Children

Boot camps are back in operation ...

Earlier than expected, children have all returned to school in New South Wales (NSW).  There have been a couple of brief closures because of identified student COVID-19 cases, but overall there have been no dramas, and so far it looks like a good policy call.

 .... rock fisherman were making the most of the day ...

The soundness of the decision seems to have been supported by some interesting statistics about COVID-19 in children published in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday.  For NSW, there have only been 59 children diagnosed with COVID-19 who have acquired it locally.

..... the boat ramp was busy ...

On a per capita basis, adults have recorded positive tests at roughly ten times the rate of children.  If you assume they are exposed to the virus at the same rate, children are clearly less vulnerable.  Even if there are other factors that help explain the difference, they are unlikely to explain it all.

... and the beach was popular.

Apart from two cases where tests were inconclusive, no children were found to have been infected by other children, although it is true that in a quarter of child infections, the source has never been identified.  There was only one case where a child infected an adult in the same household, and that child was 17 years old.

If there is a silver lining in all of this, it is that children have suffered far less from the virus than the rest of the population.  I doubt anyone would begrudge that.

I walked and jogged (mostly walked) 6km this morning.  I'm conscious of my right hip flexor all of the time, but there was less discomfort when running and also after I had covered a few kilometres.  It was another beautiful morning, in the last days of our southern autumn, and everybody was making the most of it.  Not too much social-distancing was apparent.