9 ms·

Covid: Children's extremely low risk confirmed by study

95 points by plank_time 5y ago

fallingknife 5y ago
Remember when Trump was censored by Twitter for "misinformation" what he said that kids are basically immune?
- dieortin 5y ago
  That he happened to be right doesn’t mean what he said had any basis
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    If he was saying kids are immune, he was wrong then and wrong now. Kids are not immune.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  He was wrong then, and he's still wrong now. Long Covid is a significant medical problem. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/ https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210607/Around-525-of-children-develop-long-COVID-19-symptoms-suggests-new-study.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210607/Around-525-of-chi... For those who don't know the BBC is in the middle of weekend political scandal where a senior Tory director was caught red-handed interfering in recruiting - specifically trying to prevent the recruitment of a journalist who might be critical of the government. https://www.ft.com/content/82a54037-501d-457b-b8f4-35744c85ec9b https://www.ft.com/content/82a54037-501d-457b-b8f4-35744c85e... That's where the BBC is now - a government mouthpiece, and not an objective news source.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    That's where the BBC always was. People hired by the BBC were systematically vetted by MI5 and rejected for left-wing sympathies from its entire history until very recent times. IMO the only difference between then and now is that there are vanishingly few left-wing toffs and strivers in the UK anymore, so when hiring from the pre-filtered pool (of typical BBC candidates) they can get by relying on an informal veto system.
  - s9w 5y ago
    long covid lmao
- thealienthing 5y ago
  I’m no fan of him, but I found it odd how information that came from him suddenly was branded as misinformation even if it was true.
  - unstyledcontent 5y ago
    As the old adage says, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    The difference between bullshit and a lie is that the liar knows he's wrong, the bullshitter doesn't care. Trump said whatever was politically useful to him in any given situation at best (either by earning him praise from supporters or by distracting his critics) and whatever he felt like or overheard someone else say at worst. That anyone would look at any statement from him and use it to justify praise for him or use its falseness to dunk on him is silly. Factuality wasn't a consideration for him when making any of his statements.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Your noticing the narrative. Like how small town book stores are inherently good and big stores evil. Regardless of facts. Republicans will be portrayed as stupid and dangerous, regardless of facts. So when Trump was saying something it was automatically just that. If need be facts would be twisted until they fit that viewpoint. For contrast the current president making a joke about running a reporter over is just a laughable moment now. Under Trump it would have been discussed for weeks. Definitions of Narrative Journalism Simply put, narrative is the way in which a story is constructed through a particular point of view and arrangement of events.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    This information wasn't true. In fact almost nothing Trump said was true. Even if you can find some examples, there are literally thousands of counterexamples from speeches and Tweets which were clearly nonsense - starting with the claim that he actually won the election, and working through a very long list from there.
- _Microft 5y ago
  Trump might have guessed or it just might have been politically convenient to say so but if there is no research to base such a statement on, it's certainly not trustworthy information.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  Yes. It was a good call. They are not immune, and still spread the virus, they just have a lower chance of complications/death. As said in this report. “The overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from Covid is extremely low” != “children are immune”
  - trentnix 5y ago
    He didn't say they were "immune". He said they were "almost immune", which is certainly unscientific but is another way to say they are at very low risk. Trump was often reckless with his words, but you're being pedantic.
    - MathYouF 5y ago
