In a recent viral tweet, the new German Health Minister, Professor Karl Lauterbach, shared what seems like an alarming graph:
It shows daily Covid hospital admissions in England for all children (i.e., those aged under 18) since the start of the pandemic. Lauterbach wrote:
The UK data shows alarming levels in children. Since Omicron can be warded off well by masks, mask requirements in school and regular testing are absolutely necessary.
Incidentally, the graph itself was produced by Independent SAGE – the group that’s like SAGE, only more pessimistic about Covid and more in favour of restrictions (and not an official Government advisory body).
So, what should we make of Lauterbach’s tweet? One of the stylised facts of the pandemic is that Covid poses almost no risk to children. Has this ceased to be true in the era of Omicron? No, fortunately it has not.
One reason that Covid hospital admissions for children shot up in late December is simple: infections shot up at around the same time (in the first week of January, more than 6% of the population tested positive). And when more people in the general population are infected, the number of people admitted to hospital with Covid will rise.
Under simple assumptions, if the percentage of the population that’s infected jumps from 1% to 6%, then so should the fraction of people admitted to hospital with Covid.
Another possible reason Covid hospital admissions for children shot up – suggested by Professor Russell Viner of UCL – is that Omicron has a greater impact in the upper airways, which are smaller in young children. And as others have noted, this feature also makes Omicron less deadly.
Yet another reason, notes the FT, is the introduction of treatment guidelines requiring babies who develop fever to be put under hospital observation.
Indeed, a new study from the U.S. confirms that Omicron is less deadly than Delta – even in young children. Lindsey Wang and colleagues compared two cohorts of under 5s: those who caught Covid for the first time during the Delta wave, and those who caught it for the first time during the Omicron wave.
The two cohorts were matched on a large number of relevant variables including age, sex, race and pre-existing health conditions. Results are shown below:
For all four outcome variables considered, the risk was significantly lower among those who caught Omicron. To take one example, only 0.14% of the Omicron cohort were admitted to the ICU, compared to 0.43% of the Delta cohort.
What’s more, as this graph from the FT shows, the recent uptick in paediatric hospital admissions for Covid isn’t large relative to seasonal peaks for other child respiratory viruses:
Returning to the German Health Minister’s tweet, the totality of evidence does not suggest that “mask requirements in school and regular testing are absolutely necessary”. In fact, I’d describe them as ‘absolutely unnecessary’.
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Except, it’s just more wives’ tales care of the Ministry of Truth to cause greater confusion. “Covid-19”, with its r-numbers, and capacity to spread, is a fraud. Covid-19 – the real stuff, aka the so rare its thought to be dead SARS – probably involves already resident pathogen reacting to new conditions in the health terrain (i.e. increased levels of ACE2).
Covid-19 Is Not Flu
Far Easern countries do not use ACE inhibitors which increase the levels of ACE2. One of the main reasons they did not suffer from this ‘illness’ in anything like the amount of western countries ploughing ACE inhibitors and Statins into anything that moves.
If there is a hierarchy of virus’s then maybe a lot of the time corona virus can out compete flu. This could mean that in East Asia corona virus was the main form of respiratory disease, meaning that there was a very high level of immunity and countries in the region have very low death rates. On the other hand if until last year flu was dominant in Europe and the America’s we would have had much lower immunity to Covid, which being a new type of virus manged to out compete flu, and hence a higher death rate. If this is true then it could mean that Covid will continue to be dominant form of respiratory disease, at least until a new type of flu evolves which could be this year or could be in 20+ years time. This would mean that claims about a hard winter next year are likely to be wrong, and there may be a small uptick in Covid cases but no excess deaths as most of the population will have been vaccinated and/or have natural immunity.
Interesting hypothesis, but it wouldn’t it be reasonably easy to check by checking how many Covid hospital patients were on ACE inhibitors or statins, relative to the average member of their age cohort?
Incidentally isn’t the far lower usage of ACE inhibitors in East Asia closely correlated with the lack of obesity there?
