We’ve known since the early weeks of the pandemic that age is the single best predictor of COVID-19 mortality, and that the risk of death for young people is vanishingly small.
A letter in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that zero Swedish children aged 1–16 died of COVID-19 up to the end of June 2020. And only 15 were admitted to the ICU, of whom four had a serious underlying health condition.
Of course, England is a much larger country than Sweden, and it’s been a whole other year since those Swedish data were collected. So how many English children have died of COVID-19?
In an unpublished study, Clare Smith and colleagues sought to identify the number of COVID-19 deaths among people aged under 18 between March 2020 and February 2021. They examined data from the National Child Mortality Database, which was linked to testing data from Public Health England and comorbidity data from national hospital admissions.
The structure of their dataset allowed the authors to distinguish deaths that were plausibly from COVID-19 and deaths that were merely with COVID-19.
3,105 under 18s died from all causes in England during the relevant time period. Sixty one of these involved people who had tested positive for the virus. However, the authors determined that only 25 were actually caused by COVID-19. And of the 25, 76% had a serious underlying health condition.
Given that an estimated 469,982 under-18s were infected with the virus up to February of 2021, the survival rate in this age-group (the inverse of the IFR) was 99.995%. What’s more, 99.2% of total deaths were caused by something other than COVID-19.
Smith and colleagues’ findings underline just how small a risk COVID-19 poses to young people, and hence – I would argue – why a focused protection strategy was preferable to blanket lockdowns.
As early as 10th April 2020, Martin Kulldorff – co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration – published an article on LinkedIn titled ‘COVID-19 Counter Measures Should be Age Specific’.
Based on the data that were then available, he estimated one would need to stop 3.5 million children being exposed in order to prevent the same number of deaths as one could prevent by shielding 1,000 people in their 70s. He argued, therefore, that Covid counter-measures must vary by age.
A similar argument was made by George Davey Smith and David Spiegelhalter in a piece for The BMJ last May. These authors called for “stratified shielding”, while noting that this would “require a shift away from the notion that we are all seriously threatened by the disease”.
According to the medical researcher Russell Viner, who spoke to Nature, “There’s a general feeling among paediatricians that probably too many children were shielded during the first wave.” And the epidemiologist Elizabeth Whittaker said that efforts to shield children “have probably caused more stress and anxiety for families than benefit”.
In addition to “stress and anxiety”, there’s also the learning losses associated with months of online teaching. All this compared to the marginal impact closing schools had on the spread of COVID-19.
When we look back at the response to Covid, serious questions will have to be asked about the costs of lockdown, not only to society in general, but to young people in particular.
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Youknow, I wonder if the CCP might fail in their bid for world domination by 2049 after all? There’s only so far lying and tyranny can get you.
The idea that China want’s to occupy the world is the same type of information that we have been fed about covid killing everyone on the planet unless we do what government tells us, and that the Russian intervention in Ukraine is just a one sided argument.
In case no one has noticed, China hasn’t prosecuted a major war anywhere on the planet for at least 70 years since WW2, unlike the US/UK/European military industrial complex.
China begins building its belt and road initiative as a trading platform, but that’s somehow more dangerous to the world than the US bombing Yemen or Iraq.
We are told by western media that the Chinese are enslaving people to work in factories, yet Chinese labour is so cheap why would they need to bother?
We are told the CCP is so brutal that people in China have no freedom, yet London is full of Chinese tourists and the country is Rolls Royce’s biggest customer.
Whilst manufacturing is supposedly virtually state owned, one of the richest men in the world is a school teacher who started Alibaba. Oddly enough, this multi billionaire still chooses to live in China.
There’s a bit of a theme here. Russia is condemned by the US/UK and Europe for ‘invading’ Ukraine, the money laundering capital of the world which is, strangely enough being handed another $40bn of Taxpayers money, when there are serious questions to be answered by Hunter Biden, the Presidents son about his dealings in the country. Meanwhile, China, India, Africa and Latin America refuse to condemn Russia for its intervention in Ukraine.
What makes everyone think that the worlds most aggressive nations, operating an almost closed shop trading block (the US/UK/European cosy club) are the good guys all the time when we are demonstrably not.
Why is every global leader who doesn’t march in lockstep (Bolsonaro of Brazil, Orban of Hungary, Xi of China, Putin of Russia and numerous African leaders) with the west, painted as some sort of far right, or in China’s case far left, dictatorial nutter by our government and media?
