@Brian Guilfoyle: Great at cleaning chimneys though.

@John: Ah in fairness John, not all of them are good at it. Our middle lad Porky was useless.

@Brian Guilfoyle: to be fair in 35 and I still haven’t figured that one out Brian.

@Marianne: widely infected? The numbers are a tiny fraction. Interested to know what your definition of widely infected is?

@Craic-Hommy: report also states with very limited evidence. Take it with a pinch of salt

@Macca Attack: the original Australian report actually makes that point themselves, it’s an indicator but not conclusive and recommends more detailed research is required.

@Wheresmyjumper: also in nearly every case the child was clinically obese or had significant underlying conditions https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/well/family/coronavirus-children-covid-19.html nothing like a bit of fact free scare mongering though

@Craic-Hommy: 100 children in New York been affected with inflammation symptoms that are linked to Covid 19

@Melina Roberts: ‘Major concern’: Nearly 100 New York children treated for mysterious inflammatory illness thought to be linked to Covid-19 https://www.rt.com/usa/488492-new-york-children-mystery-syndrome/

@Mary Walshe: you have to also consider hundreds of parents congregating in a small area to collect/drop off children. Staff rooms, etc. also. I know some of this could be alleviated by staggered opening times and breaks but it is not as straightforward as simply reopening.

@Wheresmyjumper: Its far to early to make a statement like that. For every study you find that suggests that, you find one with the opposite conclusions. From what I’ve seen anyway.

@NotMyIreland: we have to start playing the odds at some stage, at the moment despite a pandemic no child has passed this on to an adult and after 6 months this is good enough for me

@Rochelle: did you read the article?

@Wheresmyjumper: A recent study showed that closing schools reduced the R0 by 0.3. Considering the aim is to keep it below 0.3 is a huge jump. This of course includes the spread from teachers but as a general overview it is worrying that it changes the R0 so considerably, and would suggest children may be spreading it. The same study found that even with mild symptoms children have as much of a viral load as very ill adults. Again as viral load is linked to the spread this also indicates they may be spreading it Yes there may be no confirmed cases of spread from children to adult but as it is actually very hard to track the spread in all forms on an individual basis, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening. There were loads of cases in this country where the source of infection was unknown

@NotMyIreland: the Swiss are doing the work for us, so we’ll find out in a couple of weeks, at some point we are just going to have to play the odds and get on with our lives

@Wheresmyjumper: Yeah I’m with you there. Im all for playing the odds, but prefer to play when they are stacked in my favour with a good chance of a good return. By the time schools return in September they should know a lot more.

@Fabio Dillon: Yes. The research isn’t saying children don’t spread the virus, it’s saying they haven’t been significant contributors to date. The reason for that is pretty obvious considering schools have been closed for months.

@NotMyIreland: have you a link to that study? Just wondering how they isolated the effect of schools closing from other ‘lockdown’ factors.

@Conor Egan: it’s starting to look like rather than kids getting infected but being asymptomatic they are just not getting infected at all in most cases. Smokers and asthmatics also appear to be immune but less evidence to suggest they are immune entirely rather than just asymptomatic. Could be a lot of people locked down unnecessarily.

@Gordon Comstock: where is the source to your claim that ‘smokers and asthmatics also appear to be immune’? I ask simply because so many of the fatalities, let alone severe cases, fall into those categories.

@Conor Egan: The ABC in Australia reported a case of a student in an Australian school who was suspected of catching it off an infected teacher.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-20/student-tests-positive-to-covid-19-at-unley-high/12074128

@D Mems: smokers is based on the original outbreak in Wuhan. Despite having a large percentage of smokers the numbers of hospitalisations of smokers was in the low single digits. Asthma similarly appears to be underrepresented in hospitalisations. These are significant because you expect both groups to be over-represented when respiratory infections are going around. It’s just based on stats at present but that’s all we really have at the moment.

@Gordon Comstock: that’s an anecdote, where is your source?

@D Mems: what exactly is it that you think anecdote means?

@Gordon Comstock: I’m an asthmatic. I bought masks, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes and started using them the minute the virus hit Europe. I started complete isolation when the schools closed and haven’t been in a shop or someone else’s house since. it could be that asthmatics etc are simply being more careful rather than they’re somehow immune.

@Gordon Comstock: When will they change the warning on a packet of cigs so? No more “smoking kills” maybe instead “Smoking kills but stay covid free”. They think its the nicotine that effects the virus. Luke O’Neill said they are now even trialling nicotine patches.

@Lorraine Mac Rory: could be, but that doesn’t protect asthmatics from the flu. The hypothesis at the moment is that is has something to do with mucus. Both smokers and asthmatics tend to produce more mucus than average, so if mucus can successfully fight the infection it would explain why both of these usually overrepresented groups are underrepresented with this respiratory infection.

@D Mems: as an ex smoker I just could not believe it but I did look it up and there are many sources..

World Health Organization say they are currently reviewing research and studies concerning smoking and nicotine and will release further statements in the coming days.

The Economist: A quarter of French adults smoke. Many people were surprised, therefore, when researchers reported late in April that only 5% of 482 covid-19 patients who came to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris between February 28th and April 9th were daily smokers. The ratios of smokers to non-smokers in earlier tallies at hospitals in America, China and elsewhere in France varied. But all revealed habitual smokers to be significantly underrepresented among those requiring hospital treatment for the illness. Smokers, the authors of the report wrote, “are much less likely” to suffer severely from sars-cov-2, the virus that causes covid-19. Rarely, they added, is such a result seen in medicine

Although this is a more balanced approach https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/07/covid-19-and-smoking-what-does-the-who-say

@Gordon Comstock: washing hands, hand sanitizer and airing rooms all protect from the flu. As an asthmatic I’m entitled to a free flu vaccine which I get every year. I also use hepa filtration in my vacuum and air filters which can terminate viruses from the air.
Again, it could be that asthmatics etc are more careful and maintain better respiratory hygiene. Thanks but I won’t be going off your hypotheses that I’m immune any time soon!

@Lorraine Mac Rory: the point is that despite asthmatics being more likely to receive the flu shot, and as you say more likely to be precautionary during flu seasons, they are still overrepresented in flu hospitalisations. And that’s expected every year. That asthmatics are significantly underrepresented in covid hospitalisations means either asthmatics are not as susceptible to covid, or that asthmatics are being significantly more cautious at present than they are during flu seasons and significantly more cautious than everyone else, and this caution is producing results. It’s a lot more likely that asthmatics are just not as susceptible to this infection as non-asthmatics. We don’t yet know why though, but the mucus thing looks promising. But childhood immunity could also be a factor.

@Gordon Comstock: ah sorry! I misunderstood part of your comment. I was wondering myself about autoimmune disorders and covid. Covid kills by over activating the immune system. I wonder are malfunctioning immune systems more or less likely to overreact to covid.

@Lorraine Mac Rory: I wouldn’t know, but as I understand it if you’re young and healthy your immune system will attack it and win. The problem arises if that initial attack by your immune system isn’t successful, it’s the second wave defence by your immune system that causes the potentially fatal overreaction. If the excess mucus thing is what’s helping smokers and asthmatics then maybe the first wave attack by their immune systems is bolstered by that excess mucus in their systems anyway, which significantly reduces the possibility of the potentially fatal second wave. But this is all guess work obviously.

@FecklessBear: throwing a rock at someone is loosely the same as shooting a bullet at someone

@D Mems: covid virus

@seamus toomey: what?