Children could be collateral damage in COVID19 control

[Kokeshi123]

www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/exclusive-children-may-be-covid-19-collateral-damage/7027315.article

"Children may have died from non-coronavirus illnesses because they are not coming to hospital quickly enough, amid concerns NHS 111 may be giving flawed advice to stay away, according to senior pediatricians."

There are also concerns that kids will wind up with spotty vaccination records which end up not being made up for later on. In terms of risk to kids themselves, I'm actually more concerned about future outbreaks of measles and diphtheria than about CV itself, I have to say.

I'm also concerned about the impact on little children's immune systems and eyesight development if lockdowns and other restrictions (esp being completely kept away from other children) are allowed to persist for months rather than weeks. The world's foremost leukemia expert has been pretty adamant that children should ideally be exposed to lots of other children and normal germs in their environments, because raising babies in an immunological bubble raises the risk of their developing autoimmune conditions later on.

As we try to decide how long the lockdown should persist, these factors need to be taken into account IMO.

[Mrsmadevans]

Is this source from a reputable site?

[wonderstuff]

No one is saying old people are expendable, rather that there are important, sometimes life threatening, needs across the population that contine alongside covid 19. Many more people are dying of things other than covid 19 at the moment, but those deaths aren't being reported. We need to weigh up everyone's needs.

[BeijingBikini]

Quite - people will die of suicide, mental health issues, other health conditions and poverty due to recession. People will have life expectancy cut and more stress/heart disease if we have a horrendous recession. For some people quality of life is more important, and it's an important question to ask - how much quality of life for everyone are we willing to sacrifice to increase quantity of life for a small minority? I also know some elderly people that would rather die earlier than spend many months completely isolated.

[BeijingBikini]

Also, my friend works in brain cancer clinical trials, many of which are getting paused or stopped due to CV. We may have discovered some amazing drugs next year for other lethal illnesses that we now won't until later.

[Shmabel]

would you save the life of an ailing 90 year old at the cost of 20 children losing decades of life expectancy?
No I wouldn't. I don't think that's the choice here and it creates an unnecessary dichotomy to pretend it is.

If we continue this for too long, that's the kind of maths we'll face.
How long? I agree eventually it would, but these restrictions will be far too temporary for such an outcome, so such hyperbole isn't helpful.

I still think we should do a lockdown to protect the more vulnerable (of which I am one!), just that it should be brief
I agree with this (and said so in my comment).

The age thing is a red herring mostly because, whilst the NHS is busy dealing with covid victims (of all ages), lots of people are missing out on care. E.g. as a pregnant woman, I'll probably have changes to my care. Some women and their pregnancies are likely to be harmed by these changes. But it's unavoidable and will only be exasperated by this thing being allowed to run wild without a lockdown. Unless we tell covid victims to die at home so the rest of us can get on (they're mostly old anyway, huh?). But that wouldn't be civilised.

So we lockdown to protect all our lives, because there are many, many reasons other than covid that people of all ages need the NHS.

[BoomBoomsCousin]

Love how old people are seemingly expendable, makes me so cross. What if it’s your mum/ dad / gran / grandpa who dies??

What if it's my mum/dad/gran/grandpa/daughter/husband/brother/niece/nephew who dies because of the recession that follows this? Or because we paused a huge number of other medical interventions? I don't think old peopleare expendable, but I also don't think they are the only people whose lives have value.

[BoomBoomsCousin]

...Or that there's only one potentially preventable way for them to die.

[Londongirl88888]

I get kids are "resilient" and they will be "ok" but I also agree there is risk to certain things with children.

Example my son last year had a cough, fever, old and woke up last year grunting and struggling. We took him to a&e as he was only 14 months old and clearly not well. He was taken by ambulance to a children's hospital and kept in for 4 days to treat a small patch of pnunomia in his left lung. He was feverish and lethargic. I am so glad it wasn't this year as if I tried to get him seen with those symptoms they would of likely not let us go with him. He would have had a horrible experience and it would of been heartbreaking for us. It seems now any cough, fever etc is presumed to be the coronavirus. The problem is some children like mine get tonsilitis a couple of times a year. Mine have both required antibiotics and drs for those things at random points in the year.