Rather than condemning everything that moves out-with our own little isolated western community, I think we should be taking a long, cold hard look at our own governments to understand how we are being manipulated.
You might have received an uptick until I got to “out-with.”
For crying out loud.
Piss poor English. It does you no credit. Too long in the civil service.
Morning hp!
Might it have been a typo? I’m pleased to see that you didn’t give a downtick!
A typo as I now see I’ve made, in posting “theyseem” as one word …
Good morning AE. No I didn’t give a down tick. I am ordinarily very generous with upticks but I have to be really annoyed to downtick.
Also, I refuse to respond to the trolls. I don’t even downtick them.
I spent a long time upticking here, before I posted. It was my first experience of upticking, and I am now an enthusiast – eagerly helping out the algorithms on You Tube.
As far as trolls are concerned, I have learnt from your wise example!
‘Outwith’ is northern, mainly Scottish, dialect, and is perfectly grammatical.
On the other hand! ‘want’s’ with an apostrophe is crass – and the writer isn’t even consistent in his crassnesss, since the next third-person singular present indicative is written correctly as ‘tells’.
Worse things happen in Africa.
To paraphrase hp: Too long in academe?
This website is sneakily liable to insert its own spelling and typos, which are likely to be overlooked in a longish comment and not noticed in time to be edited.
Too much influence by American English.
IE: it’s not a “power outage”, it’s a power cut.
This is not a criticism, just an observation.
As Bismark said when he was asked what he thought was the most significant event in the 19th century. His reply: “That North America speaks English”.
I agree Phil. We don’t have footpaths now – “footway.”
“Out with” might be Scottish but it is not English. I had never come across it until a few years ago when it became a serious infection in the civil service.
I’m a Yorkshire lass – it’s been part of my vocabulary all my life.
Railway stations are now train stations.
Another of the penalties of living too long.
My pet hate: Between a rock and a hard place, what’s wrong with Between the Devil and the deep blue sea or if you’re cultured like Boris Johnson, Between Scylla and Charybdis
It hasn’t yet reached Oz. And I am pleased to report that we still have footpaths.
He also spelled ‘wants’ as ‘want’s’:
“The idea that China want’s to occupy the world”
Good questions!
I’m very wary of any words from Western media about the imminent economic collapse of either Russia or China. It sounds a bit too much like wishful thinking.
I’ve been puzzled by what I’ve read of the Shanghai lockdown. I don’t think the Chinese are led by “nutters” – theyseem pretty shrewd to me. So I wonder what’s really going on.
I think that 2049 is an anniversary that they take fairly seriously, and that they expect to be the strongest global economy and to have gained control o Taiwan by then.
It is fairly clear to me that there has been tyranny in Shanghai (and elsewhere) and subterfuge over the Wuhan lab leak. Their notorious one child policy was one of their worst human rights abuses, but there have been others (it is reported in our journals that they have started demolishing churches again). I sometimes wonder if China will find a way of getting away with their current horrendous demographic crisis and avoiding the mistakes of the Soviet Union, and embracing aspects of capitalism will certainly help, but when I see what is going on in Shanghai, apparently because the government can’t afford to back down over zero “covid” madness, and when I hear that their relaxation of the one child policy has made little difference, that they have to import wives from Korea and the Philippines, I begin to wonder if they might struggle to fulfil their long term goals after all.
Of course there are plenty of problems in “Western” countries too, and I pretty much take it for granted that they will be in serious trouble before long unless things change (and maybe even if they do).
As for occupying the world, I understand that their strategy is to gain influence in countries (universities in Britain, infrastructure projects in Africa etc.) rather than actually go to the bother of invading them. I understand they are prepared to bide their time over Taiwan, although “Western” provocations may change things.
Ahh no China isn’t misunderstood. The CCP is the model for technocracy. It has been aided in achieving that goal by the West and it is virtually there bar the full roll out of its digital currency.
You are required by law to register your identity on any device, phone or computer with your face and digital ID. You are allocated a social credit score and, just in the last 2 years millions of Chinese have been barred from travel for low scores which include communication with low score entities as well as criticising or peddling misinformation as the government sees it. So those Chinese you see touring were the good citizens.