      Yes, the wisdom of his statements jumps from "utterly nonsensical" to "occasionally somewhat correct" if you interpret what he says with the same leniency you might a 12 year old. For example, he probably meant immune by the definition "protected from" with the implied thing being "serious medical harm" rather than "infection". I agree it's disingenuous to call him a deliberate liar here when the truth is he just speaks with the vocabulary and scientific acumen of a candid 6th grader. The real shame is triplicate here: 1. That we must settle for a president with those verbal skills 2. That his verbal skills are perhaps more reflective of the average American than we'd like to believe 3. That people with sometimes exceptional verbal skills and education can somehow not comprehend some of the simple truths that he can (children being at extremely low personal health risk should've been obvious to everyone after the first few months of the pandemic) And in my opinion, the well educated being deluded into a false perception of reality is a lot more startling of a fact than that a person who has an obviously mediocre command of his native language and paltry understanding of scientific fundamentals said something that was incoherent and not technically correct when trying to verbalise his opinions.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      "Almost immune" is either wrong or nonsense, and they were still right to remove it. Children can get COVID, they just don't get a high rate of complications. They do get sick, but not severely. That is, in no way, "immune". I'm not "almost immune" to the common cold because it doesn't make me very sick.
- 1270018080 5y ago
  There's a difference between scientists doing a study and a politician making something up out of thin air and being right after the fact by chance. Can you figure it out?
  - aceon48 5y ago
    There's a difference between a rigorous scientific method providing confirmation evidence, and empiricism. Enpricism is the state of the world that is true, and you don't need science to observe empirical facts.
Kenji 5y ago
It's hilarious that the intellectual person needs to have a study to accept the obvious. If you can count the number of all the little children who died of covid in your country with your fingers, you know it's a complete non-issue for them.
_ph_ 5y ago
That is good news, especially for all the children in those countries, who are opening up with a wave of the delta variant approaching. Combine that with some reluctancy or inability to vaccinate children, it means most of them will get infected.
- Kenji 5y ago
  No, it is not good news. It is good information that we knew all along. It would be news if the information was new.
draw_down 5y ago
Can’t let them go to school, or outside without a mask though. It’s dangerous, ya know.
nojito 5y ago
As with everything...the real story more complicated than that. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34102037/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34102037/
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
We already knew that the mortality rate and hospitalization rate of children was low. Low isn't zero, of course, but it's lower than that of adults and the elderly. The real question in my mind is the prevalence of Long COVID and other longer lasting changes. Having seen the debilitating effects of post-viral fatigue syndrome (non-COVID, but still very similar) I would caution everyone to do as much as possible to avoid getting illnesses that are known to trigger extended disability like this. A COVID infection isn't a binary outcome of live or die. There's a lot of potential for lasting damage that isn't fully studied yet, so we need to stop treating the statistics as a simple matter of life or death. It's also misleading to consider the statistics for children in isolation because children obviously don't live alone in isolation. If kids get a contagious illness, the parents are highly likely to get it. This is especially true for younger children, as any parent will tell you.
- infinite8s 5y ago
  Also given the fast evolution of the virus (with the newest variants way more infectious and deadly than the original), it's not a given that the low effects in children will continue. Especially if children remain the only vulnerable population - it's conceivable that a variant that is way worse for children will arise.
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
  No doubt that post-viral fatigue is a thing, but I wonder how much of Long COVID is the collective COVID anxiety and fear that continues to be fomented by all information sources (news, media, socials, etc). At this point we need to go back to pre-COVID in terms of how much attention it receives. We have vaccines, time to move on, the pandemic is over. Basically COVID needs to take a similar mental profile as the flu, which is that we annoyed everyone about vaccines yearly but other than that it was not nightly news and discussion, with warnings plastered everywhere like it's the Cold War. Even worse you have leaders branding this fear+anxiety-laced behavior as the "new normal" I think behaving as-if the pandemic is over will do collectively far more for the well-being + psyche of fatigued citizens who have likely felt some measure of hope disappear over the past year. It does no benefit to keep circulating disproportionate levels of information about an uncertain and vague threat when we have the solution in vaccines. At this point "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" as the saying goes.
