New Zealand and Australia are currently seeing a large number of children in hospital with respiratory illness, which doctors are blaming on the lockdowns for keeping them away from bugs. The Guardian has the story.
Wellington has 46 children currently hospitalised for respiratory illnesses including respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. A number are infants, and many are on oxygen. Other hospitals are also experiencing a rise in cases that are straining their resources – with some delaying surgeries or converting playrooms into clinical space.
RSV is a common respiratory illness. In adults, it generally only produces very mild symptoms – but it can make young children extremely ill, or even be fatal. The size and seriousness of New Zealand’s outbreak is likely being fed by what some paediatric doctors have called an “immunity debt” – where people don’t develop immunity to other viruses suppressed by Covid lockdowns, causing cases to explode down the line. …
The “immunity debt” phenomenon occurs because measures like lockdowns, hand-washing, social distancing and masks are not only effective at controlling COVID-19. They also suppress the spread of other illnesses that transmit in a similar way, including the flu, common cold, and lesser-known respiratory illnesses like RSA. In New Zealand, lockdowns last winter led to a 99.9% reduction in flu cases and a 98% reduction in RSV – and near-eliminated the spike of excess deaths New Zealand usually experiences during winter.
Keeping children away from bugs means they don’t develop immunity and results in an “immunity debt” that must be paid sooner or later, a group of doctors explains.
“This positive collateral effect in the short term is welcome, as it prevents additional overload of the healthcare system,” a collective of French doctors wrote in a May 2021 study of immunity debt. But in the long term, it can create problems of its own: if bacterial and viral infections aren’t circulating among children, they don’t develop immunity, which leads to larger outbreaks down the line.
“The lack of immune stimulation… induced an “immunity debt” which could have negative consequences when the pandemic is under control and [public health interventions] are lifted,” the doctors wrote. “The longer these periods of ‘viral or bacterial low-exposure’ are, the greater the likelihood of future epidemics.”
New Zealand has reported nearly 1,000 RSV cases in the past five weeks, according to the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. The usual average is 1,743 over the full 29-week winter season. Australia is also experiencing a surge, with overcrowded Victoria hospitals also hit by unusually high rates of RSV.
Sceptics such as Professor Sunetra Gupta have been warning of this problem for a while, pointing out that children’s immune systems develop through exposure to a wide range of pathogens and that lockdowns hamper this.
While the Guardian correctly points out that New Zealand had a very mild winter after its initial lockdown and closing its borders, what it omits to mention is that its summer was pretty dreadful. Indeed, its hospitals had the worst January and February on record. Excess deaths in the country have been running above average since late spring (November), and Australia has seen similar (see below). Hiding from Covid is not doing much to suppress the mortality rate, it seems.
Despite the Guardian’s claim that lockdowns control COVID-19, Sydney is currently demonstrating the opposite, as reported infections continue to spike despite two weeks of residents being ordered to stay at home.
Lockdowns don’t control COVID-19, for reasons I have explored previously, such as that it spreads through the air and many people are still going to out to work. However, lockdowns can make an impact on other infectious diseases. Here’s a graph HART’s Dr Clare Craig made showing gastroenteritis emergency hospital attendances superimposed on Google mobility data. The match is remarkable and shows how a disease that is strongly affected by social distancing etc. should look.
Here’s the equivalent graph for COVID-19 emergency attendances. The lack of correlation – and the contrast with gastroenteritis – is striking.
So it is certainly possible that while lockdown has not spared children exposure to COVID-19, it has spared them exposure to other bugs, and they are paying the price now with their weakened immune systems.
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So why is the Lockdown Sceptics site so in favour of Lockdownism, in the way it supports the coercive mass vaccination programme? If you aren’t in favour of Lockdownism. Including the whole-population mass vaccination programme, then coime out an say it!
Vaccination mania is not the same as lockdown mania – even if thy are part of the same overall narrative.
Correct. We have to avoid conflating the two. That sort of blurring and confusion is employed by the government, not us.
Rather we should stand shoulder to shoulder with people who are vaccinated and now want to be liberated as they were promised.
