Clusters of pneumonia in china

[bigpawsjames]

I thought this was just twitter hype but now on the bbc... WHO have officially asked china whats going on

Im not much into conspiracy theories but I have wondered for a few weeks why my doctors surgery has been so diligently pushing the pneumonia jab, I had no idea one was available until this winter and actually turned down the offer, perhaps they know something we don't.

Which is appropriate and their job, we are just a bit twitchy at the moment after the last few years. My child who missed school like the rest in the pandemic had a shocker of a year for illnesses so I wouldn't be surprised that a country who locked down HARD has small children with immune systems that haven't been tested much yet.

Until we get more info I wouldn't worry any more than that.

That’s a good point re immune systems @MrSlant
iirc Spain locked down under 12 yo’s- not even allowed out for exercise and fresh air. If this is a consequence of weakened immune systems I’d expect them to be more vulnerable than us.

This looked a bit alarmist but I read they weren’t even closing the affected schools just ‘considering it’. China has no problem restricting the rights of its citizens so I figured I won’t panic yet.

Science - Immunity debt: does it really exist?
Some claim the rise in winter infections has been caused by the reduction of seasonal bugs during lockdowns. But experts are sceptical about these oversimplified explanations

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/14/immunity-debt-does-it-really-exist

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/blog-the-ten-most-dangerous-coronavirus-myths-debunked-1

It's because it's hitting children. Nice story to scare people with.

We know that covid dysregulates immune function, and it makes infections that bit worse.

We don't know what effect is had on the immune system in the longer term, especially in DC, but seem happy with them being frequently exposed.

There are rises in both incidence and severity of a number of infectious diseases (eg TB) in many countries, plus increase in shingles (shows up most when immune system is lowest). This is getting next to no news coverage

This one just has pictures of children with IV lines attending school - media interest returns

The immune system doesn't work like that.

And it's years since lockdowns - 2 whole seasons of unfettered circulation of winter viruses

And still people are getting sicker, more readily and more seriously, and there are hundreds of papers which show not just how covid dysregulates the immune system but precisely which bits, and that the effect can last for months.

But people really don't want to face the fact that we don't know whether the most dangerous part of covid infection still lies ahead of us. We don't know its medium or long term effects on any of the many body systems that we know it impacts on. So rather than face an unsettling uncertainty, they seek to blame something else - usually lockdown ie something in the past, something people did, something that can be reversed, something that was under our control. The covid virus is none of those things.

I saw this on BBC and wondered if there would be a thread. Hopefully it's just a case of approaching things with an abundance of caution.

I read that this is China’s first proper winter since lockdown, so kids being hit by illness because they haven’t been exposed as much over the past few years.

I’m personally not in the slightest concerned about this. The press enjoy headlines and panic as it gets them ‘clicks’. Remember Monkeypox a year or so ago? Where has that gone? Never mentioned now.

Why is it always from China?

I imagine it's a population density thing. When you've got that number of people in close proximity it allows viruses, etc to spread much faster.

BBC reports it's the first restriction-free winter virus season since China lifted restrictions. But I don't think that's completely right - the final lifting was in December 2022 (so height of winter bug season) and some regions had less strict lockdowns anyhow.

That's the snag with the (widely discredited, but won't go away) "immune debt" theory - the timelines don't fit the pattern of timings of circulation of disease as it actually happened (there isn't consistency between countries and their lockdown patterns) nor does it account for increased proportion of the severe disease (increased numbers falling ill makes sense, as an annually circulating disease that does not circulate one year has a larger vulnerable cohort the next)

And if doesn't really account for pneumonia in children, which is unusual.

Yes, China is saying lockdown as cause. But I think that might be the line to reassure the Chinese public; I don't automatically rely on Chinese state media.

They only publish the stats twice a year (Feb and August) and so that's when the news reporting appears. From the last couple of updates, then I'd guess that it's humming away at about the same rates, but we won't know until the next set of figures. Probably too speculative for even the most doomy of doom-mongers to give consistent coverage too.

If we are more aware/cautious of all this stuff, but without panicking, it can’t be a bad thing. Complacency and a lack of caution in early 2020 is one of the things that made Covid so bad for us

All the footage from China in 2020 of people dropping down dead in the street and being barricaded in their homes was fake.

GreekDogRescue
People being barricaded into their homes in China - is that really fake?

The size of the population is one part of it.

Also, new flu strains "tend" to originate in China because of the tendency to farm fowl and swine in the same farms in China, which greatly increases the risk of zoonosis.

New influenza viruses develop in fowl (ducks, chickens etc.) as a mututation, then get passed onto pigs. In the pig's body, the new virus picks up new bits of genetic information which make it possible for it to infect humans.

What about the MonKeY PoX, people?
Why are there not more threads about this terrible threat to humanity? Have we forgotten so soon?
Some times I wonder how we are even still alive 🙉🫨

Because the (British) stats are only published twice a year and the press loses interest in between.

Also the mechanism by which monkeypox spreads is totally different - it requires close contact with the fluid from the lesions, so is not a threat in the same way as an airborne is

I screamed (in frustration) when I heard a snippet of this on the news this morning. I'm trying to declutter. I won't be impressed if I need to start a prepper stash again.

Just to make you scream a bit louder, it's not only China.

French press are reporting a wave there too.

As a PP said, it spreads in a totally different way and fairly soon after the outbreak began we started offering the vaccine to at risk groups.

Worth a read https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/11/25/mycoplasma-likely-main-culprit-of-outbreak-of-pediatric-cases-of-pneumonia-worldwide/?sh=764c71fe1176