hnbad 5y ago
Note that this says nothing about long term consequences, i.e. Long Covid, which we've only just started acknowledging when it comes to adults. Polio was asymptomatic in 95% of cases and most of the symptomatic cases were unspecific and mild, but now we know that it can be followed by the much more severe Post-Polio Syndrome even 3-5 decades after the original infection, which may affect almost 30% of all cases, including the asymptomatic ones. That children are unlikely to die or have severe complications from Covid doesn't mean it's safe to allow children to be infected, even if we ignore that this could make them asymptomatic carriers infecting at-risk family members who may not be able to get vaccinated for health reasons. EDIT: If you find the time to downvote this comment, also check out nojito's link to the paper about Long Covid in children: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27793752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27793752 If the lower estimate of 20% of Covid cases resulting in Long Covid are right and we lift hygiene restrictions for children because of their "low risk" for hospitalization, that means we could see Long Covid in up to 20% of the population under 12 (assuming vaccinations become available for ages 12 and over). And that's assuming the data about "low risk" is interpreted correctly. The article states that 25 dead in 12 million children translates to a death rate of 2 per million (or 0.2 in 100,000 if we want to use the same scale used for numbers about the general population) but this wrongly assumes that all of the 12 million children have at some point been Covid positive, which seems impossibly pessimistic given that there have only been 5 million recorded infections in the UK across the entire population. For comparison, the ONS report[1] estimates roughly 1% of children between age 2 and school year 6 (age 10-11) having been positive with no data on ages younger than 2. This would take the number from 0.2 in 100,000 to 20 in 100,000 -- compared to the total mortality of 228.6 in 100,000[2]. In other words, it looks like children are only 1/10 as likely to die as adults, not 1/1000 as likely. Also, the article only considers the 25 children who directly died from Covid, not the 36 children who were tested positive but died from "other causes". I'm not sure if this has changed in the UK given that you often read about "deaths within 28 days of a positive test" now, but at least for most of 2020 these 36 children would have counted towards the total death count as I understand it. If we compare the 20 in 100,000 (or 20.8 in 100,000 if we want to be pedantic about rounding) number to the "deaths within 28 days of a positive test" number we actually get slightly more than 1/10 because that rate is 192.2 in 100,000. [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... [2]: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths
pessimizer 5y ago
The problem is that they give it to old people, not that they rarely die from it. I'm pretty sure people under 70 have an quite moderate risk of dying of covid (as compared to other endemic diseases that don't cause world lockdowns.) The problem is that they give it to old people.
- mikem170 5y ago
  I wonder if there's any data on this from countries that did a lot of contact tracing. On the one hand, I thought it strange a year ago when some authorities based policy on the assumption that kids didn't spread it. On the other hand if kids are mostly asymptomatic it would make sense that they don't spread it as much. I know that private schools in my area were running normal classes, en masse nothing bad seemed to happen. Hard data would be nice to see, if it's out there. Also, old people can be vaccinated now, so fears over children spreading it to vulnerable population is becoming a moot point.
- vlunkr 5y ago
  Sure, but that wasn't really the point of the article.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  But the old people are now all vaccinated so they won't get it or at least won't get really sick. I'm sure some will but a lot of the risk has been mitigated. There will always have to be some measure of risk we have to accept. We can't eliminate it completely. I'm a bit worried that because of a year and a half of mass fear even the slightest risk of covid will be blown up. I saw this effect here in Barcelona. There was an article on young people thinking they could not get covid. And an ICU nurse was quoted saying that's not true and they have a girl there who is bad. But this doesn't take into account that the numbers are so low. Many young people die because of traffic accidents and the like. There has to be a point where we say it's mitigated enough and just move on with life. I'm not saying we're there yet but we should start talking about where that point is.
