
Almost one-third of Florida children tested are positive for the coronavirus - ch_sm
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/507442-almost-one-third-of-florida-children-tested-are
======
swsieber
An article terribly light on details - what's their testing strategy? If it's
completely random statewide, then it's very alarming. If not... it's less
alarming. I have to wonder if children

a) are better at catching it (but not better at spreading it) than adults

b) have a larger window in which they "test positive" or

c) parents are the ones infecting children - that is to say that parents and
children both test positive for the same duration of time, but parents get it
and get over it first.

~~~
wtvanhest
Another explanation, if I am sick, I will get tested first before making my
kid go through that. If I test positive, only then will I test my child. If I
test negative and we are both sick, I will presume we caught something else.

~~~
saint_abroad
> I will get tested first before making my kid go through that. If I test
> positive, only then will I test my child. If I test negative and we are both
> sick, I will presume we caught something else.

If you test positive, why make your kid go through that? If you test positive
and you are both sick, you can presume you've caught the same thing.

~~~
wtvanhest
I haven't been there, (maybe someone who has can comment?), but I would expect
you need the positive diagnosis for evaluating COVID19 treatment options for
your kid. Or, at the minimum, I would expect the DR. to push you to have them
tested.

In any case, I would expect kids to be tested after adults in most cases
during the shelter in place

~~~
catalogia
> _I would expect you need the positive diagnosis for evaluating COVID19
> treatment options for your kid._

From what I understand, the overwhelming majority of kids with covid do not
require any treatment whatsoever, with only a small handful of anecdotes of
kids having bad symptoms.

Just don't let junior visit grandma.

~~~
slowrabbit
Right, but if you read the article, they are asymptomatic with signs of lung
damage and probably neurological damage as well from other studies on covid
coming out from multiple sources. They are going to suffer long term
consequences from Florida's general ignorance. There is no treatment yet, but
if your child isn't infected and you have the means, then you should leave
Florida and go to a state where they are smarter about social distancing and
safety.

~~~
mlyle
> they are asymptomatic with signs of lung damage and probably neurological
> damage as well from other studies on covid coming out from multiple sources.

Some of this research is rather worrisome. But it's important to not overstate
what it says: we find evidence of lung damage in imagery of a small proportion
of asymptomatic adults. (I'm not aware of any imaging study of asymptomatic
children).

How significant these imagery findings are, what proportion is from COVID-19
(because if you image a bunch of people without COVID-19 you're going to find
some weird things in imagery, too), and what proportion of adults infected
would have this are unknown (even the asymptomatic adults who manage to get a
positive test result and enroll in an imaging study are not typical). Let
alone knowing how common this would be in children.

------
drtillberg
Florida's positive test rates are in dispute due to large irregularities,
specifically, failure to report negative results.[1]. Chalk up The Hill report
to more goalseeked nonsense.

[1]
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/07/15/florid...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/07/15/florida-
coronavirus-tests-hospital-disputes-100-positive-report/5445139002/)

~~~
Bootwizard
Hello, Florida resident here. Our local governments and hospitals have been
short on testing supplies since the beginning of the pandemic and are only
allowing residents to get tests if they are showing symptoms or if you
employed in healthcare (in most places). That means that most likely, the
people who are getting tested will test positive. This does skew the numbers
but saves our testing supplies for identifying positive cases.

~~~
scoutt
Are 1/3 of children showing symptoms? That's terrible.

Edit: Sorry. I misintepreted parent comment.

~~~
rodonn
No, that's not the correct interpretation. 1/3 of children _who are tested_
test positive. The children who are tested are (probably) ones who are more
likely to be showing symptoms or to have been exposed. The rate of infection
in the broader population of children is (probably) lower, though it's hard to
say by how much without doing testing on a random sample of the population.

------
smallgovt
I really don’t understand why the govt isn’t doing regular testing of a random
sample of the population.

All it takes is ~500 tests in each state per week to get a significant sample
size. And, it would definitively answer what the population infection rate is,
and how it’s trending.

