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 dont know whether this is something to worry about or not. But I am a bit aghast at some posters on a parenting forum dismissing kids being hospitalised as so what, kids get hospitalised all the time.
My children are no longer tiny, but if they were hospitalised when under two years old I would have been very worried.

And I am surprised at those whose kids haven't been exposed to bugs. This was true during the first lockdown, but all the kids in my extended family have been back to normal at school and nurseries for a very long time now.
Are some people still trying to isolate their kids?

It's amazing to me how people deny reality, and leap on news like 'omicron is mild in healthy young men' as good news and then dismiss this sort of news.

It will take a while for us to know either way if Omicron is more or less severe than delta, or roughly the same. We just don't know yet. Just as it took a while to establish that Delta had a 30-50% higher risk of hospitalisation than Alpha. (and yes, we haven't seen as many hospitalisations with Delta and that's because of the vaccines - look at what happened in India in a largely unvaccinated population).

In the meantime, being precautionary keeps your options open, not being precautionary and just sticking your head in the sand means that you lose options.

But as for knowing for sure - we're going to have to wait. Probably for a couple of months. I think being precautionary for couple of months is worth it.

My one caveat would be to compare and contrast the age demographic for South Africa. It is almost a direct inverse of ours. You could argue therefore that percentages are not a cause for concern when there are so few over 50's, compared to 0-15's.

White kids in Europe… yeah sure not at all racist.

@julieca

And I am surprised at those whose kids haven't been exposed to bugs. This was true during the first lockdown, but all the kids in my extended family have been back to normal at school and nurseries for a very long time now. Are some people still trying to isolate their kids?

Yes, kids in school are having exactly the same number of bugs as normal if my kids are anything to go by.

But it's not quite the same as normal because access to timely healthcare isn't the same.

When my first child was hospitalised as a little one she didn't have to wait in the ambulance and got care as soon as she needed it. That's simply not guaranteed at the moment.

My little one had a horrid (non-covid) bug recently and I couldn't get through to 111 at all - just endlessly on hold and never got through. My options were take her to A&E (and no doubt wait for ages) or hope for the best at home. No 111, no out of hours doctor. It was pretty frightening.

More hysteria. Wait to have the facts. Panic does not help anyway.

It's amazing to me how people deny reality, and leap on news like 'omicron is mild in healthy young men' as good news and then dismiss this sort of news

I am putting this down to a defense mechanism, and also the personal attacks on me I am just going to ignore, as I understand it is not the best news, and we have all had enough and thought we were out of this.

I don't think they would be reporting something like this lightly. That is my view, I think there is a problem and I hope it is a anomaly/ SA being extra careful and won't replicate elsewhere else.

I am also wondering why people keep using the words 'no need to panic'. No one is panicking on here. We are discussing the article and what we think about it. No stress.

I have a child who is under two and they have had Covid (fine now) and I am still not terrified by this new variant. A lot of people in SA have had this new variant and the symptoms have been very mild. People have been feeling tired, but the first few cases are all back at work etc.

My point is, I’m not panicking yet and I don’t think you should be either. Wear your mask, keep your distance, wash your hands etc, but don’t get sucked in too much by the media whipping up a frenzy, wait to see how it plays out.

And people ARE panicking and WILL panic. Maybe you aren’t, great, but others will be. And the more of these sorts of articles we see, the worse those people will feel.

Also children are experiencing worse bugs Regis year. One doctor has said the wheezing virus which normally goes around is a lot worse. Hand, foot and mouth is excessive this year too. A bit of mixing isn’t always a bad thing!

classic We can't avoid information because we panic, we need to assess the information, look at our risks and set up and think about wha we need to change (if anything) and wait for more data. The children seem to be getting better, so there is no need to panic.

Meh, I'm going to wait and see. I'm not going to change my behaviour until we know a lot more.

There are lots of articles about this, not just the one I have added BTW

No, there is pretty much one article that has been repeated across several sites. All short on detail. Because they don’t know the data yet.

I would like to have all the information - that is my preference. I imagine the scientists here would prefer to have more data before we are informed, possibly, but in the world of global news keeping a lid on information is pointless.

Not having the information isn’t the same as covering things up. This variant is a couple of weeks old, if that.

Health-care providers and officials said they are making preparations to deal with what is effectively a fourth wave of the pandemic in the country — including by ensuring there are enough pediatric hospital beds to deal with the possible increase in young children’s hospital admissions.