Well my comment was a bit garbled…
It is the government that have conflated the two by stating that the way to end lockdowns is through vaccination.
However, probably wasn’t the time or thread to start that discussion.
OKUK you need to be very clear what your putting forward -I suspect most people would say that if you think no one should be vaccinated that you’re just as big a loon as those who still claim lockdown works
Please don’t tarnish this site this way -unless that’s your agenda Matt
So now lockdowns, masks, hand washing and social distancing work? Weren’t we supposed to be arguing that they didn’t hence our skepticism?
They work in correlation to how strict they are. If we weld your front door shut you’d struggle to spread anything, or eat, or work or keep your immune system functioning.
They also work to destroy everything else, mental health, relationships, education, physical health, domestic abuse, stress, isolation, child abuse, etc and only really delay any spread storing up a whole host of problems for later.
On balance they don’t ‘work’ they destroy.
Suppressing pathogens also comes at a massive price in terms of diminishing the endemic equilibrium of the herd… exactly as Sunetra Gupta said in spring 2020.
… which was obvious to any un-lobotomized being.
Sars 2 is not passed through touch. The “science” has known that since last May.
As stated in the article, lockdowns are largely ineffective against covid, which is a airborne. But they do affect other viral and bacterial transmission.
It doesn’t work for airborne respiratory viruses (like corona19).
We live in a world of pathogens (that spread in various ways) and keep interacting with them all the time. Regardless of lockdown, if someone puts their child in isolation, and obsessive hygiene sterile environment, then that child will have problems later with underdeveloped immune system.
As far as I know using too much antibiotics for mild bacterial infection is not a good idea since these antibiotics will then also kill a good number of normal (not disease making) bacteria that live in human body and is part of its ecosystem (for example, some bacteria help us digest food).
OK, just read the article in detail and that RSV is a respiratory virus. According to CDC transmission happens by air but also by surfaces and direct contact like kissing. Also according to CDC, corona19 is spread solo via air, not surfaces. So this might explain some difference in the way lockdowns worked differently for RSV and c19.
But I’m not sure that what happened here is a case of lockdown preventing RSV so children couldn’t build immunity to it gradually, and now they are experiencing a surge due to lack of immunity. It might be due to measures such as masking (as someone suggested) or some other causal mechanism. Or it might be a coincidence.
Well, my above comment still stands.
The point is we do live in a world of pathogens, many of which live in our bodies and are part of the human ecosystem. If some of them grow too much in number and disturb the balance then our immune system kicks in to keep them in check. Some of these live in different parts of the body and if introduced in larger numbers in other parts, it would cause some problems temporarily.
Some don’t live in us naturally but are all around us but immune system keeps us safe.
This obsessive hand washing, sanitizing and mask wearing (masks are breathing ground for bacteria), they would disturb the ecosystem in us and around us, and especially for children who need to train their immune system.
Totally agree Milo. State sponsored germophobia is harming the health of everyone.
Covid, like measles, appears to be, overwhelmingly, spread by aerosols so lockdown measures (unless they involve shutting off an entire country to the outside world) and surgical masks, leave alone cheetah print, yummy mummy masks, don’t stop it; however, lockdowns, hand washing and masks do stop other respiratory diseases that are spread by droplets and surface transmission. But stopping any pathogen comes at a massive immunological price as NZ and Australia are discovering…
General excellent response but have fallen into the mask myth. Masks do not stop aerosol spread as worn by the general public. When you wrote your piece where was your mask? Most of us rush around to find a bit of cloth to put over our face to comply then stuff it in a bag or pocket or leave it on a table. It is vital that this myth of the magic mask to stop Covid19 is halted – it is not a nil cost solution
I agree entirely. Masks, as worn by the general public, do not stop a pathogen spread by aerosols, although they might stop a pathogen spread by droplets and surface transmission.
Masks worn by anyone don’t stop a pathogen spread. there’s a reason virologists work in full hazmat suits with a separate oxygen supply.
Masks are also germ farms, so much of this could equally be driven by masks directly. The excess deaths shown here for NZ and Aus, don’t seem to correlate to a spread in childhood respiratory illness.