  - wussboy 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
f38zf5vdt 5y ago
We've known this since the beginning of the pandemic. The danger with children is them spreading with mild or asymptomatic disease in academic settings, not them succumbing to it.
rossdavidh 5y ago
The difference between British and U.S. mainstream news sources, in regards to covid-19, is that you would be a lot less likely to see the NYTimes or Washington Post or etc. run any story with anything resembling positive news. While the BBC, Guardian, etc. can certainly make mistakes, I don't get nearly as strong an impression of a heavy-handed filter on what information I'm being given. With U.S. mainstream news, I very much do.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  I don't know that that's true. I quickly spot-checked this with NPR (a closer analogue to the BBC) by Googling "npr children covid". The first two results were neutral factual information about current CDC guidelines, and the very first result with a narrative angle was "In kids, the risk of covid-19 and flu are similar, but the risk perception isn't". https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/999241558/in-kids-the-risk-of-covid-19-and-the-flu-are-similar-but-the-risk-perception-isn https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/999241558/in-kids-the-risk-of...
  - swiley 5y ago
    Right, a closer British analogue for the NYT would probably be the daily mail.
    - rossdavidh 5y ago
      You may be correct. Once upon a time, in my lifetime, the NYTimes _was_ the analog to the BBC, and at least to the Guardian, but perhaps what has changed is that the place in the American news spectrum that the NYT and WashPo are occupying is different.
      - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        It's much more like the guardian than the BBC.
        5y ago
jamses 5y ago
Article lead: The overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from Covid is extremely low, a new analysis of Covid infection data confirms. As far as I can tell the linked report mentions nothing about severity of illness, only mortality. Edit: Second study is linked to further down the page which addresses the severe illnesses, as ricardobeat points out.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  Looks like they are reporting on multiple studies. There is a second paper that includes hospitalization rates linked under the “Hospital stays are rare” section.
- mikro2nd 5y ago
  Also mentions nothing at all about the rapidly-rising Delta strain that appears to hit younger people much harder than other/earlier strains and in preference to older folk. Ugh. This virus is horrible.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    All strains affect younger people more than older ones. Because they aren't vaccinated.
    - throwaway8689 5y ago
      I'd like to think that was accounted for in the analysis. We can compare children infected last year when other strains were dominant, with children infected this year in UK (likely to get the Delta variant).
      - anoncake 5y ago
        I'd also like to think that no one publishes garbage studies, but there we are.
fatsdomino001 5y ago
Knowing this, why are we so willing to risk our children's safety by injecting them with emergency-authorized vaccines? When we know that it's not about helping them at all. Whatever happened to protect the children?
foobarbazetc 5y ago
I've seen 4 other studies that say the exact opposite.
random_slayer 5y ago
Why is the BBC posting on Hacker News? How is this article Hacker News? I avoid the BBC for good reason. It’s enough that I have to pay the license but I don’t consume it because I don’t want to be misinformed.
throwaway1_1 5y ago
Knowing this, why are we so willing to risk our children's safety by injecting them with emergency-authorized vaccines? When we know that it's not about helping them at all. Whatever happened to protect the children?
- detaro 5y ago
  Who is "we"? In many places, vaccines for children are restricted or not recommended.
parrellel 5y ago
Since there've been studies attributing Covid's lung and circulatory damage to bad immune response to the virus, I'm looking forward to seeing the numbers on juvenile diabetes. Anecdotally, Type 1's exploding along with other auto-immune disorders. The problem is, of course, we've got a 6-12 month lag on type 1 diagnosis, and various often long delays on other auto-immune failures.

