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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Children feeling tired and depressed is no justification for jabbing kids or depriving them of their education.
I daresay these symptoms are also exacerbated by poor sleep routines, too much screen time, too little exercise and too little fresh air.
Spot on
Some people out there will refer to this garbage as “science” because it has been published in a scientific journal and will eventually be peer reviewed.
Gathering data, doing some statistical analysis on it and drawing some conclusions is not science.
Here is a simple test of what constitutes scientific knowledge:
Can an accurate prediction be made about the future based on this knowledge?
In the case of this paper, your ability to predict anything about the future is exactly zero. The author has no ability to tell you anything about what is going to happen going forward based on his rubbish little analysis. Nothing.
If you can’t make accurate predictions based on your work, you’re not a scientist. You’re a bullshitter.
While your sentiments I fully support perhaps the biggest casualty of the pandemic is understanding of what is ‘the scientific method. It cannot determine fact but only indicate the likelihood of an event occurring by chance. Sadly scientists and their labs are funding relate
d to prestige related to impact factor of publications. It is not in their interest for the crisis to end.
Tiredness? Headache? Shortness of breath?
Take your bloody face nappy off.
Tiredness and loss of smell is hardly disabling, unlike myocarditis.
UCL?
up there with Imperial College – utterly corrupt. Not worth the paper they put it on.
Arsewipes.
If the ‘test positives’ were told they had tested positive and the ‘test negatives’ told they had tested negative then the psychological ‘confirmation bias’ effects alone would be enough to explain the differences in reported symptoms between the two groups, I’m calling bollocks on ‘Long Covid’.
It’s called nocebo effect, the exact opposite of placebo effect.
Some 18 months after I had a very nasty bout of covid the ‘ground glass’ lesion on my right lung remains, along with a persistant cough. I tested positive for covid antibodies shortly before Boris banned the tests, and will continue to refuse the jab because I know, whatever they say, that I have naturally-acquired T-cell immunity and would be a fool – and probably become extremely ill or perhaps even die – if I had the vaccine.
But I assume that what I have is Long Covid – what else could it be? I have scans every few months and nothing changes.
I’ll second your call
Morning, rational extremists.
Credit where it’s due, Nick Triggle has been doing a bang up job of giving measured, rational, and yes, even sceptical reporting on the plandemic.
It’s genuinely astonishing that he hasn’t been sacked, sidelined or re-assigned yet.
I always find his pieces balanced and good to read. Credit to him.
virtually all others make me want to vomit.
I expect the BBC bosses will be actively “assessing” his performance to ensure he doesn’t stray too far from the narrative for their comfort.
My Best Friend Killed by the Jab – Another True Horror Story of the Lethal Injection (bitchute.com)
I have emailed the link to my MP, and suggested that if he doesn’t have time to watch it he gets one of his support staff to do so. It won’t make any difference I know but I need to feel I’m doing something.
That is an utterly horrific story. Those poor ladies.
Where I live, shingles was very common last winter.
Best wishes to the lady who narrated this story – if it is NOT genuine, her performance merits an Oscar.
God bless Sue.
“the most common symptoms among test-positives were tiredness, headache and shortness of breath…..”
The study doesnt include the prevalence in either group of mask wearing, which I would suggest the above symptoms are more likely to be caused by.
All, of course, also symptoms of anxiety.
Anxiety is the current (as of 2020) medical practioner’s coded term for I don’t fucking care about your symptoms! Go away !! (or else I’ll put you on blood pressure pills!). Correct usage of the term would be to describe a state of heightened mental awareness going together with a so-called fight-or-flight reaction (an entirely physcial phenomenon) supposed to enable an individual to spot imminent dangers.
Problem: Such a reaction can be triggered by pretty much anything and anxiety is not the problematic part of it. That would be heightened adrenaline levels to the point where uncontrollable tremors occur all over the body. That’s treatable (as far as I know) but only for people doctors etc happen to like.
£$£$£$£$£$£$£$$£$£$£$£$£
This is a preview of the malarkeys we can expect once the ‘pandemic’ inquiries start.
The cool thing about having two separate governmental inquiries into the whole ‘carry on covid’ weird out is that each will keep the other honest.
One claims ‘lockdowns’ came too late…..the other will check the background data…and so on.
Make no mistake, the Scottish inquiry will go for the jugular of the Johnson government…..and the Johnson government’s inquiry will go for the jugular of the Scottish inquiry.
Interesting times for two governments that deserve each other…….
“Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, the lead author of the study, told BBC Radio 4 that “we can’t trivialise this”.”
We absolutely can. And we should.
Not doing so for such societally trivial junk is exactly what landed us in the whole covid panic farce in the first place.
Unless he faces up to the known medicines that can treat covid and long covid, he himself trivializes it.
We used to call it post viral syndrome
Exactly.
Now wishing to appear stupid but what were the actual numbers of people he ‘studied’
Note the ‘listen to with care’ markers : ‘Professor’ and ‘Sir’ – the double alert to pole-climbing and authority pleasing.
[Yes – even professorships aren’t what they were as they have blossomed out of control as reward mechanisms.]
So many flaws! Really crap science – with psychological factors related to unmoderated self-reporting staring you in the face as confounding variables. And that’s when you ignore the sampling questions!
“It is disappointing that Professor Stephenson would spin his study’s results to exaggerate the impact of Long Covid“
Disappointing, but hardly surprising. Remember the words of Paul Johnson about the nature of intellectuals and why they should “be kept well away from the levers of power”, and “they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice”:
“For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and nonconformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behavior. Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value.”
