Hepatitis outbreak in children

[MumbleCrumbs]

I'm currently really quite unwell with Covid and not sleeping very well so please be gentle, but is anyone else really worried about the reports of this hepatitis outbreak in children now being monitored by the WHO? It seems to have gained traction over the last few days and lots of reports coming out about it now. I know very little about hepatitis but I know its quite rare to see such severe cases in children. Could Covid be the cause? I'm just feeling really quite worried about it and so sad for these poor children and their families, how horrendous after we've all just come through a pandemic .

It’s the most likely cause.

Oh my god, you really don't like lockdowns! There are a number of hypotheses, including a new strain of hepatitis. Whatever it is wasn't around before... It's not like a known flu knocking over unprepared immune systems. It is some new thing or some combination of new things. Very disconcerting.

I wonder how the lockdown is suppose to have affected the children who have developed hepatitis and were younger than when lockdown ended such as the one month old? Let's think, must be effects of lock down in utero.

At least the reports seem to have confirmed none of the children were vaccinated against COVID to prevent those with ill-intent to pivot from lockdown to COVID vaccination disaster.

Links weren’t working earlier but hopefully this will.

Dr Chand, incident director for UKHSA’s investigation in to the hepatitis surge says the leading hypothesis is the knock on effects of lockdown on children.

But @milkyaqua if you know more than all these experts then great. Are you a scientist?

Worrying how we are sweeping the effects of lockdown under the carpet. This is very serious. Far more more of a risk to children than Covid was.

Quite.

You do realise that children were only in lockdown for 3 months? The way its been written about here you'd think they have been locked down since March 2020. My youngest returned to school in 2020 and certainly made up for the colds he missed!

It’s not about school children though. It’s about babies 0-2s. So the continual lockdowns, social distancing, closure of play groups. No baby groups for a very long time. Certainly more than 3 months. People who may have sent their children to nursery at 1 might not have for fear of Covid.

There’s lots of research coming out about social and language development delay in this age group too.

But hey what does it matter?!!

@Northernsoullover wow so your children went to school Jan 21 - March 21?

Mine didn’t. Love how some on here are actually rewriting history. We only had one lockdown in 2020 did we? Not the 3 🙄. My youngest didn’t go to school from March 2020 (went one week in July) until September? Then Jan 2021 through to March 2021. Not 3 months, a lot more.

The minimising (and rewriting) of the effects of lockdown on children on here is shocking. History won’t look back on us favourably with regards to how we treated children in this pandemic. Even if you do.

It isn’t just lockdown though is it? Even outside of lockdown, normal social interaction was massively limited - people only meeting outdoors, only X people allowed in a shop at one time, constant hand sanitising, mask wearing, baby groups were basically cancelled the whole of 2020 and 2021… totally preventing normal exchange of viruses and germs

@Delatron please stop trying to derail the thread.
We all understand, you are blaming lockdown and are posting one expert you have found to agree with your hypothesis. But there is no medical consensus about this yet especially since at this point, the UK has higher numbers and that does not correspond to a difference in lockdown protocol.

It isn’t just lockdown though is it? Even outside of lockdown, normal social interaction was massively limited [...] totally preventing normal exchange of viruses and germs

Normal viruses and germs don't regularly cause liver failure requiring liver transplants in children.

I find the lockdown hypothesis a bit spurious really, considering the youngest infected is three months old and literally didn't exist during it.

@Poppetlove

My kids were born either side of the Atlantic, the only difference in the baby shots was hepatitis b, but the drs have said it's not hep b. I'm not sure if any countries other than the USA offer hep b as standard

Come on, lockdowns don’t cause hepatitis. Not even if you say that those children haven’t been in contact as much with some other viruses. This is also NOT what the researchers have found…..

The reality is that we just don’t know.
It might be related to covid (thanks to letting it go wild in schools therefore making it more visible) or it might be something different or a combination of things.

The best we can do is protect ourselves and our dcs by insisting on good ventilation and masks.
And wait to see the result of the research.

Professors of hepatology have said lockdowns are the most likely reason. But don’t let that stand in the way of your armchair expert opinion and desperation to defend the lockdowns.

I’ve never seen any random cold virus causing hepatitis up to the point some children needed a liver transplant.
i mean if that was the case, I’m pretty sure we would have been aware about it a long time ago.

@Organictangerine do you have some link that that research or some quotes form those specialists?

Because so far, I’ve seen the opposite from eminent researchers…..

Here you go, straight from the telegraph

Tbh whatever the cause turns out to be I find the using of children suffering from liver failure to push anti-lockdown ideology really nauseating and I'm seeing it everywhere. There is almost zero real proof of this either way so far and certainly not enough for it to be making head line news with that in the title. Still, whatever protects the government from criticism about it's stance on Covid I suppose.

Sky news

There won’t be any studies or research because it’s such a new phenomenon

so all we have is the best guess of experts which will be much more valuable than any guesses here

@Organictangerine

Professors of hepatology have said lockdowns are the most likely reason. But don’t let that stand in the way of your armchair expert opinion and desperation to defend the lockdowns.

I don't see either article you linked to saying that. I see them saying it could be a cause along with many other possible factors, not the most likely.

I’m very concerned. I don’t think it’s as a result of reduced exposure in lockdown, because that doesn’t fit with the ages of some of the cases. I’m wondering if it’s a mutation in the adenovirus or related to covid in some way. It’s very worrying. My heart goes out to the children affected and their families - I cannot imagine what they are going through.

Do you have some links to comments made by those experts (not newspaper articles)?

That is their best guess at the moment.

@MumbleCrumbs seeing that adenoviruses are also transmitted through the air, for me it is yet another reason NOT to go down into lockdown (that would be stupid) but to put in place the many protective measures we can to protect ourselves from ALL viruses in the air.

Basically working on air quality like they have done in Japan.