In case you haven't noticed, COVID-19 cases among U.S. children have been "steadily increasing" since last March. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed this in new data released today, also noting that "evidence suggests that children likely have the same or higher viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with adults and that children can spread the virus effectively in households and camp settings."
Says the CDC: "Due to community mitigation measures and school closures, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to and among children may have been reduced in the United States during the pandemic in the spring and early summer of 2020. This may explain the low incidence in children compared with adults."
And there's a hint of professional optimism to be had here, if you're an infectious disease expert! No, not optimism over possibly reducing the spread of the disease, don't be silly. The reason for optimism is that we're soon going to be able to tell for sure if the "low incidence in children" we've seen over the summer was indeed just because schools were closed.
"Comparing trends in pediatric infections before and after the return to in-person school and other activities may provide additional understanding about infections in children," the report said
We're doing the human experiment: opening those same schools. If American kids start dying off, somebody owes somebody a Coke.
The CDC has no direct control over whether schools reopen, of course—at least, not that they are willing to use. Around the country, but primarily in states with Republican "leadership," the experiment is being run and sure enough, reopening schools and universities is already resulting in hundreds of new COVID-19 hotspots. We now know for a fact that schools are prime candidates for superspreader events; so far, children have proved to be more resilient than adults in not dying from the new coronavirus, but infection rates have been climbing steeply in recent weeks, with nearly 100,000 U.S. children testing positive in the last two weeks of July alone. In Florida, cases among children soared almost 140% during July; nonetheless, Republican governors are especially keen on reopening schools to establish a temporary—very temporary—pretense of normality.
It's almost a given that those reopening schools will be swiftly reclosing. There is no plausible way to have in-person education during a pandemic using only the resources our schools currently have access to. There aren't enough masks, or tests, or classrooms, or social distancing precautions, and there will not be because the United States, nearly alone among developed nations, pissed away six months of pandemic time making only halfhearted stabs at solutions to any of those things. Even if conservative leaders "demand" schools stay open, parents, teachers, and students will not necessarily be willing to comply.
In the meantime, though, the schools will be spreading the virus. The CDC notes that "1 in 3 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States were admitted to the intensive care unit, which is the same in adults," and that "similar to adults, children with severe COVID-19 may develop respiratory failure, myocarditis, shock, acute renal failure, coagulopathy, and multi-organ system failure."
We know it's going to happen. But many states will be doing the experiment anyway, out of deference to a conservative, Trumpian theory that even a worldwide pandemic is nothing more than a way to make conservative leaders look bad.