Stephenson is behaving according to type.
A knight with an -ology. Hasn’t he done enough?
Agendas for Grants
Remember his name. Updated information, resources and useful links: FIGHT. BACK. BETTER. https://www.LCAHub.org/
These are the symptoms of becoming hypochondriac after having been told a thousand times how dangerous the COVID-19 disease is. It would feel quite lame to admit not to have any symptoms after all, once infected with this terrible disease, Also, simply craving some attention and feeling deeply fucked by the rest of the society and lack of further perspective overall. As for headaches, staying indoors in front of the screen for prolonged periods of time are quite a reliable way to experience them.
Tiredness, headache and shortness of breath. Sounds to me like anxiety.
Adults have done this to children! Unconscionable.
Long covid… the malingerers wet dream…
May I suggest you use the term “malingerers”with utmost caution. This “term” is/has been used by unprofessional, unscrupulous, unethical and immoral medics – Neuropsychiatrists in my experience – to screw people in very vulnerable situations usually after a major health condition. I will say no more; if you knew what I know – from personal experience – you would never repeat what you have written.
Another useless overpaid , waste of space muppet and another example of why the honours system should be scrapped!!
These kind of surveys always attract responses from certain types of idiot. A vox pox but without contributions from the majority of sensible citizens who have better things to do with their time. How is this rubbish even counted as science? Long Covid my toenail.
But but long covid.
One of the worst excuses to continue the charade. When you have a new virus in general circulation it’s obvious that many will get some sort of post viral fatigue.
As a man and as a dad, a common cold can lay me low for a month… though I suspect the version that affects me is far worse….
Tiredness/fatigue ? Anaemia and low iron could be the cause of long Covid. Low iron = low oxygen = fatigue. Oxygen is transported throughout the body by adhering to iron molecules in the red blood cells. Let food be thy medicine …. Hippocrates ! Diet ?
B12 is not a routine blood test and has to be requested. Full iron status rarely tested. Nutrition not taught at Medical School and so other causes are highlighted. Main tests for ‘wellness’ are B12 – Folate – Ferritin – VitD – so it’s Back to Basics
This man is an attention seeker, jumping on the media bandwagon playing on the naivete of the moronic masses. They will lap this up.
Why are we giving any credence to ‘Long Covid’ at all? Almost any respiratory virus will occasionally linger in everyone, some longer than others, and depends on many factors. We’ve all experienced the Common Cold that simply won’t go away, it seems to hang around for weeks, even months in some cases.
Annie hits the nail on the head with the comment…
“Tiredness? Headache? Shortness of breath?
Take your bloody face nappy off.”
“Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, the lead author of the study, told BBC Radio 4 that “we can’t trivialise this”. Maybe not, but these people have no difficulty trivialising the figures that appear to show a direct link between vaccination and serious adverse events/deaths
Received this message from a close family member hiking in Scotland on Tuesday.
What are the odds the guy described had been single or double jabbed? I’d say much higher than not or indeed of having a ‘spontaneous death’ at his age. What’s the betting that if it gets reported at all, it’ll be put down to a man dies after a short illness?
The symptoms sound awfully familiar to me.
I needed to share it!
“We almost summited a mountain. The cobbler. Just as we turned the last corner we found a man screaming, laying face down and not moving. There was a very young couple there not knowing what to do and a Scottish guy. XXXX held the dogs and I went over because they asked if anyone was first aid trained. The young couple phoned mountain rescue. The man was barely conscious but writhing in pain. I tried speaking to him found out his name was XXXX. I tried finding any injuries, seeing if he was diabetic epileptic, anything. He could barely talk. He was so clammy and screaming, clutching his chest. I knew he was having a bad heart attack. I held his hand and tried to keep him as calm as possible, we tried to move him and make him more comfortable. He literally looked into my eyes and took his last breaths. It was horrible. I have never seen anything like it. Then we had to try and move him to flat ground to do CPR. XXXX gave him CPR in between rescue breaths, the guy just kept vomiting everywhere as we tried to clear his airway it was horrible. XXXX and the Scottish guy did CPR for about an hour until a helicopter arrived. They carried on for another half an hour, injecting him with all sorts. It didn’t work. He died. He only looked about late 30s. He was on his own, had no one with him. Just a little rucksack, brand new coat with tags still in, and a little co-op bag inside his rucksack with some apples and sandwiches in. I can’t believe it.”
https://www.facebook.com/116932798502569/posts/1702682199927613/?sfnsn=scwspwa
Tragic, and sadly not something your family member is likely to ever forget.
If it was as a result of a “vaccine” jab, then it’s frankly criminal that it happened.
Perhaps Professor Sir Terence Stephenson should look at the trials and applications of Ivermectin that have already shown that it can effectively treat ‘long covid’ (have you ever heard of ‘long flu’?). He (& everyone) should listen to this interview with ICU & lung specialist physician Dr Pierre Kory: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7uVXKgE6eLJKMXkETwcw0D?si=mWC9M17CRFakqbyLetDCIw&nd=1 (it’s nearly 3 hours, but worth every minute)
From the UCL website at:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/child-health/people/stephenson-terence
He is a member of the (my emboldening) –
“Population, Policy & Practice Dept UCL GOS Institute of Child Health”
From his Research Summary. –
What a busy fellow he seems to be – surprising he finds the time to eat and take a……..