I do not understand the logic of the graphs in this (NYT article shared with alarm) article at all. At best, they're uninformative, but at worst, wildly misleading. Percent share can increase a lot if the baseline is low, or if fewer adults get infected and can mean nothing. ???

And the underlying data shows that "children" includes teens up to 19. Yes, we need better data on children but we do have one reliable statistic: deaths. Mercifully, nationally and cumulatively, COVID has killed fewer minors, including teens, than seasonal flu in a normal year.

I wish we knew more! But we're not completely without data. We know kids are not COVID superspreaders & their mortality is lower than seasonal flu, even including teens. The risk of transmission ticks up with age. Putting teens and young adults with younger kids obscures reality.

Anyway, that graph makes no informative sense to me. You don't learn much from it, to be honest, but very likely one would be misled—especially given that headline. Also obscures the potential crisis headed our way because of YOUNG INFECTED ADULTS being sent back home.

In general, unlike the very early days, we should now be looking reviews and preponderance of evidence, not covering single studies or highlighting useless statistics. I wish more media covered researchers who do that kind of review work. Here's one. https://twitter.com/apsmunro/status/1298684720411226114

Another review article. We have key gaps in knowledge; we also have accumulating evidence. This is all difficult enough without causing whiplash in the public by overly highlighting single studies (no longer what we should do) or with uninformative graphs. https://twitter.com/meiralevinson/status/1288584967317065729

From a researcher on children & COVID. We just can't do "0-19" or even "10-19" reporting. Such misinformation has costs: we're opening up colleges (yikes) and then sending infected young adults home (more yikes) while keeping K-6 completely shut down. https://twitter.com/apsmunro/status/1300807417798823938