The Unknown Unknowns

How does COVID-19 spread? One would think one should know that if one were purporting to model the disease and tell civilization what it must do, like end all economic and social activity. But alas, surprise, surprise, that is not quite the case. We made a simple argument a couple of months ago regarding adult to adult spreads by pleural effusions from infected individuals. Even in that case we know little.

However in Nature today they discuss children under 10 as a prime disease vector. They state:

Even less well understood is whether infected children spread the virus in a similar way to adults. A study of a cluster of cases in the French Alps describes one nine-year-old who attended three schools and a skiing class while showing symptoms of COVID-19, but did not infect a single person. “It would be almost unheard of for an adult to be exposed to that many people and not infect anyone else,” ... a virologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, led an as-yet unpublished meta-analysis of several household studies, including some from countries that had not closed schools at the time, such as Singapore. ...children are rarely the first person to bring the infection into a home; they had the first identified case in only roughly 8% of households. By comparison, children had the first identified case during outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in some 50% of households, the study reports.... Others have suggested that children are more routinely exposed to other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold, which protects them from serious disease. “But that doesn’t seem to hold much water, because even newborn babies don’t seem to get very severe disease” from the COVID-19 coronavirus,... children might mount a more appropriate immune response to the infection , strong enough to fight the virus, but not so strong that it causes major damage to their organs. ...preliminary analysis of 300 individuals infected with COVID-19 has found that children produce much lower levels of cytokines, proteins released by the immune system. Patients of all ages with severe disease tend to have higher cytokine levels, ... .still needs to tease out the cause and effect. “Are they sicker because they have higher cytokine levels, or do they have higher cytokine levels because they are sicker?”

 Thus perhaps it is the kids who are the prime propagators, showing little if any symptoms, yet splashing the virus all about. Just a thought.

But the real conclusion is that there is no definitive methods of propagation. The recent comment by the NY Gov that 66% of the cases were from those who stayed at home is not surprising. It just adds to the understanding that we really do not yet understand the phenomenon.

Yet models that fail to incorporate the physical phenomenon are useless. Worse, they use corrupted data and with no basis in a valid phenomenon make projections that are not only ineffective but can produce gross human and societal harm. None of the modellers seem to even recognize this no less admit it.