President Donald Trump on Monday told reporters that children are “virtually immune,” don’t transport or transfer the coronavirus, and just a “tiny fraction” of those who become infected die. Most of that is false, and dangerously so.
“They get better very quickly,” Trump continued. “But, as you know, the seriousness of it and what it leads to is extraordinarily small.”
Asked if he still believes children are essentially immune, as he falsely stated just five days ago, the President replied, “Yeah. I think that for the most part they do very well. They don’t get very sick, they don’t catch it easily, and according to the people that I’ve spoken to they don’t transport or transfer it to other people, or certainly not very easily.”
That’s false.
97,000 children across a two-week period tested positive for the coronavirus at the end of July. And while the fatality rate is lower among children, there are other diseases they (and adults) can get. Among children, “a rare but severe condition that has been reported approximately 2–4 weeks after the onset of COVID-19 in children and adolescents,” Associated Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (AMIS), has been reported, the CDC said on its website last week.
Children, especially those ten and older, studies show, transmit the coronavirus at the same rate as adults.
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