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Comment by croes | Hacker News Reader

Drosten's study was criticized for its static deficiencies. This criticism was used to revise the study. One of the criticizing statisticians was even taken on to support Drosten's team. The study has neither been refuted nor withdrawn. Especially since studies from China show that school closures had a great effect on the spread of the virus. To plead for an unrestricted opening of the schools on the basis of these data is rather daring.

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To me, the evidence on the school closures being effective is totally lacking, given the impact of the virus on the younger population. In fact, most evidence of an effect or lack thereof in general is inconsistent, or lacking.

Governments are acting on the basis of the precautionary principle, not science.

The Shezen contact study found the same risk of infection for children as for adults(https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v...). According to the results of Fundan University, school closures led to a 40%-60% reduction in new infections (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/28/scie...).

Thanks for the links. I'll read the Shenzhen paper as soon as I get the time, but as far as I can remember, there are newer studies that aren't as clear cut at that one.

It would be interesting to see whether there was an uptick in infections in places, like Austria, that have reopened schools.

This is a problem that I currently have, many conflicting studies. Depending on how careful and correct this study is (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3089476/ther...), the risks have to be assessed quite differently. With the current state of facts, I think it is better to act after the worse than too early from the better.

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