The latest findings of the world’s biggest study into ‘Long Covid’ in children and young people (CYP) – the CLoCk study from University College London – have been published as a pre-print.
Surveying 11 to 17 year-olds who tested positive for COVID-19 in England between September and March, the researchers found that the condition is not common in children and young people. This is in line with other studies into Long Covid.
As with earlier studies, symptoms were prevalent in those who tested negative as well as those who tested positive, complicating the picture of the condition which the authors acknowledge lacks clear definition.
Further confusion was sown by the fact that reported symptoms increased rather than decreased after three months, leaving the authors puzzling over the explanation.
Three months after the SARS-CoV-2 test, the presence of physical symptoms was higher than at the time of testing. This finding emphasises the importance of having a comparison group to objectively interpret the findings and derive prevalence estimates. Although 64.6% of test-positives reported no symptoms at time of testing (compared to 91.7% of test-negatives), they did not continue to remain asymptomatic, with only 33.5% of test-positives (and 46.7% of test-negatives) reporting no symptoms at three months. This finding warrants further exploration and could be due to self-selection into the study because they were experiencing on-going symptoms, recall bias, external factors relating to the pandemic such as returning to school and exposure to other sources of infection, and the actual trajectory of the illness, although this wouldn’t explain the high prevalence among test-negative CYP.
In terms of physical symptoms – tiredness, headaches, shortness of breath, loss of smell, and so on – the researchers found there was a somewhat elevated prevalence of these among the test-positive compared to the test-negative, though both had increased over the three month period.
Three months after the SARS-CoV-2 test, the presence of physical symptoms was higher than at baseline in both groups; 66.5% of test-positives and 53.4% of test-negatives had any symptoms whilst 30.3% of test-positives and 16.2% of test-negatives had 3+ symptoms. The symptom profile did not vary by age: for both 11-15 year-olds and 16-17 year-olds the most common symptoms among test-positives were tiredness, headache and shortness of breath and, among test-negatives, tiredness, headache and the unspecified category of “other”. Again, the prevalence of tiredness and headache was consistently higher in the test positives, 39.0% and 23.2% versus 24.4% and 14.2% in negatives, respectively. Prevalence was higher for 16-17 year-olds; for example, 46.4% of test-positives reported being tired compared to 29.6% of test-negatives.
The 14% difference reported here between the 30% of test-positives and the 16% of test-negatives who had three or more symptoms at three months is likely to be the study’s most accurate estimate of the prevalence of Long Covid in the sample population.
However, as the BBC’s Nick Triggle notes, the low response rate and selection bias towards the unwell in the survey may mean the true prevalence of Long Covid is more like 2%.
Only 13% of those asked to respond to the survey did so.
Researchers believe those who are suffering ongoing symptoms would be more likely to complete the survey than those who are not.
If all those with long Covid were to do so among those who did so, that would suggest their actual number was just 4,000 or fewer than 2%.
This lower figure is almost identical to the estimate of 2.3% from a study based on the ZOE Covid Symptom Study app published in Nature in March.
In terms of mental health, the study found “no difference in the distribution of mental health scores… and well-being… between test positives and negatives, overall or in either age-group”. Similarly, fatigue “showed no substantial differences between positives… and negatives”.
Despite these findings suggesting a very limited prevalence of Long Covid in children and young people, Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, the lead author of the study, told BBC Radio 4 that “we can’t trivialise this”. He said his study “provides some data” that allows policymakers “to make judgements and policy decisions” on issues such as school safety or the vaccination of children “on hard evidence, rather than speculation”.
While he acknowledged there was “no difference” in mental health between those who contracted Covid and those who didn’t, he added there was also “no difference” with young people surveyed over the last ten years. It seems young people’s mental health is “bearing up well” in the pandemic, he says.
This is a quite incredible statement in a week when it was revealed that prescriptions of antidepressants to children hit record highs in 2020, with 231,791 prescriptions issued to children aged between five and 16. In America, a new CDC report found that emergency hospital attendances for attempted suicide for children aged 12-17 were up by 39% between February 21st and March 20th of 2021 compared to the same period in 2019. There were significant differences by sex, and the most extreme increase was in females in the winter of 2021, which was up 51% on winter 2019. It is disappointing that Professor Stephenson would spin his study’s results to exaggerate the impact of Long Covid – with a nod to the vaccine rollout – and trivialise the impact of lockdowns and restrictions on the mental health of children and young people.
One of the most curious statistics in the study was of a 3.5-fold increase in young people dying in the test-negative group compared to the test-positive group. Those who died were excluded from the study, but in setting out their exclusions the researchers tell us there were six test-positive individuals who died out of 102,402, and 37 test-negative individuals who died out of 147,561. This translates to a mortality rate of six per 100,000 in the test-positives and 21 per 100,000 in the test-negatives, which makes not catching Covid increase a young person’s risk of death by 250%! No explanation is offered for this strange statistic. It is presumably because the population testing negative is at higher risk of death (from all causes) than the population testing positive. Is this because young people at higher risk of death are subject to more routine testing? Other suggestions welcome.
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solves a problem to access those large fees – and another benefit, our lecturers will be able to promote democracy to China’s up and comi…. – LOL – maybe not
It is amazing how our oh-so-careful universties can adjust their principles when money is involved.
Keeping Blairs education industry going. When my son was looking at going to uni I said no Mickey Mouse courses and no Micky Mouse Universities. (He studied Chemical Engineering at a Russell group uni).
