I’m not a health care professional. I am not qualified to make decisions about what we should and should not do about the COVID-19 situation. I still wonder if closing the schools is the right thing to do.
Children up to the age of 19 are 24% of our US population.
These two statements from the United States Centers for Disease Control are interesting:
Pediatric cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), have been reported. However, there are relatively fewer cases of COVID-19 among children compared to cases among adult patients.1-5
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- In the United States, 2% of confirmed cases of COVID-19 were among persons aged <18 years.4
and
As of March 8, 2020, just one pediatric death was reported among confirmed COVID-19 cases in China,15 and as of March 15, 2020, none of the 1,625 deaths associated with COVID-19 in Italy were among children aged <18 years.2 In Spain, no pediatric deaths were reported as of March 16, 2020.5 In the U.S., as of April 2, 2020, there have been three deaths among children with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection that have been reported to CDC, but the contribution of SARS-CoV-2 infection to the cause of death in these cases is unclear.4
It seems that school age youngsters have an easier time with COVID-19 than infants and seniors. In fact according to the CDC they are seeing that some kids with COVID-19 don’t even develop symptoms:
There have been multiple reports to date of children with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.3,6,14,15 In one study, up to 13% of pediatric cases with SARS-CoV-2 infection were asymptomatic.16 The prevalence of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and duration of pre-symptomatic infection in children are not well understood, as asymptomatic individuals are not routinely tested.
Should the schools really be closed? I would appreciate your thoughts.
We deserve better
Brutus
Posted by Brutus 
elpasospeak 
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