As for Jack Ma, whom you allude to, the guy was vanished by the CCP for criticising the globalist venture. He’s been punished and put in his place. God knows what they did to him.
Lets not forget organ harvesting and outright slavery of the Uigars. Why do they do it since Labour is so “cheap” you ask? Because they are an evil racist technocracy that does wtf they want.
I wouldn’t be so enthralled by the CCP.
Read Ian Davis’ Pseudopandemic
Here is a link to a free download: https://archive.org/details/iain-davis-pseudopandemic
It will be a painful read.
China hasn’t prosecuted a major war anywhere on the planet for at least 70 years since WW2
It depends what you mean by prosecute and major. The Korean war was pretty big and there was the annexation of Tibet and the war with India
I think you need to read Michael P Sender’s book, ‘Snake Oil’
I mean Michael P Senger!
Or
’Mao. The Unknown Story’ by Chang
Or
‘The Dragon in the land of snows’ (on Tibet) by Shakya
Or
’The hundred year marathon’ by Pilsbury
Or
‘China, trade and power’ by Paterson
Or
’Asia’s new geopolitics’ by Auslin
Or
‘Hidden Hand’ by Hamilton and Ohlberg
——
It is possible that ALL states do not have the best interests of their people at heart. That is regardless of whether their Putin’s, the CCP, the US, Trudeau’s etc
Well, there was the case of the cultural revolution and insane things like killing all the birds because they were eating grain and then suffering an explosion in growth of insects because there were no birds to eat them, then the Tiananmen Square incident and the rounding up of the Uighurs and other minorities but apart from that they’ve got a loverly long wall and an even bigger firewall. I agree that the West can’t see it’s own shadow which has been – and continues to be – cast over vast swathes of the planet but China’s shadow, which is very, very dark at home (social credits, mass surveillance etc) is far more subtle and uniquely Chinese in that it is discrete and quietly infiltrates countries around the world, never bringing attention to itself.
The CDC which is in bed with big pharma…
Yes, they’ve recorded dramatic increases in rapes by “women” haven’t they?
I wonder, do women who don’t want to see “her penis” in changing rooms etc. have rights too?
Indeed the trans thing does seem one sided, I doubt that many women who decide to go trans to male but who still have female anatomy would want to strip off and shower and change with a group of male sportsmen.
The trans movement has no concern for actual transgender people. It is just a convenient thing for morons to screech about because transgender people are a tiny minority with little visibility (usually, being invisible is their goal). Even the flagship personal pronoun dictats are logically of no benefit to transgender people, they only benefit virtue signallers.
Yes. I heard there were some historic churches in Norfolk that badly needed repairs as well. I suppose my ancestor (Sir Cloudesley Shovell) who helped free the English slaves in North Africa and has a memorial on C of E property will be safe…
Great name – Sir Cloudesley Shovel – something that Mervyn Peake might have come up with.
C of E to plough £30m into Net Zero will net it zero new parishioners in the pews. Laboring in the vineyard this is not.
I do wonder about the C of E sometimes.
Yesterday, at the beginning of our Sunday Eucharist service, the rector told us that the Chalice (the part of Communion that holds the sacramental wine) would return sometime in…. September.
The C of E should stick to being a church that looks after its parishioners, attends to the poor, sick, hungry and destitute, helps communities to flourish etc. It shouldn’t get involved in ridiculous schemes to make itself seem relevant in a changing world. People look to a church, I imagine, for its solidity, its stability, its consistent message and consistent actions. It’s no wonder their flock have left, they don’t seem to stand for anything any longer and the Bishops appear to be part-businessmen/women and part-politician.
Both our principal churches are deeply embedded in the Reset. The Pope is probably a satanist ref Archbishop Vigano.
Welby is an ex business man in poor drag, although given the way he conducts himself I suspect he left the world of business before he was pushed. Or possibly he’s a WEF plant.
Morning HP, I guess the days are long gone where the church was full of priests, vicars etc whose only concern was the well-being of their immediate flock. Christ would be turning in his grave (if he had one).
He did that on the third day!
Next: He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Welby is a WEF plant.
If he’s a plant, then he’s most likely a noxious type and needs weeding out and putting on the compost.
From the neck up!
Rand Paul would make a great president of the US. It would mean having to give up his ‘Drag Race’ programme though, I suspect.
It Won’t Be Long Before They Come For Your Family Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhIWUgqXgAw
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