The US already had an issue where more children were being hospitalised during Delta. It was all over the news a few months back. Surprised your SIL didn’t send you links about that. But the reasons for it are complex and are little to do with how dangerous variants are to children.

They have also been vaccinating children for months. The only reason they have only just started vaccinating 5-12 year olds is because Pfizer only approved the vaccine for that age group a few weeks ago. They didn’t start doing it in response to this variant.

It’s important to avoid drawing conclusions where there aren’t any, and to understand that a lack of information is always going to be the case with a new virus or variant. Filling that void with speculation and conspiracy helps no-one.

Well, obviously it's worrying when small children are admitted to hospital. My older son was very seriously ill a couple of weeks after birth with an infection and that was a scary few weeks. My younger son was in hospital with RSV at 9 weeks and then repeatedly hospitalised or taken to A&E with viral wheeze until he was about 3. I don't think it's proportionate to cancel your trip to Sweden as your children are no more likely to get it there than here.

@Fairylights25 but you have started a thread linking an article and suggesting others, where no solid evidence exist. You are also thinking of cancelling your travels. That is panicking.
You may not have anxiety and MH issues but many others do. Yes its their responsibility to control what they read but adding to the crap ton of stuff posted about this all over the media, isn't very helpful.
Its also very presumptions of you blaming people's defence mechanisms on this. Wasn't that the reason you posted on here? What did you expect? A conversation with viral specialists on here? No, you're sewing seeds of panic by adding to this. You surely weren't expecting a spew of medical knowledge written out in responses. Of course parents are worried for many many different reasons. Stop being so high and mighty.

bored I know you probably think you are being helpful but you aren't. The children hospitalised in the US all had serious reasons for being there, as you would know given you are so informed about the issue. This is different because it is affecting the under 2s, not children with underlying health issues.

I agree we shouldn't draw conclusions, and I can't see anyone doing that on here anyway. We will know more about this in the coming weeks.

Cancelling my travel plans is a sensible considered decision. People do not need to read threads if they suffer from anxiety. I feel the cancel culture has gone too far when we can't even discuss a newspaper article for fear of someone feeling stressed about the content. I am not going to be part of that, free speech is a thing meadow

@Fairylights25

Cancelling my travel plans is a sensible considered decision. People do not need to read threads if they suffer from anxiety. I feel the cancel culture has gone too far when we can't even discuss a newspaper article for fear of someone feeling stressed about the content. I am not going to be part of that, free speech is a thing meadow

No one is trying to ‘cancel’ you

Good! ThePoisonousMushroom Well they will have to wait, as I am going to work now Please post updates if you can on here.

South Africa unfortunately has lots children living with hiv, something thankfully that is very rare here - this is a known risk factor for covid.

I've seen reports that it's milder too.

Best thing to do are get vaccinated/boosted as eligible, wash your hands and use a mask in crowded places keeping your distance if possible. Then relax a bit, panicking helps nobody - eminent scientists are saying that whilst we need to look carefully at the implications there is no signs that it is worse or that the vaccine doesn't prevent severe disease

I do feel a bit cancelled to be fair, some people have been pretty savage on here but I will cope, tough old boot that I am. Have a good day folks.

There's a difference between panicking and assimilating all the available data (including establishing the robustness of that data) so you can make an informed risk assessment.

As far as I can see OP was trying to do the latter.

Also, the opposite of 'panicking' is sticking your head in the sand going 'la la la' about real risks.

Just pretending things don't exist doesn't end well - we've seen it so many times in both directions (not locking down soon enough, sending schools back for a day to infect everyone during the Alpha peak, not heeding warnings about very rare AZ side effects sooner). The initial data on this from SA are concerning but don't prove anything and they should gather more data.

If you don't want to read about it and be informed, don't go on a discussion forum. It's everyone's responsibility to do what's best for them - it's gaslighting bullshit to say that OP is responsible for everyone else's mental health.

Just turn your computer off if you don't want to read it. OP can post any news articles she wants on here as long as she doesn't break talk guidelines and this doesn't.

The report about more children being hospitalised and the reports about it being 'milder' are of the same validity (i.e. not that great either way). We'll have to wait and see on both.

However if you choose to believe one unsubstantiated report over another and do nothing, that will mean you may lose the opportunity to influence the outcome later on.

The reports about it being 'milder' are taking from a misquote of a doctor who then went on to say that even though her healthy male patients were only affected mildly, one child she treated had a 'racing pulse' and she was concerned about the impact on older people.