~~~
twblalock
Even California, which was praised for locking down first and longest, is
behind on testing and contract tracing.

You can blame ignorance or anti-science beliefs for the problems in some
states, but the California state government clearly takes the virus seriously,
is following expert advice, and still can't meet testing and tracing goals.
Something else is going on here. Dysfunction of government is the answer.

The Federal government is pushing responsibility onto states, and states are
pushing responsibility onto county governments. Most county governments are
not equipped to deal with pandemics. There is just no way this is going to go
well. The countries that did a good job testing and tracing had a central
coordinated effort from the top.

~~~
pwarner
Yes, it was the recent failures in CA that I am seeing living here as evidence
that the rest of the country, and large chunks of the world, are also doomed
to head down the same path. CA had all the right initial steps catching it
early, and had every chance to move forward, but could not execute. I imagine
Canada, NY and even Europe may end up following, although I really really
really hope I am wrong.

~~~
twblalock
It seems like Europe is already executing better than the United States. Asian
countries definitely did. The real problems may be in Africa and South America
where state capacity is lacking or there is leadership that wants to ignore
the virus, e.g. Brazil.

Failure to execute is why I will not support another lockdown. We squandered
the time we bought with the first lockdown, and I don't see a reason to
believe it would go differently the second time. Not with the government we
have.

------
eiji
And we still only have 31 confirmed death by Covid19 on children under 14
years.

> [https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-
> Counts-...](https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-
> Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku)

~~~
VikingCoder
And we have no idea what the long-term impacts of Covid-19 might be.

Just as a for-instance, I had the Chickenpox, like most people my age. No
biggie. Then I later developed Shingles, because the Chickenpox virus can be
dormant in your body for decades. Shingles can be debilitating.

I highly doubt that Covid-19 will have long-term health impacts like that for
children. But we absolutely don't know for sure, yet.

~~~
at_a_remove
Chickenpox is a retrovirus, which is why it can linger in your body for
decades, as it transcribes itself into selected portions of your genome to
hide and then later re-emerge. SARS-CoV-2 is _not_ a retrovirus.

~~~
obloid
Varicella-zoster virus (chickenpox/shingles), while it does create latent
infections, is not a retrovirus. Retroviruses like HIV actually insert a copy
of the viral genome into the host cell's DNA. VZV and other herpesviruses have
a different latency mechanism[1] than retroviruses. SARS-CoV-2 probably does
not cause latent infections, but could potentially cause a chronic infection
similar to other RNA viruses like Hepatitis C. I would suspect it probably
doesn't, but it is certainly possible.

1:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3118253/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3118253/)

~~~
at_a_remove
How odd, this is not what I was taught decades back. I suppose I will have to
refresh. This is like finding out that Mercury is not tidally locked to the
Sun, despite that being in textbooks forever.

~~~
mrguyorama
Are you sure you aren't just misremembering?

~~~
at_a_remove
Of all of the things you can be _sure_ of, misremembering isn't one of them.

------
throwaway5752
There is a lot of argument about the quality of the numbers. Bottom line is
the much higher all-cause mortality rates (on top of lower non-natural rates
from homicide and automobile accidents).

[https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/2020/06/06/what-s-...](https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/2020/06/06/what-
s-true-toll-epidemic-here-s-how-we-estimated-it-florida)

There is an uncontrolled covid outbreak in Florida that has killed thousands
and at this rate, will get much worse. This is after state leadership had the
opportunity to see the exact same thing play out in Hubei province, northern
Italy, and the NYC metro area. This is no surprise, the means of preventing it
are well know, and it happened anyway.

------
chadash
I have a theory. My wife and I had COVID recently and we both tested positive.
My child also had a fever for about a day but otherwise was symptom free.
Given that we were quarantined and not exposed to anyone else for about a week
before my child's fever, it's hard to imagine that it was anything except for
COVID.