95 points by plank_time 5y ago

fallingknife 5y ago

Remember when Trump was censored by Twitter for "misinformation" what he said that kids are basically immune?

dieortin 5y ago
That he happened to be right doesn’t mean what he said had any basis
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  If he was saying kids are immune, he was wrong then and wrong now. Kids are not immune.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
He was wrong then, and he's still wrong now. Long Covid is a significant medical problem. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/ https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210607/Around-525-of-children-develop-long-COVID-19-symptoms-suggests-new-study.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210607/Around-525-of-chi... For those who don't know the BBC is in the middle of weekend political scandal where a senior Tory director was caught red-handed interfering in recruiting - specifically trying to prevent the recruitment of a journalist who might be critical of the government. https://www.ft.com/content/82a54037-501d-457b-b8f4-35744c85ec9b https://www.ft.com/content/82a54037-501d-457b-b8f4-35744c85e... That's where the BBC is now - a government mouthpiece, and not an objective news source.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  That's where the BBC always was. People hired by the BBC were systematically vetted by MI5 and rejected for left-wing sympathies from its entire history until very recent times. IMO the only difference between then and now is that there are vanishingly few left-wing toffs and strivers in the UK anymore, so when hiring from the pre-filtered pool (of typical BBC candidates) they can get by relying on an informal veto system.
- s9w 5y ago
  long covid lmao
thealienthing 5y ago
I’m no fan of him, but I found it odd how information that came from him suddenly was branded as misinformation even if it was true.
- unstyledcontent 5y ago
  As the old adage says, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
- hnbad 5y ago
  The difference between bullshit and a lie is that the liar knows he's wrong, the bullshitter doesn't care. Trump said whatever was politically useful to him in any given situation at best (either by earning him praise from supporters or by distracting his critics) and whatever he felt like or overheard someone else say at worst. That anyone would look at any statement from him and use it to justify praise for him or use its falseness to dunk on him is silly. Factuality wasn't a consideration for him when making any of his statements.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Your noticing the narrative. Like how small town book stores are inherently good and big stores evil. Regardless of facts. Republicans will be portrayed as stupid and dangerous, regardless of facts. So when Trump was saying something it was automatically just that. If need be facts would be twisted until they fit that viewpoint. For contrast the current president making a joke about running a reporter over is just a laughable moment now. Under Trump it would have been discussed for weeks. Definitions of Narrative Journalism Simply put, narrative is the way in which a story is constructed through a particular point of view and arrangement of events.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  This information wasn't true. In fact almost nothing Trump said was true. Even if you can find some examples, there are literally thousands of counterexamples from speeches and Tweets which were clearly nonsense - starting with the claim that he actually won the election, and working through a very long list from there.
_Microft 5y ago
Trump might have guessed or it just might have been politically convenient to say so but if there is no research to base such a statement on, it's certainly not trustworthy information.
ricardobeat 5y ago
Yes. It was a good call. They are not immune, and still spread the virus, they just have a lower chance of complications/death. As said in this report. “The overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from Covid is extremely low” != “children are immune”
- trentnix 5y ago
  He didn't say they were "immune". He said they were "almost immune", which is certainly unscientific but is another way to say they are at very low risk. Trump was often reckless with his words, but you're being pedantic.
  - MathYouF 5y ago
    Yes, the wisdom of his statements jumps from "utterly nonsensical" to "occasionally somewhat correct" if you interpret what he says with the same leniency you might a 12 year old. For example, he probably meant immune by the definition "protected from" with the implied thing being "serious medical harm" rather than "infection". I agree it's disingenuous to call him a deliberate liar here when the truth is he just speaks with the vocabulary and scientific acumen of a candid 6th grader. The real shame is triplicate here: 1. That we must settle for a president with those verbal skills 2. That his verbal skills are perhaps more reflective of the average American than we'd like to believe 3. That people with sometimes exceptional verbal skills and education can somehow not comprehend some of the simple truths that he can (children being at extremely low personal health risk should've been obvious to everyone after the first few months of the pandemic) And in my opinion, the well educated being deluded into a false perception of reality is a lot more startling of a fact than that a person who has an obviously mediocre command of his native language and paltry understanding of scientific fundamentals said something that was incoherent and not technically correct when trying to verbalise his opinions.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    "Almost immune" is either wrong or nonsense, and they were still right to remove it. Children can get COVID, they just don't get a high rate of complications. They do get sick, but not severely. That is, in no way, "immune". I'm not "almost immune" to the common cold because it doesn't make me very sick.
1270018080 5y ago
There's a difference between scientists doing a study and a politician making something up out of thin air and being right after the fact by chance. Can you figure it out?
- aceon48 5y ago
  There's a difference between a rigorous scientific method providing confirmation evidence, and empiricism. Enpricism is the state of the world that is true, and you don't need science to observe empirical facts.

Kenji 5y ago

It's hilarious that the intellectual person needs to have a study to accept the obvious. If you can count the number of all the little children who died of covid in your country with your fingers, you know it's a complete non-issue for them.

_ph_ 5y ago

That is good news, especially for all the children in those countries, who are opening up with a wave of the delta variant approaching. Combine that with some reluctancy or inability to vaccinate children, it means most of them will get infected.

Kenji 5y ago
No, it is not good news. It is good information that we knew all along. It would be news if the information was new.

draw_down 5y ago

Can’t let them go to school, or outside without a mask though. It’s dangerous, ya know.

nojito 5y ago

As with everything...the real story more complicated than that. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34102037/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34102037/

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

We already knew that the mortality rate and hospitalization rate of children was low. Low isn't zero, of course, but it's lower than that of adults and the elderly. The real question in my mind is the prevalence of Long COVID and other longer lasting changes. Having seen the debilitating effects of post-viral fatigue syndrome (non-COVID, but still very similar) I would caution everyone to do as much as possible to avoid getting illnesses that are known to trigger extended disability like this. A COVID infection isn't a binary outcome of live or die. There's a lot of potential for lasting damage that isn't fully studied yet, so we need to stop treating the statistics as a simple matter of life or death. It's also misleading to consider the statistics for children in isolation because children obviously don't live alone in isolation. If kids get a contagious illness, the parents are highly likely to get it. This is especially true for younger children, as any parent will tell you.

