Risks to children are vanishingly small? Really?

[GrumpiestOldWoman]

Heard a statistician on BBC this morning explaining the statistics, tiny tiny risk to the under 25's.

Yes, fine, children have negligible risk of dying from covid 19. But I view the risk to my children as including the risk of losing one or both parents, which for many of us is more likely. Look how close the Prime Minister's son came to losing a parent.

Risk of dying - tiny. Risk from losing parent (s) - more significant surely?

Closing schools has never been about the children.

Its been about saving the school staff and that families of the children.

For the vast majority of children closing schools has been a bad thing.

That's not me saying it is safe to open schools. But let's be clear - the decision to close schools was not made in the best interest of children

"I’m getting sick of posting the statistic,....under the age of 65, 3000 people have died. 95 percent of them had significant health issues."

Bluntness And I'm getting sick of posting these important caveats:

1. That is with lockdown
   We don't know if the death rates will remain at this level without lockdown
   A few local hotspots in Germany have increased cases and had to be locked down again

2. Nearly all those 95% under 65 with conditions would normally expect to live decades more,
   e.g. for conditions like T2, COPD, BMI 40+ etc

Personally, I advocate restarting schools and the economy from 1 June, if the government's 5 conditions are satisfied
and if they have organised the mass testing & contact tracing needed by then

However, we should be honest about the risks

• misleading people will just cause panic if cases rise locally in some areas, or indeed across the country

@Simplekindoflife

I'm so sorry you've been so unwell. But approx 20% of people infected will have no symptoms at all and many more will have mild symptoms similar to a normal cold.

There is a massive disparity in symptoms which does not always relate to 'risk' of complications.

"Its been about saving the school staff and that families of the children."

Both staff and families are entitled to assess whether the increased risks to themseves are outweighed by the benefits to the children

imo, the economic argument wins out overall
plus returning at risk children to school where their welfare can be monitored again.

But then accept school maybe needs to become just full-time childcare for some months at least,
with masks and if necessary only very limited education

In Germany, 18% of confirmed cases are hospitalised, with 2% of cases going to ICU
roughly what China found.

Many of the hospitalised and all those in ICU have long periods of recovery ahead of them - often many months

And of those who stay home, some need regular home visits by health teams (in full PPE)

To find out the extent of damage in peole, surely we need the antibody test. In this country peope have only been tested with symptoms so we know how their cases pan out, although we only truly know those who have been hospitalised because ohers aren't getting health checks or lung scans etc.
Do we have reliable data from other coubtries, who have mass tested, about how many asymptomatic covid 19 confirmed cases they have had, so no guessing, actual confirmed cases with no symptoms. Has anyone followed up wuth health checks on these people to see if there has been lasting damage or any temporaray damage even though they felt fine?
Thisbis the data I want to see, no speculation actual hard evidence based data, that is backed up and supported by studies. I know it's perhaps too early for this yet but until we know this we actually can't be too sure of the risks to health. Hildren have been hard to study so far because they have, in many places been sheltered from the virus due to lockdowns. Sweden may be a great place to start, do the antibosy tests, find how many have had it, also include all children and do scans and medical exams on them, if willing to collate data. Perhaps only 20% of the population will have any issues as they say then we can balance the risks.

@Stopmenow123 I used 1% as a simple example. The maths would become far more turgid if I used x to represent my probability of dying over the coming year.

Regardless, if the premise is true that a given person's probability of dying from Covid is equal to their probability of dying from all other causes combined over the next year, then their probability of death, if they contract Covid, has come extremely close to doubling and moaning about the discrepancy is, absolutely, splitting hairs.

@nellodee No. It really hasn't. I'm sorry it's disappointing you that you've failed to prove your point that contracting COVID doubles everyones risk of dying but those are the facts and the statistics.

Populations and individuals are different.

I've had COVID (confirmed by testing as i'm a nurse). I wasn't very ill at all. My risk of dying in the next year hasn't increased by virtue of me having had COVID either.

Population vs individual

Thank you @Stopmenow123

But we have no idea about the figures yet as we're in lockdown. As more people catch it or catch it again, we have no idea yet how people will be affected.

Lack of testing for non key workers and no antibody tests at all suggest we are not at all ready for an ease of this (shambolic) lockdown yet.

"how many asymptomatic covid 19 confirmed cases they have had, so no guessing, actual confirmed cases with no symptoms"

Eachdubh Some information from RKI (German public health institute)

FYI: The "manifestation index" is the % with any symptoms

The values in studies vary considerably, depending on age of subjects and time period of study
We know that a very few people only develop symptoms after some weeks

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Steckbrief.html

(translated and the references are listed at the bottom of the report)

"6. Manifestation index

The manifestation index describes the proportion of those infected who are actually ill.

Different manifestation indices are reported in the literature.

This is partly due to the fact that examination situations in different settings and the examined populations differ greatly.^period of

For example, younger people without previous illnesses could only have been examined once, and that sometimes only during an early phase of the infection and without knowing whether symptoms still developed in the further course.

Another examination situation would exist if
e.g. older infected people with previous illnesses were observed until the end of an ongoing infection or illness.

Manifestation indices from different settings are e.g.