However, most testing sites that you can just sign up for on your own only
test 18+, so getting her tested would be a PITA. Most likely we'd have to take
them to the doctor and maybe they would order a test, but more likely, they'd
just say go home and get some rest, call us if it gets worse. And even if I
got my child tested, what would I gain from it? At best it would tell me what
I already know.

Given that most cases in children are mild (I wouldn't have suspected COVID
nor bothered to have taken my child's temp if I hadn't tested positive
myself), I imagine it's only the children who doctors suspect have it that are
getting tested in Florida, for the most part. And among that group, the
positive rate is gonna be high.

~~~
noja
Are the long term effects for children known yet?

~~~
conception
They are not. Certainly not any lifetime effects.

~~~
scruple
Any longitudinal studies done would only have 6 months of data to go by. I
recall reading that permanent lung damage from hypoxia is the most common
problem with covid-19 but I don't remember where I read that or when. I'm
trying my best to not be too alarmed, too fearful, of the unknown /
uncertainty around this thing, especially when it comes to young children (I
have twins that are 13 months...) but it's very, very hard not to.

------
lokl
We are tracking cases, hospitalizations, ICU beds, deaths, but it is too early
to track long-term health problems. I think it would be beneficial if there
were more public discussion by experts about the implications of not knowing
the long-term consequences of infection.

------
bearjaws
While these numbers might be inaccurate, what is actually going on right now
is starting to look very grim.

Every nurse & Dr I know is getting massive bonuses (200-400 a DAY + hazard
pay) to pick up 1-2 extra shifts. Recruiters are offering contract jobs at
smaller hospitals north of $100 an hour for 12 weeks, with housing. We are
weeks away from Doctors & Nurses working 48+ hours a week. (Do you really want
to be treated by someone on their last 12 hour shift on overtime?)

There is not much staff left to deploy to help with the rising case load.
Florida hospitals will soon be overwhelmed.

I hope we peak here soon and learn a valuable lesson going into winter, where
we will have to deal with both corona virus and influenza.

~~~
Dumblydorr
Good points! Fortunately, we can prevent influenza and corona with the same
measures of mask, social distance, remote work, etc.

I am concerned for the US economy long term. The pandemic will kill 100k more
at least, current projected deaths in just a couple months is up to 150k,
which doesn't count the winter ahead.

But considering how damaged our collective productivity is going to be from
3/20 to 3/21, we are in for unemployment above 10% for a very long time as
shutdowns and closures continue.

Will all the musicians, music venues, sports venues, museums, bars,
restaurants, parades, weddings, etc still be the same after mass vaccination?
I think they will all be hollowed out industries, we will not achieve that
level of culture for a few years...sigh.

Anyone else feel depressed to be American?

~~~
azinman2
And on 3/21 hundreds of thousands will be dead that likely would have
otherwise been alive. We’re already at 1/3 the number of Americans who died in
WWII, in less than half a year. They won’t come back in “a few years.”

What’s insane is how much more under control this could be with federal
leadership, and a more compliant public.

------
s1artibartfast
It would be great if this was true for the entire population, but the 31% is
not from a random sampling.

~~~
yetanta
The only thing you can say for sure is that 1/3 of the population that have
children also probably have it. If that is true I do not think you can
'contain' it. You can speculate on the long term effects and what not. But you
will probably get it. People always ask me what is my zombie plan. I usually
reply with 'brrrraaaaains'.

~~~
hedora
They probably tested sick kids, and kids that were known to be exposed.

Here is one possible interpretation of the story:

The authors tested 100 kids in a COVID ward. Only, 33% had the disease, so the
hospital is drastically over reporting COVID cases. This means actual death
rates could be 3x higher than thought.

Here’s another:

We randomly tested all kids in Flordia, and 1/3 had coronavirus. This implies
there are over 10x more coronavirus cases in Florida than previously thought,
so the hospitalization rate and death rates in Florida are less than 10% was
previously thought.

As written, the story tells us almost nothing. The most likely explanation is
that the underlying study was studying some unrelated aspect of Coronavirus,
and that this story is a mixture of sloppy reporting and clickbait. Without
knowing how they sampled the population, you can’t infer anything about
Coronavirus infection rates from the provided data.

