LikeFluence

In Catalonia 🇪🇸, 6yo wore masks in schools but 5yo did not

A brilliant team used this to see what effect mask wearing had on #COVID19 transmission

Finding: No difference between the two groups

Conclusion: No meaningful effect of masking school children

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf….. https://t.co/gFhwMATgug

Nothing to see here, just a children’s emergency department shift full of cases of bronchiolitis, RSV wheeze and gastroenteritis

IN THE SUMMER ☀️

What. Is. Happening. 🦠

This is great news - nearly 25% of all paediatric #COVID19 deaths reported by CDC were due to a coding error - now vanished!

Also slightly worrying that this data was being used widely in the US to guide or advocate for policy… 😬 twitter.com/KelleyKga/stat…..

Absolutely HUGE study on persistent symptoms after #COVID19 ("long covid") in 37,000 children from Denmark 🇩🇰

Incidence 0.8% compared to controls

Most symptoms resolved in <5 months (often loss of smell/taste)

Reassuring news from biggest study yet✅

link.springer.com/article/10.100….. https://t.co/GctgyMXn6I

It’s becoming more apparent that one of the most toxic lies sold to the public is that if you’re not terrified of this virus, you are not taking it seriously

You can be informed without being afraid

You can be sensible without being scared

You don’t need to be ruled by fear

Something I’m surprised is never brought up about masks, is that there is *inherent value* in seeing peoples faces when you interact with them

Enjoying social and emotional connections is central to who we are

Seeing faces enriches this experience

We shouldn’t undervalue it

Did you hear “Delta is different”, when it comes to #COVID19 symptom severity in children?

GOOD NEWS 🥳

Turns out there is barely any difference at all between Delta and Alpha in symptom duration, severity, or risk of “long covid”

Myth busted 💥

medrxiv.org/cgi/content/sh…..

There is some misinformation circulating that 1% of children with COVID-19 in England get hospitalised

That is not true by any way of measuring the data

The true rate is MUCH lower for most children (<0.1%)

Let's look at the data

1/

The study we've all been waiting for

Using data from >50,000 #COVID19 contacts, vaccinated people are less infectious EVEN with Delta, and EVEN if CT count is the same

Also, kids appear less infectious and less susceptible, including with Delta

1/
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…..

The case for masking pre-school children for #COVID19 is baffling

No one has ever considered masking them for RSV, despite it posing a much higher risk to their health

This is because the potential harms on social, speech and language development outweigh any marginal benefits https://t.co/N1DkolwNTC

Might be a good time to remind everyone that the person who kind of invented health/biostatistics and data visualisation, and the OG “data lad” was in fact…

Florence Nightingale

theguardian.com/news/datablog/…..

Cases in children in England now back at their lowest levels since October 2021

There are currently no mask requirements for any age

What a lovely way to start half term! https://t.co/WnRefxM01b

@thatsmanderley @NYCMayor @R_Hughes1 @MAbsoud @sunilbhop Wait a minute

So the ONLY group actually *required* to wear masks are the youngest children, who are at most risk of harms to their social and language development, who are lowest risk of severe illness, and who the WHO specifically advised *against* masking?

I am speechless

If not already obvious, the phrase "following the science" is an overtly political statement

Science can inform decisions, but it does not make them

Value judgements are needed to put weight to different outcomes

That is the job of policy makers. Not scientists.

Astonishing

A pre-print on child covid mortality in the US (by authors from UK…?) was quoted by the CDC and in a vaccine recommendation meeting

The study is totally inappropriate. I can see no justification for decisions they made

How did this happen?

covid-georgia.com/news/fact-chec…..

"Getting back to normal" does not, and never did mean pretending covid doesn't exist

It *does* mean ending legal restrictions on civil liberties based around covid

It *does* mean letting lay people live with covid in the background, not foreground

We are getting back to normal

@c_drosten Thanks for your interest @c_drosten

I’m glad to report there is no basis for this criticism. In Catalonia the children of these ages all attend the same institution and follow similar schedules

That is one reason the design is superior to other observational studies twitter.com/Alba_Llobet/st…..

One thing is becoming increasingly clear about the Omicron variant

The R0 of people confidently tweeting really stupid stuff about it is significantly higher than previous variants

It’s finally here – I’m so proud to say the @covboost study now published in @TheLancet

This is the largest trial so far on 3rd dose booster vaccines for #COVID19 💉

Ready to dive in? There’s a lot to cover!

1/🧵
thelancet.com/journals/lance…..

Thanks to a combination of immunity from vaccinations and lots of infections, the chance of dying if you get infected with #COVID19 in the UK is now on average lower than if you got infected with flu

ft.com/content/e26c93….. https://t.co/38XJp4VpVB

I am going to explain why this pair of tweets is both:

- Antithetical to the scientific method
- One of the biggest dangers to medical science

This is very important, so bear with me

1/ 🧵 https://t.co/4z1MxQzUL2

How do hospital admissions of children from #COVID19 in England compare to other infections ?

All admissions testing positive for #COVID19 in <18yrs after nearly 2yrs of pandemic: 15,273

Mean annual admissions for
Viral wheeze: 77,488
Bronchiolitis: 51,655
Otitis media: 33,000

A new study using high quality data from the UK is helping us better understand the risk of death from #COVID19 in children

The good news: not only is it low, it keeps getting lower

For a healthy child ~ 2 per million infections

alasdairmunro.substack.com/p/children-are…..

In Finland, Turku extended its school mask mandate to 10-12yo. Helsinki didn’t

They used this natural experiment to see the effect of masking in school for these ages

There was no difference in rates of #COVID19 based on whether they wore masks or not

medrxiv.org/content/10.110….. https://t.co/cw6ftkzNAD

You may have heard that #COVID19 is more severe for children under five, and seen scary graphs of hospital admissions

For context, here is England's Omicron wave (red) in comparison to our summer RSV wave (blue) in hospital admissions for <5s https://t.co/0HcUubrtLq