Kids do spread COVID — why did it take South Korea to prove this— when they have way fewer cases than we do?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

19 July 2020

 

 

United States is dragging its flag through Incompetence's muck

 

Essentially the same week that some of us critiqued America's stupidity for not properly investigating and preparing for the risks of COVID school reopenings — South Korea published a persuasive study that indirectly demonstrates reopening's hazards:

 

 

Young Joon Park, Young June Choe, Ok Park, Shin Young Park, Young-Man Kim, Jieun Kim, Sanghui Kweon, Yeonhee Woo, Jin Gwack, Seong Sun Kim, Jin Lee, Junghee Hyun, Boyeong Ryu, Yoon Suk Jang, Hwami Kim, Seung Hwan Shin, Seonju Yi, Sangeun Lee, Hee Kyoung Kim, Hyeyoung Lee, Yeowon Jin, Eunmi Park, Seung Woo Choi, Miyoung Kim, Jeongsuk Song, Si Won Choi, Dongwook Kim, Byoung-Hak Jeon, Hyosoon Yoo, and Eun Kyeong Jeong, Contact Tracing during Coronavirus Disease Outbreak, South Korea, 2020, Emerging Infectious Diseases, https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2610.201315 (16 July 2020)

 

 

The study age-grouped the results of its COVID contact tracings

 

Contrary to many people's previous assumptions, young people between ages 10 and 19 figured prominently in the disease's transmission:

 

 

We also found the highest COVID-19 rate (18.6% . . .) for household contacts of school-aged children and the lowest (5.3% . . .) for household contacts of children 0–9 years in the middle of school closure.

 

Despite closure of their schools, these children might have interacted with each other, although we do not have data to support that hypothesis.

 

We showed that household transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was high if the index patient was 10–19 years of age.

 

A contact survey in Wuhan and Shanghai, China, showed that school closure and social distancing significantly reduced the rate of COVID-19 among contacts of school-aged children.

 

 

My comparative cultural point here is that . . .

 

The scientific mentality that allowed South Korea to get a handle on its COVID pandemic is the same one that generated the above study.

 

Despite the fact that South Korea has way fewer COVID cases than we do, whether calculated by proportion or absolute numbers, its leaders are still trying to get to the epidemiological root of SARS-CoV-2's spread.

 

The United States is not.

 

Despite having some of the planet's highest numbers of infections, we seem to lollygag-lag many other cultures' clear-headed determination to find out, and control, what is going on.

 

 

Think about the magnitude of the American lapse

 

The world's (self-advertised) richest and most scientifically advanced nation is doing among the least — in both those respects — to figure out how to keep its people from falling over dead or populating overburdened hospitals.

 

 

Why so?

 

The likely answer is that American culture is unreasoningly unscientific.

 

 

The moral? — Stupid monkeys eventually do not get many bananas

 

Sometimes they just meat-grind themselves by ignoring obvious forest dangers.

 

Other times, they happily distract themselves from thinking by intentionally generating conflicts among their integrated clans.

 

Sound familiar?

 

President Trump is America's cultural face, uncamouflaged. Changing who is in the White House is, by itself, not going to change anything.

 

What we are witnessing is the complete collapse of American societal competence.

 

Boggles the mind.