“the common cold (the rhinovirus) can suppress COVID-19″
actually covid-19 is a common cold.
“The common cold is an infection of the upper respiratory tract which can be caused by many different viruses. The most commonly implicated is a rhinovirus (30–80%), a type of picornavirus with 99 known serotypes.[30] Other commonly implicated viruses include human coronaviruses (≈ 15%),[31][32] influenza viruses (10–15%),[33][34][35] adenoviruses (5%),[33] human respiratory syncytial virus (orthopneumovirus), enteroviruses other than rhinoviruses, human parainfluenza viruses, and human metapneumovirus.[36] Frequently more than one virus is present.[37] In total, more than 200 viral types are associated with colds.[4]”
nasty for the frail, harmless for most – like all colds
Spot on. Whilst many ‘common colds’ are caused by rhinoviruses, some of them – maybe a third or so of them – are actually caused by coronaviruses, such as OCE43, or HKU-1 and a few more. I think the records associated with this are a bit sketchy, as it’s never been the norm to report them, or even to take time off sick on account of them (probably not popular now!). It could be that there is a degree of cross-immunity (As Alex B says) after having dealt with some of them, against the SARs-Cov-2 one, but the available documentation about this is also sketchy.
In effect, Covid-19 is yet another coronavirus caused infection in us. They have never tried to classify all the different ‘common colds’ in the same fashion, just one generic name. Not sure how well known it is, but the term ‘coronavirus’ was actually invented by the Common Cold Unit in Salisbury (UK) in 1966/67, on account if it’s imagery under electron microscopy.
Some virologists have suggested that the “Russian flu” pandemic of 1889-1891 was actually caused by the OC43 coronavirus, which had just crossed over to humans at the time.
Cor blimey where have these guys been for 13 months! This sort of thing was discussed ( and agreed by experienced virologists) back then. Bit late now putting heads above the parapet after all those lovely injections have gone in.
Cross immunity from the ‘common cold’ was being discussed months ago, I think even Michael Levitt touched upon it due to the fact that many people seemed to already possess immunity to SARS-COV-2.
Back then I even suggested to my partner, partly in jest, that they should just give everyone a dose of the cold!
And then there’s this from the CDC. It does seem like Covid19 IS last seasons flu rebranded for maximum panic. Further the argument about mutations becoming more virulent is not supported by science.
And due to the lack of contact over the last year (a) our immune systems are shot and (b) we can’t catch colds which would save us.
And isn’t it exactly what sunetra Gupta said way back. We need to mix with each other to keep our immune systems in good order.
Which news the BBC announced to an astonished world two months ago when starting to discuss care homes resuming family visits for residents whose
‘immune systems may have been compromised by being kept in social isolation for up to twelve months’.
Yet the only way to protect your self is with experimental vaccines.
Obviously not.
Strong immune system in any healthy under 60yr old will handle covid with ease.
I had a cold the week before last. It somehow felt good having it haha.
There are also therapeutic measures for people who have covid. So many answers and more to come.
END LOCKDOWN NOW! Get some Societal immunity in between now and Autumn when it will kick off.
This is exactly what the two Kern County doctors warned of last summer, in their press conference which was subsequently banned.
This is an interesting article to read this morning since one week before I took a vaccine, I got a wonderful head cold. I say wonderful because it made me feel normal. I was glad to have sniffles and sneezing, especially those 12 in a row body blows that incapacitate you for minutes till they are finished. I wondered what effect the cold might have and still do in light of taking the vaccine so soon after it all subsided.
Good to see this kind of data coming out
Sadly it’s only after a year of restricted immune exposure that the importance of it will be clear
Perhaps that’s even behind the ‘3rd wave’ in some European centres?
Except rhinovirus levels have not been suppressed. They’re normal.
Er, not an expert, but my reading of this is that the flu creates an immunity to Covid19. the opposite of what cash-for-comment experts and vaccine proponents have denied all along.
Also proves that Covid19 isn’t a “novel” coronavirus.