PEDIATRIC COVID TRENDS IN DENTON COUNTY, 9/21
Welcome to the 2021 Hunger Games. May the odds ever be in your favor.
The two graphs here are from case data released by Denton County Public Health this afternoon.
Top graph shows the seven day rolling average of new pediatric COVID cases (ages 0-19) in Denton County. The last eight days there have been improvements overall with decreases in new pediatric case numbers. I'll get to the significance of that decrease in a bit when we go over the second graph.
The fully vaccinated fraction of Denton County continues to increase by about 0.1% per day. That just over 900 people each day. For a county that's just under 1 million in population, that's not a great increase per day.
Kids as their own population continue to have a more significant case load than what is the case across all ages in Denton County (now 70.2 per 100K based on today's case numbers versus 47.6 per 100K across all ages in the county).
The test positive rate for Denton County is still quite high at 12.0%, but this has improved over the last several days. Less than two weeks ago the TPR for the county was just over 15%. Right before school started it was 16.8%. Denton County has had a TPR over 10% since July 23.
Keep in mind that a TPR >10% means your existing test infrastructure is being overwhelmed by community spread of the virus. At a TPR <5%, you are almost certain that enough testing is being done to catch all positive cases as well as test their close contact. We haven't been below a TPR of 5% since right after July 4th weekend.
We still have only 1 open ICU bed in all of Denton County. Open hospital beds has improved somewhat to 95 open beds, but that margin can be lost very quickly inside of 24 hours. Reflective of what we are seeing across the nation, the vast majority of those hospitalized for COVID or in the ICU for COVID are the unvaccinated.
Second graph is a seven day rolling average of the new daily pediatric cases per 100,000 people which is a standard epidemiological measurement. Anything over 25 new daily cases per 100,000 is considered highly indicative of extensive community transmission of the virus. That's the first horizontal red line.
The second lower horizontal red line marks out 15 new daily cases per 100,000 people. That's the benchmark used by the Policy Lab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Their pandemic benchmarks are stricter as they are viewed through the lens of keeping children safe.
When looking just at pediatric COVID cases in the county, we have been over the 25 new daily cases per 100K mark since August 9.
When looking at the county overall across all age groups, we crossed the 25 new daily cases per 100K mark on August 9 as well. That was the date of the first Lewisville ISD school board meeting I addressed. In that week, just in the space of five days, cases exploded across the county from 18.2 per 100K to 43 per 100K. We crossed the stricter 15 new daily cases per 100K mark across all age groups on August 2.
That's an important point I have to emphasize each and every time. BEFORE school started, two widely used pandemic assessment measures, the test positive rate and the new daily cases per 100,000 people, were already well past what is considered safe.
We all know what our respective school boards decided to do.
"Hygiene theater."
That's what I call it. It was nothing closely resembling pandemic mitigation based on not just sound science and best medical practices,. It flew in the face of the guidelines and recommendations of nearly every scientific and medical governing body in this nation.
So since cases trends are dropping, were such necessary measures needed?
Let's put 1000 students from grades K through 12 in the gym.
Each day, between 10 and 35 of them are selected to get COVID.
For every 100 kids who get COVID, one of them is selected to get hospitalized for COVID.
In the absence of a mask mandate along with capacity restrictions and limits on indoor activities, this is the lottery that has been going in our schools each day since the start of school.
Hospitalizations and deaths are thankfully rare in children with COVID, but nearly 1 in 7 children who gets COVID is still not symptom free and fully recovered four to six months after the initial infection. They may be short of breath. They may have memory or cognitive function issues. They may even develop mood issues like anxiety or depression. Some lose their sense of taste and smell for weeks. Others may be saddled with chronic headaches or fatigue.
Should we be allowing school boards and district leadership to be gambling with the well-being of our children this way?
Even with lower case numbers, absent a mask mandate and other mitigation measures, the COVID lottery is still played.