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

I’m pro vaccinating kids but let’s not lose sight of the stats. 100 children is 0.009% of the 11 million under 16’s there. This is not to minimise their deaths in any way but when looking at risk, it’s TINY.

And thank god the risk is small. It would be nice to keep it that way by not letting covid rip through schools with no mitigations (not lockdowns - masks in communal areas, bubbles if needed, ventilation and air filtration - by the way have any of those CO2 monitors turned up yet?) Increasing the amount of children infected increases complications, long covid, PIMS and death (even if by a small metric for the last, it’s still a preventable death that’s not being prevented.)

A parent on Twitter is compiling the numbers (infection/hospitalisations/long covid/deaths) for children. As I recall GDPR and inquests are causing delays in confirming the deaths of children.

twitter.com/tigressellie/status/1454514223304871941?s=24

But schools do have contingency plans. The minute 3 or more cases are identified in our school, it’s back to masks in communal areas, no visitors & no school assemblies. No singing & PE outdoors. Above 10 cases & we were back into bubbles, no mixing & staggered lunches.

It did the job. Cases dropped & back to normal before half term.

I think it’s far, far better than another year of restricting school activities for the whole year.

Those contingencies, if they are as effective as that, continue them.

@Lalalablahblahblah

Really sorry to hear about your DC Librarian . Hope they turn a corner in their recovery soon

Thank you! I hope so too, 20 months is more than enough for anyone, let alone a 12 year who wants to be dashing around all the time and can’t! I’m sure he’ll get there

@BonnesVacances so sorry to hear about your dd. That was difficult to read and I do hope she is soon on the up and new effective treatments will also become available.

@Bobholll

But schools do have contingency plans. The minute 3 or more cases are identified in our school, it’s back to masks in communal areas, no visitors & no school assemblies. No singing & PE outdoors. Above 10 cases & we were back into bubbles, no mixing & staggered lunches.

It did the job. Cases dropped & back to normal before half term.

I think it’s far, far better than another year of restricting school activities for the whole year.

Well if all schools were doing this, that'd be great.

But they're not. The only way I even know if there's a case in school is via other parents or my child. The schools (I have children in two) provide 0 information to me. I've repeatedly written and asked about their risk assessment with it's scientifically flawed focus on fomite transmission, pointed out the long list of parents asking for masks, the science and they've ignored me.

I also asked them to inform me if there were insufficient teachers to actually teach my daughter as if she's going to watch movies all day I'd rather she do it at home (this happened once last term due to too many teachers off sick). No response.

I do understand they're underpaid, over stretched and I believe they genuinely want to do their best for children, but it seems the fear of the DfE is greater than common sense. You have to wonder how far they'd go if the DfE asked them to do something even more obviously morally wrong.

@theemperorhasnoclothes

And it affects children's mental health when their classmates are dropping like flies and many of them are very ill and only in school intermittently after covid. It's scary and they feel abandoned by the adults.

Of course it's tragic for any child who has become very ill with Covid and is only in school intermittently afterwards, but you write as though this is the norm rather than the exception is it. 75%+ of children are estimated to have had Covid now... the vast majority of them only had it mildly, if they were symptomatic.

Long Covid is the bigger threat.

Children are low risk generally from Covid but low risk isn't the same as no risk.

inews.co.uk/news/health/long-covid-cases-rise-million-notably-higher-in-teenagers-young-adults-1284050

75%+ of children are estimated to have had Covid now... the vast majority of them only had it mildly, if they were symptomatic
With such a large percentage of children getting Covid, surely the point is that even if the percentage of children who suffer long-term health problems from Covid is low, the numbers involved are so huge that even a small percentage equates to large numbers of children suffering from long-term health problems.

@ADreadedSunnyDay

Ah OK so this thread is actually about lobbying for children to get the Covid vaccination.

Well in that case can you also start lobbying for children in the UK to receive the chicken pox vaccine (which does kill children or can have serious long term effects) and for the Men B vaccine to be offered to all children - I think it was introduced as a routine vaccination in 2014 as my DS just missed out. Meningitis is a huge issue within children and a great swathe of children fell outwith the vaccination programme.

I've just looked how many children die of meningitis each year in the UK. This is what I've found:

How many children have died from meningitis UK?
A total of around 750 people in the UK (mostly babies and children) were infected by MenB in 2011, and around 50 of these died. The MenB vaccine (introduced in September 2015) is expected to have an impact on numbers of cases of MenB disease.