~~~
yetanta
fair enough

------
alex_young
Florida is now showing a large spike in daily deaths following the case spike
3 weeks ago: [https://cv19.report/?state=FL](https://cv19.report/?state=FL)

------
tchaffee
I'm astounded by the number of attempts at persuasion in this thread. Around
claims that deserve hard evidence. Just wait for the evidence and say "I don't
know" in the meantime. I see nonsense like "because other Sars viruses act
like this we can assume blah blah blah". No we can't. Nature is full of
bizarre surprises and scientific consensus changes often enough thanks to
research and hard evidence. If you have meta studies on Coronavirus, please
cite them. Otherwise stop with the "educated" guesses. You're better than this
HN.

~~~
jmull
It's correct to say "We're not sure".

However, if you demand hard proof before taking any significant action, that's
the same thing as _demanding that no significant action be taken_.

That's a very difficult position to sustain. Not to mention, doing nothing in
the face of a huge and deadly pandemic _is_ a very significant action, which
you'd be taking _without hard evidence_.

The reality is, we have to take action and don't have the luxury of time to
ensure our decisions are absolutely correct. We need to marshal the evidence
we have, have our best experts extrapolate what we don't know and take our
best guess as to the most effective course of actions. Of course, one set of
actions we can take is to initiate research to gather more evidence and change
course in response -- prioritizing things based on level of impact and
time/resources it takes to gather the information.

> You're better than this HN.

Making decent decisions in the face of imperfect information is something
everyone should try to learn, though it is hard to do well.

~~~
tchaffee
> However, if you demand hard proof before taking any significant action,
> that's the same thing as demanding that no significant action be taken.

We do have enough hard evidence of many things to take action. And we have
seen those actions result in positive outcomes.

My gripe is about the many hot takes presented in this thread about what
action we should take based on way more guessing than is needed and then
presented as almost fact.

It sounds like we both agree we "need to marshal the evidence we have, have
our best _experts_ extrapolate what we don't know and take our best guess as
to the most effective course of actions".

------
js2
This is anecdotal, but younger patients are also now showing up at the ICU:

> They're younger patients. [Their] age, last time, was probably around 65.
> Now, our average age is between 25 to 35, 45 years old. That's one big
> change. Much younger patients, pretty much healthy. Not really major past
> medical history.

> We are not seeing that much obesity. I know there are some reports about
> obesity, but at least in the ICU, I would guess maybe 20% of patients are
> obese. Most of them are pretty young and healthy patients.

> And also they get sicker than the previous [wave]. Mortality has not been a
> major issue because they are younger patients. But I think as the days go
> on, we might also see a change in mortality.

> The delivery of oxygen is much higher, that's one. Second is the blood
> pressure has been low. So we have to use a lot of medications to actually
> bring the blood pressure to a normal level. So it's one, the use of
> medications to keep the blood pressure high, and second, the amount of
> oxygen these patients are required, which is more than last time.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/07/13/890403682/miami-hospital-icu-doctor-new-influx-of-patients-
is-younger-than-before)

------
woeirua
Florida's covid data shows that they're testing far fewer kids then the rest
of the population [1]. The 30% figure apparently comes from [2] which shows
that of the kids that are getting tested, a significantly larger proportion
are covid positive than the normal population.

To be blunt, I don't think this is anything new or surprising. Kids are
staying home more this summer than ever before, and with limited social
interaction they're less exposed to other respiratory illnesses that are
circulating in the general population. Hence, those that are coming down ill
right now are more likely to have covid than not.

[1]
[http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_ar...](http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/state_reports_latest.pdf)
[2]
[http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_ar...](http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/pediatric_report_latest.pdf)

~~~
baldfat
My son have to have testing at the hospital. He had to get tested (It was
negative). I think this is a large portion of kids who get tested.

You can't get a kid under 12 tested where I live except for these situations.

~~~
jshaqaw
We had our children tested at a Quest Diagnostics facility.