Also kids are not stupid. My five year old has a very simple version of what is going on. There are germs. Everywhere is being cleaned. The germs are nearly gone. They won't hurt her. But she still knows things are strange. I can see she is getting more emotional and fed up. We do our best. We take her for a walk 2-3 times a week. We are on the garden every day. We do a variety of things with her. She has a younger brother who's 2. So she does have someone else to interact with we a child. But I can see the small affects creeping in. She wants answers. She knows this isn't the school holidays. We normally go to the parks and out and about. We don't stay in the house for a month. It feels so unhealthy to tell her she can't go in the shop. She's not allowed to swim. See her friends. Go to school. See her Grandparents.

I have seen many people claim schools won't return this year. But I really don't think that's healthy. Even if they only go for a couple of days a week to keep the crowd down. I just think by may the kids need some sort of life back.

It's really upsetting. My kids are loved and safe. But some children will be scared, abused, not fed anything other than junk. Some kids will be hungry. It's worrying.

[wanderings]

Many more people are dying of things other than covid 19 at the moment, but those deaths aren't being reported.
Indeed, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of those deaths are being included in the Covid 19 figures: dying anyway, and happened to have the illness.

[Londongirl88888]

@beijingBikini

Yes my neighbours brother jumped of a bridge yesterday onto a dual carriageway. It's already began.

[tellmetocalmdown]

I agree with you. I am honesty wondering if we are throwing the younger generation under the bus just so the elderly can live another few years

[tellmetocalmdown]

What if it’s your mum/ dad / gran / grandpa who dies

Both my parents are dead. But if it came to a choice of my gran living to age 96 or my child living to adulthood I know for damn sure which one I would choose and it wouldnt be my gran.

[GirlOnIt]

I agree Op. I get that it's very unprecedented times and I'm obviously following lockdown rules. But there has to be a limit to how long 'normal' life can be put on hold.

I'm a social worker (although on mat leave) and I feel sick thinking about what some children are going through right now. Dv will be increasing that's a given and services to help and support are stretched, there's already been a few cases that have made the news and I suspect many more to come.

[BeijingBikini]

@Londongirl88888 I'm sorry, that's awful. My neighbour told me a similar story today about her colleague - the company got told to WFH the evening the lockdown was announced, she said yes that's fine I'll pick up the laptop etc. Next day no-one had heard anything from her; it turned out she'd killed herself.

[YukoandHiro]

Yes it could affect all of those things. The alternative, however, is that we end up with a hell of a lot of orphans.
Would rather my child had dodgy eyes frankly

[MRex]

It's an awful situation to be living through. Some people on this thread however don't seem to believe that it is the illness causing NHS issues, not the lockdown. Otherwise healthy doctors and nurses have died and sadly more of them will, that's because of viral load and would get much worse of the pace of people catching this virus isn't slowed down. There isn't yet a major shortage of treatments (also needed by otherwise healthy and much younger people), that would be the case if the pace of the virus isn't slowed down. You can't have a lot of other treatments continuing with unchecked covid-19 rampant through hospitals and general society, or those being treated will just die unnecessarily. It's horrible and it's hard to cope with, but that is what a pandemic is, horrible. All we can do is try to mitigate its effects to do the least harm. The lockdown will cause extra harm too and I'm sure it'll be ended as soon as the infection rate is back under control.

[HoffiCoffi13]

I'm a social worker (although on mat leave) and I feel sick thinking about what some children are going through right now

My best friend is a child protection social worker... her caseload has tripled since schools closed. She is trying to manage working from home as well as looking after her children and she’s a mess, she’s lost a stone in 3 weeks with the stress of everything that’s happening at work.

