US Cases: 3,101,339
US Deaths: 125,590
Worldwide Cases: 12,232,745
Worldwide Deaths: 554,304
It looks like public schools will reopen in the fall. And the science suggests that the risk to schoolage children is minimal:
“The data that is clear is that children do not get serious consequences of infection compared to adults,” Fauci said. “That’s a fact. Everything else is less secure. It is more anecdotal.”The anecdotal evidence, he said, is that children do not transmit the coronavirus to adults as readily as adults infect one another. But, he acknowledged, “the definitive study has not been done.”The pandemic has shown a clear pattern of discriminating by age. The CDC’s provisional death toll from covid-19 stood at 112,000 on Wednesday — a figure officials acknowledge is likely an undercount — and of those deaths, 29 were among children under the age of 15. That compares with 37,247 deaths among people 85 and older. (A Post analysis shows more than 130,000 people in the United States have died from covid-19.)Though epidemiologists agree that children generally dodge the worst of covid-19, the emergence of a rare but dangerous “multisystem inflammatory syndrome” in children has been linked to the virus. The syndrome, which can manifest in a variety of early symptoms such as fever and rash, shares some characteristics with Kawasaki disease, a rare illness that usually affects children under 5.
The bigger concern is whether schoolchildren will act as asymptomatic carriers to spread the disease to faculty, staff and parents.
Sadly, this is an extremely complex issue, with no clear right answer. But since it appears that it's going to happen, it needs to be done with a lot of advance planning, and a lot of money.
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