ICYMI: On Thursday, we published a story suggesting that elementary schools, especially, do not seem to be seeding clusters of infection. As all articles on this topic do, it made some people angry, so... a thread for people who did not bother to read it or maybe misread it. 1/x

First, what the article did not say. It did not say kids don’t get infected or that they don’t transmit. They do, on both counts. It did not say that schools are fine to open no matter what is going on in the community. 2/x

Community prevalence is important because if it’s high, it means some number of kids and staff will arrive at school infected, making it more likely that they will spread the virus to others. 3/x

In other words, schools are not magically immune to virus spread, and they do contribute some infections, but elementary schools do not seem to be hotbeds of germs as we worried they might be. 4/x

Again, the risk is not zero, NEVER zero. But in elem. schools, kids do not seem to be driving the infections as much as adults do in their activities—restaurants, bars, gyms—and certainly not *more* than those things. Meaning, young kids do not seem to be super spreaders. 5/x

I say young kids because age matters very much. Elementary age seems to be different from a teen of 15+ so the bar for middle schools and high schools and especially colleges is different. But again, none of this exists in a vacuum. 6/x

If community prevalence is super high, everything, including elementary schools, may need to close. The point the experts were making is that given the info we have, schools should be the last things to close, not the first. 7/x

And to those who love to say that we knew all this 3 months ago—no, we did not. The American south or Midwest is not Europe, and attitudes to mask wearing, the state of schools, risk factors in the population—those are not easily translatable. 8/x

Also, the studies from Europe were extremely mixed. Which brings me to the last point. These data are NOT the final word. They’re still patchy, not great, and not based often enough on random testing. But it’s as much as we can say for now. 9/x

So if you're looking for definitive statements, you're not going to find them here. If more and better data come in that point in another direction, I may well write that, too. Science is iterative, and we are still learning about this virus. 10/x

For eg, if it turns out (and I'm not saying it will) that kids who are infected develop some mysterious syndrome 6 months later, it will change the picture entirely. That's an extreme example, I know, but it's making a point. 11/x

So let's take some comfort in the fact that young kids at least seem to mostly be spared the disease and can maybe go to school without disrupting community prevalence too much.

feat @jenkinshelen @brookenichols and David Rubin https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/health/coronavirus-schools-children.html