Covid Child Mortality

[Warhertisuff]

A horrible topic I know, but one which parents have a right to be informed accurately about.

I've read that over 100 children have now died of Covid in the U.K. However, that doesn't seem to square with the stats I can find. The ONS data below suggests that there have been 14 deaths of children under 14 since February, and 4 school aged children under 14 since the start of autumn term. I appreciate the pandemic has been here since before last February but even so.... especially since infections in schools have only really skyrocketed
since summer half term and through into this term.

Obviously all child deaths are tragic, but in order to determine our response, we need to know whether deaths are as prevalent as other diseases such as meningitis or other causes such as traffic accidents, or whether we are talking another level of magnitude.

www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1470/age/wrapper/datadownload.xlsx

Unfortunately librarians, people are using child deaths to scaremongering, which is why the ability to access accurate numbers is important.

@Bordois

See my ONS link in my previous post for deaths broken down into smaller age bands NOT 1-14 15-24.

(Also where on mumsnet are people using child deaths to scaremonger?)

The figures are used to scaremonger- and also to deny. But it's still weird to get all wide eyed about why they dont add up when, by your own admission, half of them are not available.

[quote BewareTheLibrarians]@Bordois

See my ONS link in my previous post for deaths broken down into smaller age bands NOT 1-14 15-24.

(Also where on mumsnet are people using child deaths to scaremonger?)[/quote]
Yes, I saw your link which gives accurate figures, but for a specific time frame.

Scaremongering and underplaying child mortality happens on a lot of threads. You get comments like "hundreds of children have died" then the counter arguments- all because there is not a single figure for children (or indeed a defintion!)

Is 25 and under not young?

It’s horrific so many have died.

We could have jabbed our school and uni students over summer. Had mask wearing in schools. Adequate ventilation. Also not allowed children with a covid positive member of their household come to school.

Why have we not taken these measures? Other countries have. We are an outlier.

The deaths are individually tragic, although small in numbers. Yet long covid will affect many, many young people. Blighting their education. Furthermore, the long-term effects are likely to be not fully understood as yet.

Why are we not taking more measures to protect young people.?

It’s a national disgrace.

As I posted on the Data thread last night:

“Under 20” is the accepted definition of child by many organisations - this paper cites a mean suggested upper age limit across 115 countries of 18.7:

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(19)30266-4/fulltext

and UNICEF’s definition is here:

data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/covid-19/

However in the UK NHS paediatric services apparently stop at 16, although the GMC refers to children and young people up to the age of 17!

Obviously it is the upper end of the 0-18 age range who make up the majority of covid deaths however.

lashing out at numbers

I think the op is the opposite of this

It’s calm not emotive

@Brindle88

Is 25 and under not young?

It’s horrific so many have died.

We could have jabbed our school and uni students over summer. Had mask wearing in schools. Adequate ventilation. Also not allowed children with a covid positive member of their household come to school.

Why have we not taken these measures? Other countries have. We are an outlier.

The deaths are individually tragic, although small in numbers. Yet long covid will affect many, many young people. Blighting their education. Furthermore, the long-term effects are likely to be not fully understood as yet.

Why are we not taking more measures to protect young people.?

It’s a national disgrace.

This. Too much focus on dying and not enough on Long Covid too. I think many parents don't actually understand how devastating Long Covid can be and sometimes I wonder if dying might have been kinder for my DD. Would folks be as blasé about Covid if it had a chance of leaving their DC infertile but not dead, like with mumps?

It’s cold

Sorry posted too soon

It could also be seen as cold, not calm.

@Brindle88

It’s cold

Data is usually non emotive and simply presented

Some find that harder but I appreciate the non heightened version

The source and figures so I can interpret it

Sorry to hear about your DD. BonnesVacances.

I don’t think people realise how debilitating long term fatigue is. I have a medical condition which causes severe fatigue. I really feel for anyone with long covid.

Under 25 is young. It is ludicrous, when talking about appropriate measures to take in nursery, primary, (middle), secondary schools, and sixth form colleges that nobody appears to have bothered to collect and publicise clear data identifying the relevant groups, rather than spanning widely across them, particularly when wild claims were being made that covid didn’t spread between children and children were barely capable of passing covid on, as though this was the case right the way through from birth to age 18.

The full weekly figures from the ONS give 43 deaths with Covid 19 on the death certificate for under 20s in 2021 and 20 in 2021, so 63 in total, of which the majority are in the 15-19 age band.

Data from death certificates is normally quite delayed, which is why we also get given statistics on deaths within 28 days of a positive test, because that data comes through more quickly and is generally an underestimate of covid deaths compared to the numbers of people who have covid as a cause on the death certificate.

@Walkaround

Data from death certificates is normally quite delayed, which is why we also get given statistics on deaths within 28 days of a positive test, because that data comes through more quickly and is generally an underestimate of covid deaths compared to the numbers of people who have covid as a cause on the death certificate.

Yes. But worth noting that Covid deaths are greater than Excess deaths in the UK.

This does make sense because a sizeable minority of people who died from Covid would have died from other illnesses too in a short period of time.

@MsWarrensProfession

The full weekly figures from the ONS give 43 deaths with Covid 19 on the death certificate for under 20s in 2021 and 20 in 2021, so 63 in total, of which the majority are in the 15-19 age band.

See, this is the kind of data thats pretty clear and concise and is exactly what is needed.

Quite a few posts on other threads saying things like "so many children have died, look at this really fuzzy graph that makes it impossible to discern exact numbers" that just end up in squabbling ooverwatch the figures actually are.

The deaths in exact numbers is relatively irrelevant as it could be in say a child with a 1/1m condition. (So not relevant to others)But mainly because we have no balancing mumber of children infected. If all then it's done. But more likely it could be several times higher yet.
The main issue then being obviously everyone is aging and having covid at 2 then 4 could be completely different. There doesnt seem to be many dying after second infection but with age/change in childs conditions who knows. Nor whether you only get long covid on furst infection.

It's not just the lc its the not knowing of its lc too. My dc friend has been on/off unwell since their relatives had covid. Is it that who knows? Theyve missed at least extra 10d of school over 6m.
We arent hearing about pims either because initially it seemed that may be linked to a childs weight?

Even if child death and disability was lower than it is, why wouldn't you take the most basic, non-invasive measures to protect children?

Ventilation, air filtration, would massively reduce risk in schools.

I'm wondering what's next after this. On another thread a poster said they're undermining fire safety too.

Apparently risk reduction for children is no longer a thing. Welcome back to the Victorian era.

We know covid can be nasty, we know it can result in diabetes, heart conditions. We know we don't know everything about its long term effects.

There is literally no good argument for not ventilating classrooms properly or having low cost air filtration. None. Except that they see the lower classes of children expendable.

They're not even doing the basics to protect our children - why people aren't up in arms I don't know.

I remember working out that more children were killed by their father than covid in the first lockdown

No one is asking for lockdown, just safe schools.

More children died from chicken pox too. I’m not trying to sound insensitive but these things need to be put into perspective obviously no deaths would be better but as viruses and illnesses go covid generally isn’t a treat to children and I do hate the hysteria.

Especially when the restrictions have effected so many young (particularly teenagers) mental health and education.

@Ohsofedupwiththis - yes, worth noting that, too. No dataset is perfect, it all just helps give us an idea of what is going on.