Something has stunk since the beginning with NZ in particular, being held up as the worlds miracle in leadership. Their excess deaths as a percentage are over that of Swedens..why?
because lockdowns etc. don’t work?
I seem to remember a story about a previous health scare – cough into a hankie and then throw it away being the advice. What good does it do if people cough into a mask, and leave it on, probably for rather longer than the recommended 30 minutes?
It seems the official line went from droplet transmission to aerosol transmission. You have to wonder why then the transmission rate from an infected person in a household to another person in the same household is only around 10%.
immune system working in same household probably .
That was in Guardian copy. The idea they work is part of Guardian theology. Will obviously doesn’t believe any of that, hence the gastroenteritis chart.
Weakened children’s immune systems leading to them being hospitalised? That’s not very nice, is it? Were the children consulted on this I wonder? Were they? To adapt a phrase – no human rights abuses without representation. Time for a tea party?
Clare Craig also signalled a while back an increase in England of children with respiratory viruses in A&E – not from Covid.
Attributing a rise in a disease such as RSV to any cause is difficult at best. It may, for example, be linked to excessive mask use more than any other factor.
“Half of the masks were contaminated with one or more strains of pneumonia-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with one or more strains of meningitis-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens. In addition, less dangerous pathogens were identified, including pathogens that can cause fever, ulcers, acne, yeast infections, strep throat, periodontal disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and more.”
https://alachuachronicle.com/dangerous-pathogens-found-on-local-residents-face-masks/
I agree. Over use of masks should be a consideration here.
Use of masks should be abandoned. These are dangerous and contributing to deteriorating population health.
I wonder why….?
Hmm, strange that isn’t it?
‘
Overuse of masks should be a consideration here.’Fixed it for you.
Antipodean press and doctors talking the kind of common sense that should have been exposed from the beginning viz the knock on effects of masking and locking down the kids (and everyone else). Go Antipodes!
Do you know what – RSV is already an issue in the UK. It kills around 80 babies a year. Presumably many of those are already poorly in NICU but you never heard about it, still don’t hear about. You already mitigate against it though – if you have a friend who has a newborn and you have a cold then you wait until it’s passed before cuddling them or even visiting at all. I presume a test for it exists but no ones made to take it. A vaccine also exists but is only intended for the vulnerable obviously.
It absolutely boils my blood that women in labour are subjected to Covid screening, masks, social distancing, self-isolation all served up with a massive dollop of guilt, for a virus that won’t actually affect their baby. How do people not question these ridiculous double standards?
You haven’t got it at all. We the people/patients exist to protect the NHS. Not to be treated by them.
And definitely not to put them at any kind of risk if we selfishly reproduce.
I don’t understand why lockdowns don’t work to restrict the spread of SARS-COV-2 but do, supposedly, restrict the spread of other respiratory viruses.
Perhaps SARS-COV-2 is unusual in that it’s spread almost entirely by aerosols, and other respiratory viruses are spread by surface contact. But to me this seems unlikely.
Maybe lockdowns do work, to some extent, for children – in that they need to mix with other children to get their quota of bugs.
Whatever’s going on here, it’s crying out for an explanation.
St Jacinta will know and I’m sure she’ll pass down some tablets of stone soon
I should add here that while children clearly are very efficient at spreading most respiratory viruses (don’t I know it …) they don’t tend to spread SARS-COV-2, and maybe that explains what’s going on here.
Anyone who has had children will know that when they get to about three, and start mixing with other kids at nursery, say, they bring home a runny nose for weeks at a time. I guess that cutting off that contact will have stopped that.
Friends of ours , who live in the uk, recently spent a night in hospital with a five year old daughter, due, apparently , to her lack of exposure to bugs over the last year or so.
Fundamentally, the immune system seems to be like the rest of our bodies – it needs to be exercised occasionally to work properly.
I wonder how many admissions to hospital now are due to a) the vaccine and b) lockdowns? I bet SAGE haven’t modelled that.
“I bet SAGE haven’t modelled that.”
Oh, rest assured I bet they bloody well have.
