There's a good discussion on today's episode of the Daily podcast (Feb 27). Basically the theory is that children often get the 4x regular coronavirus strains and this provides a bit of protection against the new coronavirus strain. Therefore they tend to get subacute cases of coronavirus but can still spread.
Here's an unintended consequence of closing schools though. Who often takes care of children when schools are unexpectedly closed? Grandparents. So in a way, they could be making this worse.
Kids staying at home with grandparents means far smaller groups of people though.
When my daughter started preschool... boy did she ever bring home every type of disease known to science. We ended up pulling her out and just having her grandparents look after her, which worked out really well, because I kept getting sick and missing work myself.
They can choose to not do that. Kids can't just take care of themselves on their own, they need an adult to take care of them. And seniors are a lot better about washing their hands and other things than young kids in big groups are.
Being "immune" just means your body can fight the infection effectively. It doesn't mean you don't get infected and can't spread the disease for a short amount of time.
> Basically the theory is that children often get the 4x regular coronavirus strains and this provides a bit of protection against the new coronavirus strain.
If that is true, that would seem to imply that one could improve one's resistance of COVID-19 by deliberately infecting themself with one or more non-COVID-19 coronaviruses. (Not that I suggest anyone try this.)
Here's an unintended consequence of closing schools though. Who often takes care of children when schools are unexpectedly closed? Grandparents. So in a way, they could be making this worse.