BERLIN.Before the start of school in eight federal states, the Federal Ministry of Education tries to participate in schools in the scientific debate about the risk of infection - and embarrasses itself with a false claim on Twitter.Is this the new style of Federal Minister of Education Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP)?Your cabinet colleague, Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD), is now alerted by (real) data from Great Britain.
As a new Federal Minister of Education, the FDP politician Bettina Stark-Watzinger is very concerned about promoting presence lessons at all costs."We have to do everything we can to keep the schools open with Omikron," she can quote on Twitter.Do everything - does that mean: if necessary, also bend science?
"Studies show that schools have no excessive influence on the infection.However, it turns out that school closures have negative effects, especially for the psychological well -being of the children.Many greetings, the social media team, ”it is currently said in the Twitter channel of the Federal Ministry of Education (wrong articles in the original).
The Green politician and educational expert Marina Weisband immediately asks: "Studies?Can we have sources, please?Would like to see the studies."
In fact, the studies are given in the answer:
- SARS-CoV-2 circulation in the school setting: A systematic review and meta-analysis (Martinoli et al.)
- Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by children and young people in households and schools: a meta-analysis of population-based and contact-tracing studies (Viner et al.)
- Risk of infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among children and adolescents in households, communities and educational settings: A systematic review and meta-analysis (Irfan et al.)
The problem: None of the studies say what the Federal Ministry of Education claims.The physicist and science journalist Markus Pössel looked at the three examinations in detail. „Kurzfassung: Die Studien belegen die Behauptung leider nicht, sondern widersprechen ihr zum Teil sogar", so schreibt er – und begründet das in einem Blogbeitrag auf Spektrum.de detailed.
His conclusion: "I don't find anything meaningful about the role of schools for infection.To do this, one would have to consider completely different relationships than examined in those studies.And one would have to examine in particular how the virus spreads between the individual subgroups.The fact that a family infect each other as soon as a member is infected should be very likely.That in this sense schools are more secure than mutual handling of the family without a mask and at a short distance: clear, free of charge.But under such circumstances, a kind of distribution function could also be part of the possible role of schools (as is apparently given in flu waves).If only 50 of 1000 students are infected in school, but each again two family members infected at home, we could not simply say: Ha, household is dangerous, there 100 infections, but only at school50!But then the school would have played a key role in the distribution and thus in the infection dynamics, without that could have been read directly from the pure number of cases of the numerical example."
Reactions of scientists also fail on Twitter: devastating:
In fact, the Federal Ministry of Education would only have needed inquiries at the Conference of Ministers of Education, which recently had the state of research on the role of schools in pandemic - which then only reluctantly published, asNews4teachers reported.
It states: "The contribution that contacts with people infected at school have the overall affairs in the general population has changed over time.This also applied within the 3.Wells in which we estimate the contribution in infection modeling between 5 and 12%.This post has increased significantly since KW 33 and will probably be over the maximum of 3 in the next few weeks.Wave climb."
„Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass Schulschließungen effektive Instrumente zur Eindämmung der Epidemie sind"
Dabei ist festzuhalten, dass mit „Gesamtgeschehen" lediglich die offiziell erfassten Infektionen gemeint sind – bevor in Schulen getestet wurde, waren Kinder (weil Ansteckungen mit dem Coronavirus bei ihnen meist symptomlos bleiben) statistisch unterrepräsentiert.That has changed with the tests of schoolchildren.And lo and behold: the incidence in children and adolescents exceed that of the other age groups by triple.The schools are therefore very important in the infection in Germany.
That is why the study also says: "Overall, the overview is shown that school closings are effective instruments for the containment of the epidemic."
Perhaps a call in the Federal Ministry of Health would not have been bad either.Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) only tweeted yesterday - immediately before the start of school in eight federal states: “Data from UK show frightening values in children.Since Omicron can be fended off well by masks, mask obligation at school and regular testing are absolutely necessary." Entwarnung klingt anders.News4teachers