The TJN household is on about one cold a month – thanks little ones (3 and 5). We ensured they didn’t miss school and nursery, in part because we wanted to make sure they kept in contact with bugs.
You are surely entirely correct in saying that the immune system needs exercise – like every other function of the body.
What I was trying to say in my original post was that if children are major vectors for spreading viral infections, such as colds, then by locking them down perhaps that does help cut down on colds in the adult population. (Doesn’t mean it’s worth it of course, far from it.) Lockdown probably did effectively isolate a great number of children. Not so with adults – a great many have to interact just to keep society functioning.
If children don’t spread SARS-COV-2 (and we are pretty sure they don’t, to any appreciable degree), and if the major vectors of spread are among the adult population, then lockdown wouldn’t work with respect to covid.
There’s a possible mechanism here for why lockdowns didn’t stop the spread of SARS-COV-2, but did suppress normal colds and the like.
Either way, we need an explanation for the apparent suppression of many viral respiratory illnesses during lockdown, but not covid.
Viral interference
a dominant rhinovirus will kick the flu into touch
In a fight between Sars Cold-2 and a rhino cold my moneys on the rhino
Interesting thought, and a hypothesis worth testing. Conjecture, or do you know if there’s any evidence for this?
It also highlights that if you tinker with immune response in the young the consequences may be grave for children. Vaccination of children is an immortal human experiment which appears to be condoned by a large swathe of society band medical opinion. Children need freedom not vaccines!
‘immortal’? I think you mean ‘immoral’.
Night time curfew??? How glad I am that I live out in the wilds, away from all this garbage.
Its obvious, once you put people and children in perpetual fear, the immune system is weakened. Add masks and some dodgy gene therapy and its only a matter of time until the body is so weakened…it gives up. Death by stealth…
Who’d a thought?
It’s amazing the number of headlines now reported here which have always been obvious long term outcomes to anyone with a brain.
I guess we’ll just be seeing more and more of these and still nothing will change.
My daughter’s paediatrician warned, in April last year, that removing children from the protection/ challenge of the herd for the first time in the history of the species was likely to have unintended immunological consequences which we could not even imagine….
Yep, the unknown unknowns are so often the really dangerous things.
Lots of people here mentioning masks, so I’ll chime in with my two bits worth: apart from the debate as to whether they even work, they will have a massive cost in terms of adding more plastic nanoparticles to the environment, plus other dangerous materials, and we now have a study proving that children are breathing in six times the legal limit of CO2, with its attendant health issues. Common sense says at least youths should ditch them, but I’m guessing teacher’s unions will put the kabosh on that. So much for adults putting children first.
The role of mask wearing in the transmission of pathogens is dismissed in the media because of the one sided Masks are Good dogma. Although an unlikely major source of problems Masks are dirty and not helpful. This is a very reasonable study- Contamination by respiratory viruses on
outer surface of medical masks used by
hospital healthcare workers- showing virus on outer side of masks
Saint Jacinda must be very proud of her work look how she has helped the little children.
You know she is going to blame their disease as some form of mutant covid strain, its how she will protect herself just watch, as will every other politician including ours, after all if the kids immunity are shot, they can say its a covid strain that attacks children and get the injection into them. Watch if Boris Johnson doesn’t find a way to bring this into play with our children,
Doesn’t anyone remember the calls for anti-bacterial gels and handwash etc to be limited? Also about being overly clean in the home too hurts immune systems. This was pre-covid and we have now forgotten this.
This is now no longer about Covid and people are still following the ‘rules’ makes you wonder if covid was really anything to anyone.
Who’d have thought not exercising your immune system would lead to this
………………………WE DID
I think that there needs to be a constant basic ‘health warning’ when discussing the fine detail of this pathogen (and most others) :
This was never a public health emergency, or ‘unprecedented’ event. It was about a virus of ‘no high consequence’.
It is irrefutable that the ‘cures’ have amounted to a political event far more deadly to society than the disease.
This underlying fact should always be uppermost : in looking at the detail, we are largely considering the comparative effects of physical and medical poisoning – not cures or reasonable ‘medication’. In terms of real evidence – the votes are in – and growing.