------
phantom0308
Florida is really thinking outside the box. Schools will have no problem
opening up if children have herd immunity. This is the type of creative
thinking school administrators have been looking for.

/s

~~~
slackfan
This except completely serious.

People getting herd immunity involves people, you know, actually contracting
the disease.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Protect the vulnerable (no sending Covid positive patients into their living
spaces!) while allowing low risk population to develop and overcome the virus.

This seems like the most logical way to combat issue, as opposed to hiding and
hoping it goes away. Of course proposing it publicly means to be smeared by
the media and politicians and twitter blue checks, who always have our best
interests in mind.

Does this solution cause no pain and death? Of course not! It’s about causing
the least amount of pain _long term_ , including the externalities of our
actions.

~~~
phantom0308
There isn't enough evidence of long term immunity to make herd immunity a
sensible strategy. It's smeared by the media b/c it's way less preferable than
the alternative of containing it like nearly every developed country in the
world.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/immunity-to-covid-19-uk-
stud...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/immunity-to-covid-19-uk-study.html)

~~~
ashtonkem
“This strategy would kill over half a million Americans” isn’t even really a
smear, it’s an accurate description of why the herd immunity strategy is bad.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
It's neither a smear nor an accurate description. It's fear mongering.

~~~
ashtonkem
They said the same about tens of thousands dying; we’re now at 141k dead
Americans. If you want to dismiss it as “fear mongering” that’s your
prerogative, just don’t be surprised that most people find this unconvincing.

------
gdubs
Not my field, but my understanding is that a high positivity rate means you’re
not testing enough. That’s been my concern with the rush to say that children
don’t spread coronavirus. It seems more likely that children are asymptomatic,
and therefore not tested as much. If you’ve had the test, you can understand
why parents are probably not rushing to have their asymptomatic kids tested
for the sake of having better data.

~~~
croutonwagon
I think its probably hard to draw much from this, other than it seems to
substantiate the theory that a LOT of the transmission has been asymptomatic.
And kids are the least vulnerable here. I dont think it would be a stretch to
say most kids are asymptomatic. But, at least here in Florida, there still not
a lot of "show up and test" style facilities available. Most have to be
registered with your employer or healthcare provider. So you have to have some
symptom or otherwise ASK to be tested.

------
ummonk
To be clear, this is not about a random sample of children, but about normal
testing of children suspected to have COVID-19. Rising test positive rates are
a strong indicator of rising infection rates in the overall population
(because increased testing won’t show a false rise in this metric). But the
title reads as if a third of children in Florida are infected, which is
absolutely not the case.

------
itnAAnti
I'm confused... clicking on the PDF source data (Data through Jul 16, 2020
verified as of Jul 17, 2020 at 09:25 AM), it clearly shows a 13.4% overall
positivity rate. Where is the 31.1% coming from?

------
rapnie
Generally speaking, at least what's tested negative in this whole terrible
pandemic is how everyone is creatively applying statistics to fit their
narrative. Of course this has always been the case in the media, but now it
becomes abundantly apparent.

------
blhack
Okay a serious question for the people who saw this news and thought it was a
bad thing: what do you think should happen?

Everybody HAS to have antibodies for this eventually. There is no way around
that at this point.

If Florida truly has 30% infection among children, that is FANTASTIC news.

To those who think they can wait it out until a vaccine, how long will you
wait?

All of the measures we are taking: masks, distancing, WFH, these are meant to
slow down the rate of infection, not end it.

If this statistic can be extrapolated to the entire population: GREAT. We need
to study what Florida is doing and replicate it.

~~~
whymauri
>All of the measures we are taking: masks, distancing, WFH, these are meant to
slow down the rate of infection, not end it.

That's just not true. There are safety measures than can absolutely stop the
spread of infection and given the chronology of a vaccine or treatment, even a
slowdown of infections will save lives and prevent more infections. This is
much is glaringly obvious.

Also, "what Florida is doing" is literally nothing. _That 's the problem._