Universities have become (more so) holding bays for the young, who self fund 3 years before going into the job market, to do a job they could of started at 16. (I was talking to somebody in the village and the grass was being cut. The person said it was his grandson cutting the grass and he had a Phd in Psychology).
there’s a growing industry in behaviour science
Indeed – we can be assured that those taking STEM courses will be free from undue influence, and deal only in a truth based on scientific method. That has been so obvius over the last 18 months. We need more versed in the critical thinking of a science and technology dominated culture.
The issue is less simple, and – as always ‘Follow the Money’ is the guide. Chinese students are BIG money, and offending the Chinese is not the road to wealth.
Why are we using our limited training capacity as an export product?
If we wish to train Chinese students, open branches in China.
But as our democratic rights are being swiftly eroded by our once Conservative government to bring about an enforced communist type regime, how useful those students will be over here to advertise the benefits of communism! What a clever ploy. The Imperial College will be delighted. I bet only the most zealous are permitted to come.
“communist type regime”
It’s just the natural (if unforseen by addicts) trajectory of the Tory addiction to capital accumulation at the expense of anything else, not the con of ‘communism’ used as a front for the same.
Some British private schools (which are increasingly abandoning the British middle class in favour of the more lucrative global elite) are indeed opening branches in China.
Let me get this straight. 2 years ago a virus escaped from China and arrived in several countries at a time corresponding to the arrival of Chinese students to universities across the world. Since then we have had universities stopping face to face tuition, because of this virus. Now we have those same universities bussing in students from that same country.
Yep…but God forbid you want a week on the Costas!
PUB’s Three Notice Process To Stop Schools Vaxxing Children
By popular and urgent demand, here lies PUB’s three notice process to deal with the clear and present threat that UK schools will be offering the experimental COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ to 12-17 year olds next month, following the JCVI’s recent u-turn on its 15/07/2021 assessment that the risk outweighed the benefits of vaxxing anybody under 18.
https://www.thebernician.net/pubs-three-notice-process-to-stop-schools-vaxxing-children/
Chinese students are welcome. Chinese politics can fuck off. The UK is not a fucking COMMUNIST country. And the politicians who are committing treason by importing Chinese Communist Party policy like lockdown and vaxpass and credit scores etc, well please fuck off to China and live your fucking dream there you dirty traitorous pieces of filth. These scumbags better pay for these crimes.
CCP and Tory Party = different guises in differing contexts for grabbing the boodle and the power. Simple.
Academia hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party. Bought and laid for.
Meanwhile, the CCP exploits the Chinese peoplemas slave labour and kills Christians.
How many of these ‘students’ are CCP operatives? What about stealing our IPR?
None of this matters, only the need for Vice Chancellors to top up their obscene salaries and promote their woke agendas.
It’s known as unregulated ‘global capitalism’ – favoured by both the Tories and Labour since 1980 and that ludicrous figure with the handbag.
And the university most closely linked with China is… yes, Imperial.
Hello Mr.Ferguson
How does Ferguson manage ordering from a chinese menu?
…I’ll have 200,000 Number 54,000’s please.
Are you sure?
Of course I am! My computer model says so.
Okay. Do you want wafers with that?
Course I don’t want f’ing wafers…… (copyright Monty Python)
Daughter of a friend of mine, in New Zealand, was a student recruitment officer and flew in and out of China, recruiting, on behalf of the Catholic school she worked for. She’s been NZ bound for a while now so not sure what is going to happen there.
A friendly reminder to British students: You’re forced to wear face masks etc because it is conjectured that it will help with attracting and maintaining a sizable number of these guys who are much more important than you because more money is (reportedly) to be made of that.
Aren’t Chinese people in the uk quite successful compared to other groups eg white working class boys and BME? Yet another means of infiltration and turning the indigenous population into second class citizens?
There were a lot of Chinese students at my university 20 years ago. I have absolutely no idea how they passed anything though as none of them could speak a word of intelligible English. I don’t mean that to sound small-minded, I’m all for studying abroad but I can’t imagine doing it without a decent grasp of the language. I just kinda assumed that the Uni didn’t mind when they were paying so much. It was super annoying to have to attempt to work with any of them on anything that wasn’t in the universal language of maths though.
Well, lots of valuable products are made in China these days – including the students, with related cash flow for the universities. Not necessarily beneficial to our local people, though.
Get the CCP sleepers topped up
Fascinating. So universities are able to organise chartered flights for their Chinese students.. but large food organisations in the country cannot organise drivers to deliver food to Uk shops. Yes, this makes complete sense.
And the wealth of China comes from energy generated largely by coal with a sizable amount of nuclear and environmentally disruptive Hydro. It’s a funny old world and will be even funnier if the Taliban turn up at COP26. How will the XR supporting and woke universities square any of this?
When we are constantly under economic and security threats from the Chinese, we import this vast army of Chinese students with obvious non-west allegiance, just to earn a buck? Are we utterly barking mad?
Just another way the East is winning and we are losing. When it becomes all about money this happens.
World peace may be great, we’ll never know it. Why is it bad to recognise that we have enemies.
So they fly in Chinese students who then have to sit in the rooms remotely accessing courses? They could do that from China.
The treatment of students during the government’s pandemic shows that universities are not “centres of learning”. The insistence on mask wearing proves that.