What does it mean when Study Findings are Potentially Confounded

1) What does it mean when study findings are ‘potentially confounded’? Explain exactly what authors meant when they said, “Epidemiologic studies suggest that children exhibit lower transmission rates than adults, however, these findings are potentially confounded by higher rates of asymptomatic or pauci-symptomatic infection in children, increased social isolation by children early in the pandemic, and reduced COVID-19 testing in children.” How can each of these confounding factors lead to results that suggest children exhibit lower transmission rates?

2) Why do you think authors were interested in showing their data in slightly different ways, plots Figures 1A-D? What question does each plot uniquely answer?

3) Why did authors conduct viral culture assays for recoverable SARS-Co-V-2 in parallel with viral load testing? [What additional information do authors gain by doing both?]

4) What’s the significance of Fig. 2B? Explain the groups on the x-axis, and the y-axis. Then explain how to interpret the data.

5) What does Fig. 4A signify and why did authors analyze their data in this way?

6) Which COVID variants were found among the subjects in this study? Why were the authors motivated to sequence the genomes of the cultured viruses from their subjects?