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<p>a) are better at catching it (but not better at spreading it) than adults<p>b) have a larger window in which they "test positive" or<p>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.
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/07/15/florida-coronavirus-tests-hospital-disputes-100-positive-report/5445139002/" rel="nofollow">https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/07/15/florid...</a>
I really don’t understand why the govt isn’t doing regular testing of a random sample of the population.<p>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.
And we still only have 31 confirmed death by Covid19 on children under 14 years.<p>> <a href="https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku" rel="nofollow">https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-...</a>
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).<p><a href="https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/2020/06/06/what-s-true-toll-epidemic-here-s-how-we-estimated-it-florida" rel="nofollow">https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/2020/06/06/what-s-...</a><p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
While these numbers might be inaccurate, what is actually going on right now is starting to look very grim.<p>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?)<p>There is not much staff left to deploy to help with the rising case load. Florida hospitals will soon be overwhelmed.<p>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.
Florida is now showing a large spike in daily deaths following the case spike 3 weeks ago: <a href="https://cv19.report/?state=FL" rel="nofollow">https://cv19.report/?state=FL</a>
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.
This is anecdotal, but younger patients are also now showing up at the ICU:<p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/13/890403682/miami-hospital-icu-doctor-new-influx-of-patients-is-younger-than-before" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/state_reports_latest.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_ar...</a>
[2] <a href="http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/pediatric_report_latest.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_ar...</a>
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.<p>/s
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.
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.
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?
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.
Okay a serious question for the people who saw this news and thought it was a bad thing: what do you think should happen?<p>Everybody HAS to have antibodies for this eventually. There is no way around that at this point.<p>If Florida truly has 30% infection among children, that is FANTASTIC news.<p>To those who think they can wait it out until a vaccine, how long will you wait?<p>All of the measures we are taking: masks, distancing, WFH, these are meant to slow down the rate of infection, not end it.<p>If this statistic can be extrapolated to the entire population: GREAT. We need to study what Florida is doing and replicate it.