That’s completely true.
However, it struck me recently, at the very beginning when Sars 2 moved into the Chinese population China and Fauci and his gain of function = gain of money research pals probably were really worried. They knew how much had been done to engineer the spike to make it potentially deadlier than Sars 1.
What we saw in Wuhan then was, at first, panic.
But immediately amongst the Fauci crew some long considered agendas were triggered, ie the chance to put the rna vaccines = tons of money for research and pharma, straight into production by passing safety checks.
When they realised Sars 2 wasn’t as deadly as it was engineered to be, they just lied and fudged figures.
Given that New Zealand spent less time in lockdown than the vast majority of countries (because its case rates were so low when it went into the first lockdown back in March 2020: thank southern hemisphere seasonality for that one!) shouldn’t the headline be corrected to
“New Zealand Hospitals Flooded with Children Due to Immune Systems Weakened by Closed Borders, Doctors Say”
?
An interesting point and I must admit that I have forgotten much of the internal NZ response. Looking into this ( https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-the-covid-19-alert-system/ ) I see that there was an earlyish lockdown for nearly two months. Otherwise it seems to have been a rather limited response. So, yes, it does seem like most of the consequences on children seem to be at least indirectly related to border closures, perhaps augmented by psychological factors and, also perhaps, over-reaction and coddling by parents.
Also, there have been assorted local restrictions such as Auckland local lockdowns ( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/28/new-zealands-auckland-in-lockdown-for-second-time-in-a-month ).
In the usual Mercator projection of world map,NZ, seems to be fairly close to Australia but that is notso in reality. There is another projection more accurate (can’t find that picture now) which shows much further away from Australia and seems to be two big islands more far away in the Pacific ocean. This have some relevance as isolated Pacific Islands, it would be easier to isolate in common with smaller pacific islands, which tried to the same thing during 1918 Spanish flu.Australia is much more close to other areas, hence more difficult to isolate.
Which is why all the wailing from British Zero Coviders about “we should have been like NZ” is BS: the Tasman Sea is over 1000 miles wide (you could fit most of the EU in there) unlike our own English Channel which is more like 25 miles wide.
The core of the response of Australia and NZ is to reduce the number of people coming in to as near zero as possible, which would be impossible for a country like the UK which is far easier to reach: who’s to say that Brits stranded abroad by an Aus/NZ style border policy wouldn’t end up turning to the same people smugglers already used by impoverished third-worlders seeking a better life here?
Kind of reminds me of what comedian George Carlin had to say about germs. If you live a completely sterile life then when germs come along you’re not going to be prepared – and nevermind about ordinary germs what about when a supervirus comes along? A true story he tells about immunization was when he was a kid, he and his friends would swim in the Hudson River that was filled with raw sewage in order to cool off in the summer – and at that time the big fear was Polio – thousands of kids died of Polio – but in his neighbourhood, no one ever got Polio because they swam in a dirty river containing raw sewage and all kinds of bugs and germs – but because their immune system would kill these bugs and germs it was prepared for the bigger viruses that came along … as he correctly points out … we’ve all got an immune system but it needs to practice!
As a toddler, I used to be found playing with the coal bucket, I used a lump of coal as a teething aid! It didn’t kill me as I’m still here 72 years later!
As my Grandad would say, you need to eat a ton of muck before you die!
The politicians have thrown out a hundred years of research on immunity and decided that “lockdowns should work”.
Perhaps because they did work in China?
Your claim “Nash’s not only help control the spread of covid” is just not supported by the evidence,in fact you should be well aware that the few RCTs show little or no benefit.
“Masks’ not bloody Nash’s
Tim Spector has a new video on YouTube where he is advocating the ongoing wearing of masks in certain circumstances.
Young children should be outside and playing in the dirty garden. They should be encouraged to eat using their hands. Washing hands with soap and water after going to the toilet or if their hands are visibly dirty. Bear in mind that people still contract infections in hospitals despite the hand washing and sanitising.
Everything that has enabled the human race to survive for millions of years is now being demolished, stay away from fresh air, keep face covered, stay away from other humans, they are trying to destroy us, the question is why?