Omicron is affecting children in South Africa

[Fairylights25]

I am not sure how the SA doctor can be so relaxed about Omicron variant when we see the stats for children in hospital just coming out:

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-29/young-kids-make-up-10-of-hospital-cases-in-omicron-epicenter

Not wishing to worry anyone, but why don't we know about this? No sign of this headline anywhere that I can see this morning? Or maybe there has been a thread already I have missed. I accept the doctors will be very careful with small children, but the admission rate does seem high to me,

I feel quite misled in some ways, because it has been referred to as 'young people' here in the UK and I think downplayed, even if the children are admitted as precautionary measure it highlights the need for medical intervention no matter how small, that was not needed before. So even if we consider that the children are bouncing on the beds a few hours later, the fact they are in hospital at all is meaningful, at least to me.

Japan and Israel have slammed their borders shut repeatedly at the first hunt of anything at all, throughout the pandemic.

No-one knows a special secret here. They are still ascertaining how mild or otherwise this variant is and how much if any vaccine escape there might be.

@Fairylights25

Maybe this means we will all need to get the children vaccinated very quickly?

It does explain why some countries are closing borders though, and why everyone is so worried.

If that's the case, the government will organise it and inform us.

How do you know everyone is so worried? If people chose to worry about every headline or news articles they'd be no time for any joy and perspective.

@Fairylights25 I am not a Dr but if the pandemic has proven anything, it's that media has a firm grip on people's perception.
What I do know, and am much more worried about, is the fact children are not being exposed to normal childhood sickness. My 3 year old nephew is very very poorly with a virus. Not COVID. Their Dr has made it clear that they are seeing a big increase in children being extremely poorly from things that they would be fighting off easily in the past.
I myself have been really ill the last two weeks and my Dr said the same applies to the general public. Anxiety around transmissions and obsession with germ control is getting to the point where people's immune systems are so weak, they are seeing more and more people hospitalised with colds.

I think it's right to be concerned, but not right to panic, we really don't know anything about this variant.

Your post is likely to cause unnecessary panic among anxious parents. That's not great, when no one has any answers. What we can do now is to be vigilant and take any precautions, and keep ourselves and our children healthy as possible.

Scientists, drs, gov all over the world is working to find out about this valiant. We just need to be patient and wait.

I can assure you my SIL and her friends etc are concerned about this, as will all parents reading the news.
I won't bother posting all the links, but the news is pretty mainstream now so I hope it will be addressed by our government here, because we need to know whether this is likely to happen here or whether it is something we don't need to worry about.

I wouldn't imagine you are any more likely to catch it in Sweden than you are here, so I would still continue with the travel plans if it were me. If you were planning to go to SA it would be a different story.

@Fairylights25

I am not sure how the SA doctor can be so relaxed about Omicron variant when we see the stats for children in hospital just coming out:

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-29/young-kids-make-up-10-of-hospital-cases-in-omicron-epicenter

Not wishing to worry anyone, but why don't we know about this? No sign of this headline anywhere that I can see this morning? Or maybe there has been a thread already I have missed. I accept the doctors will be very careful with small children, but the admission rate does seem high to me,

There's a heavy caveat with this that it could be explained by parents being cautious due to the current situation and being more likely to take children to hospital - they said they observed the same trend in a previous wave.

Similar to when the AZ CVST link was annouced.

There isn't good evidence that omicron is affecting children more adversely than previous variants, it's a watch and wait situation unfortunately.

@Fairylights25

I suspect this is why there is a news conference this evening, and why the reaction seems quite an overreaction up to this point. To me anyway. I was really wondering what all the fuss is about until now.

BBC said this morning that the news conference is about the booster rollout.

rain It may well cause anxiety amongst parents, but they are bound to read it somewhere, so what difference will it make whether it is now or in a few days time or less?

You are supposing, incorrectly, that this post is here for sensational reasons, when actually many of us are having to make very big decisions about Christmas and travel plans that involve our children and being informed about potential issues is not some kind of sin.

It is not my job in life to stop parents feeling stressed, they don't need o read the thread if that is the case. The point of a forum is to discuss information, discard it at will, but for many of us we would rather know!

