Age Structure Update, September 9

After the recent weekly report came out, Mr. Dixon has updated our charts on what is happening among various age groups in terms of cases, testing, and hospitalizations.  One motivation for these charts is the continuing garbage claim that children are being unduly affected by Delta.  You can see on the charts that they are not seeing any disproportionate rise in cases or hospitalizations.  Somewhat surprisingly to me, they also aren’t seeing any disproportionate rise in testing.  Minnesota parents very smartly are refusing to test their kids and risk an unnecessary quarantine.  The last couple of weeks’ downturn then upturn on most of the charts is probably due to the holiday weekend, but may actually also be due to kids being back in school.  Studies show they are less likely to pick up the virus in school and home is where a lot of transmission occurs, so they aren’t either getting infected or passing the virus in their homes.  But then excessive testing takes over.  And it may be a state fair effect as well.  Need to wait a couple of weeks to see how that sorts out.