[Namelesswonder]

Scotland hasn’t cancelled routine childhood vaccinations, they are continuing as normal.

[Josette77]

I hope if nothing else then it prompts people to sign up to be foster parents or adoptive parents. Raising a child who has experienced trauma is extremely challenging and incredibly rewarding. Op, have you though about connecting with your local child protective services? They might be able to give you some info on what is needed.

[GirlOnIt]

I know my colleagues are facing the same @HoffiCoffi13. I was considering going back early but my dd is only 5 months and I've a ds 18 months too. And honesty I'm not sure I could deal with the stress of it right now.

Sadly this is the perfect excuse for some families to stop engaging completely. Such a shame in cases where progress was being made too.

[Shmabel]

Some people on this thread however don't seem to believe that it is the illness causing NHS issues, not the lockdown.
There is a lot of this.

Total agree with everything else you've said @MRex. Made similar points myself upthread. Sadly I think people want to argue that lockdown itself will cause thousands of young people to have shortened lives simply because they don't like the lockdown. Honestly, I don't know how such people are not concerned about what would happen if their children became sick or injured whilst the NHS is completely overwhelmed by covid unrestricted.

[SansaSnark]

Arguments about poverty don't make a huge amount of sense to me- losing a parent is bound to put a lot more families into poverty than a recession, and the recession is not a zero sum game- if 250,000-500,000 people die in a very short period of time, that's also likely to trigger a recession.

I do think it's important that essential health services for children continue, but this is equally only possible if the NHS doesn't get overwhelmed.

Do bear in mind that when you post about "children being stuck in with their abusers" it makes it sound like you think it's acceptable for a child to live in an abusive situation, as long as they get a break at school. FWIW, schools are still trying to provide as much of a pastoral/safeguarding service as they can, so it's not quite like the summer holidays, and children with an allocated social worker can still go to school.

Perhaps in the future, thoughts of this situation will trigger more intervention into some home situations which SS currently deem "good enough"? Perhaps it might also cause more action on children living in temporary/inadequate housing?

Yes the situation isn't great for a lot of people, but the alternative is really shit as well- we do need to balance both carefully.

I do think there are some people using hypothetical abused children and women to support their arguments when they never cared about these groups before, though.

[wejammin]

I read on a thread somewhere that midwives and health visitors are doing all appointments by phone except for the 6 day weigh and heel prick test.
It absolutely terrifies me thinking about how many tongue ties, domestic violence, PND, failure to thrive could be missed, not to mention the lack of breastfeeding support at the moment.

[Rocketmam]

Both my parents are dead. But if it came to a choice of my gran living to age 96 or my child living to adulthood I know for damn sure which one I would choose and it wouldnt be my gran.

If your hypothetical gran and thousands of others flood the NHS and your dc needs ANY emergency medical care during that time because of choking, accident, appendicitis, and a while host of other diseases that can pick off dc if untreated....then maybe you will figure out this isn't an either/or choice.

Lockdown is to slow the tide and atop that flood from happening. It benefits every one of us.

Those making it a 'choice' between the young and old are ignorant, selfish or a combination of the two.

[YappityYapYap]

I know this isn't as serious as most of the situations noted here, no where near but my DS who is 3.5 years old, finally got speech therapy started at his nursery 2 weeks before it closed and that was just an observation session and it was just once. He is now not getting it due to the lockdown and the nursery being closed. He has a zero word count. Me and DH do the best we can, the absolute best we can but we are not trained speech therapists.




We waited a year to get it and after just one session that wasn't an actual session, it's stopped for we don't know how long. I'm worried we'll have a 4 year old with a zero word count and with him starting school in just 16 months, I'm getting really, really concerned.




I agree a lockdown needs to happen and I agree preserving life needs to happen but we can't just stop everything and put everything on hold. There's going to be a lot of children severely behind and this affects their entire lives