I would add I didn't think the Netherlands would become a hot spot either but it did, I don't think anywhere is safe especially including Sweden probably. I have family that live there, and I have promised to go but I am too worried now.

FFS, you lock up your children & ruin their Christmases yet again. We’ll be carrying on having a lovely month of celebrations.

Kids get ill. Kids sometimes need hospital. Life goes on.

Kittyninja Agree with poster above, many children in SA are living with malaria, HIV and TB in poverty with poor sanitation. It is not the same as clean, healthy, white children dying in Europe and the US so it won’t affect you. HTH. And get a grip

Blimey, how much racism could you fit in a short paragraph? FYI There are also a lot of healthy black and white children in South Africa, sadly most likely to have the chance of experiencing first world healthcare and being admitted to hospital The rate of HIV is high but there is only one small area of malaria risk. Equally there are a lot of white and black children from deprived backgrounds in Europe with underlying health conditions who are especially vulnerable.

You may have had a point but I can’t see beyond the ignorant racist stereotypes in your comment.

Reported

@Emilyontmoor how was that comment racist? Why are you even bringing race into this? Its literally a fact that this is the case in SA and the comment was made because the data is taken from SA. Of course there is deprivation in areas of Europe. This exists everywhere but the OP is worried about travel to Sweden which whether you like or not, is much smaller, more developed and much more able to handle something like this. It is not a like for like comparison so the difficulties being experienced in SA are unlikely to be the same in Sweden.

It's scary.
My youngest is currently very ill with an unknown virus (testing negative). I am out of my mind with worry.

@Emilyontmoor Ok nevermind, the emphasis on clean white children wasn't necessary. There are masses amounts of white as well as black children living in dire poverty in SA and in Europe.

Did you read the article you linked?

In (almost) the words of Aled to Jackie Weaver, "Read it and understand it".

@Fairylights25

I suspect this is why there is a news conference this evening, and why the reaction seems quite an overreaction up to this point. To me anyway. I was really wondering what all the fuss is about until now.

The news conference is about the boosters.

This doesn’t say the children are in hosp with covid unless I am reading wrong, got to a paywall

And this evening's conference has been said to be about the booster rollout

Honestly OP little children are taken into hospital all the time for respiratory reasons. Croup, flu, chest infections. You're always advised to taken them in if you're worried - I don't suppose SA is much different.

We don't know anything much yet.

Op, why is your sil sending you this stuff when she must know you habe mental health issues such as anxiety or struggling with conspiracy theories?

The articles are all very clearly speculative with no real data behind them, and imagining there is “stuff they aren’t telling us” is very damaging to you

Ask her not to send you anything anymore are you’re struggling to cope at the moment,

@Lucyinthesky07 This is my point I raised above. A lot of drs are much more worried about children not being able to handle viruses due to all this sanitation. This scaremongery that leads to more isolation away from healthy virus and bacterial exposure (I am not talking about COVID) is leading to this. My nephew is also really really poorly. He's only 3 and has also tested negative.
Sending you lots of good thoughts, I'm sure you DC will recover soon.

I wish people would stop bloody scaremongering

lucy Really hope your little one gets better soon

bluntness Luckily for you, as it would be unkind in the extreme if it were not the case, I don't have anxiety or MH issues. SIL sent the link over because I have children (as does she) and we are very close, so we share stuff a lot. I am glad she did. I am sorry if you find the information disturbing, there are other threads you can read, try the Christmas section>>>>>

@Meadowbreeze

I agree with you. My DD2 (9) recently had a bad cold which she took much longer to shake off than she would have done pre pandemic. This isn’t good and helps demonstrate that hiding away from infection isn’t good for kids.

It isn’t good for their mental health, either; I can also see an anxiety in my DDs that wasn’t there pre pandemic.

I have Long Covid BTW, so I would never downplay the possible risk from the virus, but so far I haven’t heard anything that sounds more disturbing than what we heard about previous variants. (Apart from the fact that there’s the possibility that it may have some resistance to vaccines, but we don’t know that as yet, either.)