(1) Cruise ship outbreak (estimated):82% (95% CI: 79.8-84.5%) (ref 93)

(2) evacuated returnees: 69% (ref 94),

(3) nursing home: 86% (ref 95), and

(4) a village population in Italy (estimated): 56.8% (95% CI: 45.3-67.8%; see 20.) (ref 53)"

Stopmenow123. Nice clear post. Thank you.
Explaining population level versus individual risk is hard and I think part of the panic is caused by really poor science reporting in the mainstream press, which is then picked up and passed on through social media.

stopmenow123, nellodee Detailled risk calculations by Prof. Sir David Spiegelhalter

The risk does not double for someone who would die within a short time anyway, due to great age / grave illness

However, for the averagely healthy young / middle-aged person it doubles
and he suggests the risk may be even higher for frontline HCPs

How much ‘normal’ risk does Covid represent?

Note added 2nd May 2020.

"^ Some people seem to be interpreting this article as suggesting that COVID does not add to one’s normal risk.^"

I should make it clear that I am suggesting that it roughly doubles your risk of dying this year.

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196

.....So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two.

If someone has had a mild version of COVID, then they have already survived their risk of death from COVID

and hence this does not affect their risk of dying for the remainder of the year

i.e. they would be 2 separate statistical events

However, if someone has had a very severe case of COVID that has caused longterm damage to heart, lungs or whatever,
then that would increase their risk of dying that year

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Spiegelhalter

Sir David John Spiegelhalter OBE FRS (born 16 August 1953) is a British statistician
and Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge [3]

and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.[1][4][5][6]

Spiegelhalter is an ISI highly cited researcher

@Suchanaughtydog

I understand your inference re dv deaths etc. But if I had to choose between the risk of dv against my child, which I can control and negate or covid that I cannot prevent, control or negate except via Socially isolating at home, I'll opt for the latter.
It is sad that you're probably right there will be an increase in deaths, but there are increases in dv and deaths every time there's the World Cup, yet it continues.....

Ahhh. I'm thinking of other people's children and not just my own in this. I actually care what happens to all children, because of course I can make sure mine are ok, but I'm not selfish, and care about what's best for the wider community. I think it's a bit selfish to think "my kids are ok at home, therefore everyone's should be", and victim blaming to say DV damage to children is due to mothers not mitigating that enough.

I care what happens to our vulnerable adults, too. I just think the evidence points that closing schools, and harming children, doesn't make much difference to the risks for adults. The biggest effect on risk for adults is what adults do with other adults, and kids shouldn't be asked to suffer because adults don't like modifying their own behaviour unless children have to, too.

Justin Wolfers@JustinWolfers

Remembering that very responsible
@wsj oped (https://wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464…) arguing against lockdowns because

"only 0.01% of those who got the virus would die." 🤔

We now know that 0.23% of all New Yorkers have died from it
(That’s a share of all NYers, not just those with the virus.)

< Antibody tests on NYC found 21% had been infected ... to kill that % of the entire population within just a few weeks >

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/10/new-york-mystery-coronavirus-illness-three-children-die

New York state is alerting all other parts of the US about a new mystery syndrome that appears to be related to Covid-19 and is
causing severe illness and even death in very young children.

So far three children have died
– a five-year-old in New York City,
a seven-year-old in Westchester county
and a teenager in Suffolk county in Long Island.

All three showed signs of blood vessel inflammation, and also proved positive for the novel coronavirus.

Cuomo said 85 cases of Covid-related illness in children were now being investigated by New York, up from 73 on Saturday.

Two other deaths are being looked at.

The syndrome has puzzled health experts because it appears to be striking young children largely in the toddler to elementary school age,
who had been thought to be largely unaffected by coronavirus.

The symptoms are also unusual.

Instead of respiratory problems normally associated with Covid-19,

the children are experiencing inflammation of blood vessels or the heart. Their symptoms are similar to toxic-shock syndrome and Kawasaki disease, an illness with no known cause that mainly affects children under five.

Cuomo opened up the possibility that several more children may have been hit by the mystery illness without health workers recognising what was happening.

“It’s possible that these cases were coming in and were not diagnosed as related to Covid, as they don’t appear as Covid,”

At some stage, all governments will need to prioritise the economy whatever the risks,
for the sake of the country as a whole

However, we need to then be honest and accept that both adults and a small number of children will be casualties in doing this

I don’t disagree but the lockdown itself is not entirely benign (in terms of direct damage to health as opposed to indirect damage caused by damage to the economy).

I don’t know what the statistics are in terms of whether lockdown or the virus cause more direct harm to the health of children but I would imagine it’s a closer run thing than it is with adults. If the entire population were affected by the virus in the same way as children are I doubt very much we would be locked down at all (in fact I’d suggest it’s possible that no one would even know COVID existed!)

Chris Whitty said in his lecture that if your sole aim was to minimise deaths from COVID you would behave differently than if your aim was to balance the risks to health from all causes. There will be some risk (and consequently some deaths) in all age groups whatever we do. I just worry a bit that anything but lockdown is now viewed as unsafe when it’s obviously a lot more complicated than that.

I support a slow and cautious approach to exiting lockdown and the vague time frames set out by the government don’t seem too ridiculous to me. As usual, the messaging has been poor. Hopefully the additional guidance today can firm things up a bit.