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/04/15/your-lockdown-may-vary/ ), lifestyle at work is similarly disparate. I think it will depend a lot on the state. The U.S. is in a strange situation where centralized bureaucrats in D.C. are making decisions for people who live in states that they’ve never visited. This doesn’t happen in the EU. Nobody in Croatia or Portugal is saying “Only a central bureaucrat in Belgium can possibly make health-related policy for us.”
Well put Alex. I’d add one more thing…..What’s Plan B?
@Professor K: I wish I had a good answer to that, but I don’t. Economically and in terms of permanent disruption to people’s lives, I fear we’re only at the beginning of what is going to be a very long set of years. I know what people on the Left are working for, and it’s nothing less than a radical political transformation of the United States. They’ve been waiting for this all their lives. To them, this is the crisis moment, the tipping point, not just in terms of capitalism but on climate change and the government of the country.
“With the epic upheaval of the Coronavirus, the massively organized and inspired grassroots, and the 100% loss of hope that progressives have for the Democratic Party, the iron is as hot as it’s ever going to be.”
““That which is falling should also be pushed.” Nietzsche
https://medium.com/@phoenix_goodman/america-is-about-to-have-an-overdue-political-party-realignment-cb0c7bb87cc7
The Left knows what Bernie Sanders really represented.
“Bernie’s role, ultimately, was not to become president and reign over a Democratic-Socialist administration of the country from the top-down, like Roosevelt. His role was more cultural and nuanced, but no less profound-it was to inspire a leftward consciousness shift, galvanize a grassroots movement, and ultimately, in the end, lay the seeds for the destruction of the Democratic Party. Remember, Bernie Sanders is himself not a Democrat. From the beginning of his political career in 1981 until 2015, just before his 2016 candidacy, he was registered Independent, and only switched to run under the party banner. Yes, he pledged loyalty to the party, and endorsed Hillary and Biden after his losses, but he did so as political chess moves to keep his role as a power player on the inside while his legacy winks and nods to the grassroots. Make no mistake, this was an infiltration. That’s why Party insiders fought to the hilt to keep him out.”
In other words, the Left doesn’t care about Plan B. This isn’t checkers! They’re working on Plan C, comrade!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimwang/2020/05/08/2000-per-person-and-2000-per-child-monthly-economic-crisis-support-act-would-send-payments-to-over-90-of-americans/#6e42750b3977
This is the Senate side of the Ro Khanna / Tim Ryan (HR) “Emergency Money for the People” legislation. $304 billion a month! And the payments “…would continue for three months after when the Health and Human Services Department declared the public health emergency has ended.” Which is, as far as I can tell, is going to be … several years from now, or maybe never! We may never have a vaccine. People who test positive may not have lasting immunity. Every time we have an outbreak, everyone has to shut down again. We will crash the car into the brick wall until there’s nothing recognizable left.
Forbes notes that it’s unlikely to pass – in this Congress. By the time November rolls around, if the Democrats re-take the Senate and the economy is still sucking wind and many more people are going hungry, this is going to be an imperative! By that point there will also be enough companies in the broken-to-shards regular economy that are completely dependent on the government that they’ll accept whatever new rules of operation the Democrats have in mind for them. We will be the USSA.
What the Medium article didn’t really touch on was that the “old guard” of the Democratic Party isn’t going to just slink away. They’re going to shift to the Left as well, as many as possible, to protect their own power. It’s a little bit like Andrew Cuomo proclaiming that New York State was going to become the most Progressive state in the country after Bill de Blasio was elected mayor. Cuomo is now the most popular Progressive governor in America, and probably the most popular politician in America. Mario taught him very well how to hang on and prosper no matter what happens.
“A day after Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) were working on a bill of “Rooseveltian” proportions…Today, Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Ed Markey (D-MA) have released the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act.”
So all of this is in flux right now, but the groundwork is already being laid. First they have to win the election and kick the Republicans out of power. Then they’ll hash out the details and figure out where they stand among each other in the great Socialist Reconstruction of the United States.
Watch in the coming months, in particular as the hurricane season transpires, and you’ll witness the reconciliation of coronavirus response with climate change response. Those two concepts have yet to be unified in the public mind, but after a couple of hurricanes, they will be irreversibly welded together.