[quote Lelivre]A parent on Twitter is compiling the numbers (infection/hospitalisations/long covid/deaths) for children. As I recall GDPR and inquests are causing delays in confirming the deaths of children.

twitter.com/tigressellie/status/1454514223304871941?s=24[/quote]
It's increased now. I think another 4 in last day. twitter.com/tigressellie/status/1456301301898285064?s=21

I find it strange that as a country we are not fighting harder for things like ventilation in schools, or why some adults won't help kids a tiny bit with community transmission by wearing masks on transport/in shops, why there are still full school assemblies, why we act as though long covid, organ damage etc won't affect kids, why we ignore studies showing how natural infection ages the immune system. Covid is not more or less inevitable for school communities in other countries. It is here. It is very wrong.

As for the 'what about other diseases' mantra? Ignoring that it reminds me a bit of 'black lives matter' / 'all lives matter' or 'not all men' etc, then of course kids will benefit for other illnesses such as RSV with ventilation, of course kids should be offered vaccines for chickenpox, meningitis etc. I don't understand why those concerned about other illnesses don't start a thread about them. As for flu, the figures often quoted are for flu and pneumonia combined.

With regard to 'underlying conditions' - and ignoring the abhorrent undertones that often seek to minimise deaths - unfortunately as a result of covid policy here, more people will now have underlying conditions. Is it ok that their risk increases when reinfected now?

What about years of life lost/deaths in other illnesses as a result of covid policy and impact of time treating covid?

Aren’t we one of the only countries offering all teenagers and children the flu spray in school this year?
So yes Covid vaccination rollout has been slow for 12-15 but now open to all to register.
Covid vaccine 5-11 yet to be approved in England/U.K. - but same applies to most other developed countries.
Healthcare in England was never the best by comparison to other developed countries, neither was state education. So just because a pandemic comes along it isn’t suddenly going to be as good as eg Switzerland, Norway, Germany.
It is indeed right to raise these issues but really I think they are reflective of the general state of the health care and education system.

It's interesting that people are putting the MenB and chickenpox vaccine as ones that are more important than Covid. The impression being given that those illnesses are far more commonly fatal to children.

As above MenB, around 750 people a year get it and around 50 die.

Chickenpox, on average there has been around 20 deaths from chickenpox a year, 80% are adults and most deaths are among immunocompromised people.

Should those vaccines currently be put as more important than covid vaccine, if we go by number of deaths?

Once again, we still have masks in Scotland, including all day every day in secondary schools, and it’s making not a whit of difference.

@WouldBeGood

Once again, we still have masks in Scotland, including all day every day in secondary schools, and it’s making not a whit of difference.

Could be worse without masks. Last term we had two teachers go down with Covid, on two separate occasions, with no apparent spread to any other teacher or pupil. I think the fact they were wearing masks helped.

It’s emerging that masks plus other measures alongside their use (I’m seeing more FFP3 on TV, interestingly) are proving helpful for airborne viruses:

twitter.com/drericding/status/1456188127916306434?s=24

@WouldBeGood

Once again, we still have masks in Scotland, including all day every day in secondary schools, and it’s making not a whit of difference.

Ireland and Wales seem to be the same.

Good to see that cases have been dropping in children since before half term though. Hopefully that will continue. If the 75% estimate is correct then it most likely will. Didn’t recent King’s college data suggest that we reached the peak in mid October?

@MargaretThursday the reason I mention Men B is because it isn't just about deaths though is it, meningitis can cause significant, severe and long term chronic illness. I read page after page arguing for covid vax for children because of long covid yet few people see the similarities with meningitis which already has a proven vaccine programme that lots of children have missed out on.

I personally know more families who have had babies and young children infected with meningitis leaving long term issues -hearing loss, speech and language delays, seizures, learning disabilities. The difference I think is that meningitis has been normalised in some ways.

Personally I think if the cost / benefit analysis is such a national vax programme is not recommended on the NHS the vaccinations should be available privately to give choice.

@beentoldcomputersaysno

I find it strange that as a country we are not fighting harder for things like ventilation in schools, or why some adults won't help kids a tiny bit with community transmission by wearing masks on transport/in shops, why there are still full school assemblies, why we act as though long covid, organ damage etc won't affect kids, why we ignore studies showing how natural infection ages the immune system. Covid is not more or less inevitable for school communities in other countries. It is here. It is very wrong.

I agree. I’ve been writing to my MP about this. She’s terrible. A conservative who says “they’re monitoring”. It will be too late by the time they finish monitoring.

Most children don't end up in hospital with covid, but I wonder what the numbers are like in terms of other ways in which kids with covid might be a strain on the health service. For example, there must be loads of parents calling 111 for advice, kids getting their chest listened to, antibiotics for secondary infections, getting checked over at A&E but discharged. It all uses resources even if it's not a hospital admission or a death.

From the start till 28th October 100 children died in the UK of covid and within 28days of infections. since 28th October 8 more have died.

as a % of UK child population this may be a tiny number but as individuals this is a tragedy. the image i've attached to put into context we didn't dismiss these also avoidable deaths as nothing or minimise the impact.