The success or failure of Australia’s coronavirus fight relies to a remarkable degree on just one thing, new modelling has found.
Source: It’s up to you: data shows coronavirus can only be controlled if eight out of 10 Aussies stay home
Very interesting! If it survives peer review and can be tested in some manner (back casting on another outbreak?) This highlights the requirement for keeping kids at home – but the effect is unexplained, uninvestigated which, unfortunately, opens the whole thing to endless argument, more so because there is significant and published counter evidence. This part of their modelling needs to be tightened and explained, or will remain controversial.
Do we need some jackboots for our police, legalise tasering of children breaking isolation + distancing? (not talking about lockdown)
While the article claims this simulation is inline with the Royal College report, the Royal College model has closing schools as significantly reducing the infections.
Additionally there is research (see below) that observed students did not immediately adhere to isolation (agrees with model), but were more likely to as the epidemic progressed (less agreement with model) – so I’d question the modelling parameters.
However this does add some weight to keeping schools open, but the papers that I have seen advocating this are very light weight. I would wait to see what happens with the paper post peer review.
It seems we are going down the path of partial schools open + online learning, which might be the best of both worlds. (?) However we need to have daily testing for children (temperature, not COVID) prior to entering school (like Singapore).
Most importantly : are there ANY current outbreak distributions from any country that look anything like what is predicted by this model? Because there are a large number of countries that have closed down schools.
“The number of new cases of children infected by coronavirus increased by 8 per cent at the peak. Professor Prokopenko said the model did not explore why this might be, but he speculated it could be caused by children mixing with their communities when schools are closed.”
“It has been published online but has not yet been through a rigorous peer-review process.”
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Student Behavior during a School Closure Caused by Pandemic Influenza A/H1N1
PLoS One. 2010
“interaction with other students was lower at the end of the closure than at the beginning”
“students did not closely adhere to advice from the school about behavior to control the spread of infection. Prior to the closure, students were advised to remain home for one week following onset of fever with respiratory symptoms. This was not followed, and some students attended school the day after symptom onset.”
Pandemic simulation of antivirals+school closures: buying time until strain-specific vaccine is available
Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 2008
“Simulations show that the combination of antivirals, school closures, and a strain-specific vaccine can reduce morbidity and mortality while in effect.”
Does closing schools slow the spread of coronavirus? Past outbreaks provide clues
Science, 2020 (blogs)
“reactive school closures for a moderately transmissible pathogen reduces the cumulative infection rate by about 25% and delay the peak of the epidemic”
Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand
Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, March 2020
Modelling transmission and control of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia
(unpublished)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.10218.pdf
(unpublished)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.10218.pdf