Alex: I think what you’re ignoring is that we live in a somewhat globalized world and a country in which there are at least variations on a theme. Americans have become increasingly static over the years (see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2017/03/31/tyler-cowen-asks-if-we-can-do-big-projects/ for some stats), but coronavirus might give people the motivation that they need to move. Perhaps one state will be wide open for work and play by anyone under 60 years of age. Perhaps young skilled people can migrate to countries with points-based immigration systems, such as New Zealand and Australia that seem to be mostly immune to this plague (though maybe this is because it hit during the summer there?).
Due to unlimited multi-generational welfare (means-tested public housing, food stamps (SNAP/EBT), Medicaid, and Obamaphone), the U.S. is the ideal destination for anyone who can’t speak English, has no job skills, and is in poor health. But for ambitious young well-educated Americans, the U.S. is not the only place available for them to build a career. A flat-to-down trend for the U.S. as a whole does not spell doom for current Americans as an undifferentiated group.
With a lot less paperwork and formality, New York State, which was already #1 in the U.S. for state and local tax burden (percent of residents’ income; https://taxfoundation.org/state/new-york ), can concentrate on its strengths (government and welfare industry) while young people with skills valued by private sector employers can move to Texas and Florida.
@Philg: That’s true, I’m sketching pretty broadly here and missing a lot of detail, but you’re right: younger, smarter and more ambitious folks who have the ability to go will actively consider leaving, either to other states or abroad, especially if what I’m sketching out becomes reality. And they should!
So we will have a brain and talent shift and exodus to add to the Great Socialist Reconstruction. I don’t think the New Democrat party will mind sending their young and talented away to make their fortunes while they preside over the masses of newly poor and permanently stuck here in America. And there will be some attractive career options for their children, running the companies and staffing the agencies responsible for converting America to a carbon-neutral economy. The kids who are going to be attending school in Lincoln will have a head start on preparing for those careers, so the future isn’t bleak for them. America’s best private schools, preparatory academies, and elite universities will survive the plague and their graduates will continue to prosper in the global economy regardless of the transformations the rest of the country is subjected to.
Alex: I should do this as a separate blog post, but yes, my friends’ kids who are in an elite private school in Cambridge (BB&N) are working 4-5 hours/day online with teachers and then doing homework. Public school kids are working 1 hour/day here in MA, if that, with perhaps a 2 hours/week of teacher-moderated online chat.
I’m going to do a separate blog post on this in a couple of days, but check out
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2020/05/08/markey-seeks-federal-bailout-steamship-authority
where Elizabeth Warren wants to fight inequality by having lower-middle-class people in the Midwest pay for $3 billion in ferry tickets for the richest Americans (i.e., those who live on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket). I think the elites are going to do fine!
The Obamas closed on their Vineyard property in December, 2019 just before the plague. Got to keep those ferries going now! He’s got a whole campaign to help Joe Biden win and needs a stress-free place to think.
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2019/12/04/president-obama-buys-home-edgartown-great-pond
The sprawling 6,892-square-foot house sits on 29.3 secluded acres fronting the Edgartown Great Pond between Slough Cove and Turkeyland Cove, with views of a barrier beach and the ocean beyond. Designed by Bradenburger Taylor Lombardo Architects in San Francisco, the home was built in 2001 by John Early, a well-known Island contractor.
It’s interesting how the Steamship Authority was structured in 1948 so that it’s a state-owned entity. We’re all #InThisTogether !!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamship_Authority
Contrast with the privately-owned ferry service between Fisher Island and the mainland in Miami, which applied for a PPP loan, got approved for $2 million and then the residents held a virtual town hall and turned the money down. But they could have kept it! They successfully navigated the red tape and got that loan when hundreds or thousands of other businesses were out of luck (as you’ve talked about in a previous post). Fisher Island is tiny even compared to Martha’s Vineyard – only ~ 200 households and 467 total population! At one time it was exclusively owned by the Vanderbilts.
“Some members of the board said it was easy money. In the end, they decided to not accept the money.”
https://www.local10.com/news/local/2020/04/24/wealthy-fisher-island-approved-for-2-million-small-business-loan-but-why/
Like Telluride, CO and Bolinas, CA and a couple of other towns, Fisher Island paid to buy enough coronavirus tests for everyone on the island.
Alex said,
“Sooner or later someone someone at the center of this in Washington is going to test positive and die. At that point, how does the administration plan to adjust its messaging to tell anyone to go back to work, particularly those who have limited access to testing unlike all of the aforementioned?”
Unless it is Trump himself, the casualty will be venerated as a “warrior for the Nation” and an example to be followed. Madness cannot be reasoned with, only outlived. Just VOTE. If we do it to ourselves again, we deserve it.