infinite8s 5y ago
Also given the fast evolution of the virus (with the newest variants way more infectious and deadly than the original), it's not a given that the low effects in children will continue. Especially if children remain the only vulnerable population - it's conceivable that a variant that is way worse for children will arise.
dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
No doubt that post-viral fatigue is a thing, but I wonder how much of Long COVID is the collective COVID anxiety and fear that continues to be fomented by all information sources (news, media, socials, etc). At this point we need to go back to pre-COVID in terms of how much attention it receives. We have vaccines, time to move on, the pandemic is over. Basically COVID needs to take a similar mental profile as the flu, which is that we annoyed everyone about vaccines yearly but other than that it was not nightly news and discussion, with warnings plastered everywhere like it's the Cold War. Even worse you have leaders branding this fear+anxiety-laced behavior as the "new normal" I think behaving as-if the pandemic is over will do collectively far more for the well-being + psyche of fatigued citizens who have likely felt some measure of hope disappear over the past year. It does no benefit to keep circulating disproportionate levels of information about an uncertain and vague threat when we have the solution in vaccines. At this point "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" as the saying goes.

hnbad 5y ago

Note that this says nothing about long term consequences, i.e. Long Covid, which we've only just started acknowledging when it comes to adults. Polio was asymptomatic in 95% of cases and most of the symptomatic cases were unspecific and mild, but now we know that it can be followed by the much more severe Post-Polio Syndrome even 3-5 decades after the original infection, which may affect almost 30% of all cases, including the asymptomatic ones. That children are unlikely to die or have severe complications from Covid doesn't mean it's safe to allow children to be infected, even if we ignore that this could make them asymptomatic carriers infecting at-risk family members who may not be able to get vaccinated for health reasons. EDIT: If you find the time to downvote this comment, also check out nojito's link to the paper about Long Covid in children: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27793752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27793752 If the lower estimate of 20% of Covid cases resulting in Long Covid are right and we lift hygiene restrictions for children because of their "low risk" for hospitalization, that means we could see Long Covid in up to 20% of the population under 12 (assuming vaccinations become available for ages 12 and over). And that's assuming the data about "low risk" is interpreted correctly. The article states that 25 dead in 12 million children translates to a death rate of 2 per million (or 0.2 in 100,000 if we want to use the same scale used for numbers about the general population) but this wrongly assumes that all of the 12 million children have at some point been Covid positive, which seems impossibly pessimistic given that there have only been 5 million recorded infections in the UK across the entire population. For comparison, the ONS report[1] estimates roughly 1% of children between age 2 and school year 6 (age 10-11) having been positive with no data on ages younger than 2. This would take the number from 0.2 in 100,000 to 20 in 100,000 -- compared to the total mortality of 228.6 in 100,000[2]. In other words, it looks like children are only 1/10 as likely to die as adults, not 1/1000 as likely. Also, the article only considers the 25 children who directly died from Covid, not the 36 children who were tested positive but died from "other causes". I'm not sure if this has changed in the UK given that you often read about "deaths within 28 days of a positive test" now, but at least for most of 2020 these 36 children would have counted towards the total death count as I understand it. If we compare the 20 in 100,000 (or 20.8 in 100,000 if we want to be pedantic about rounding) number to the "deaths within 28 days of a positive test" number we actually get slightly more than 1/10 because that rate is 192.2 in 100,000. [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... [2]: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

pessimizer 5y ago

The problem is that they give it to old people, not that they rarely die from it. I'm pretty sure people under 70 have an quite moderate risk of dying of covid (as compared to other endemic diseases that don't cause world lockdowns.) The problem is that they give it to old people.

mikem170 5y ago
I wonder if there's any data on this from countries that did a lot of contact tracing. On the one hand, I thought it strange a year ago when some authorities based policy on the assumption that kids didn't spread it. On the other hand if kids are mostly asymptomatic it would make sense that they don't spread it as much. I know that private schools in my area were running normal classes, en masse nothing bad seemed to happen. Hard data would be nice to see, if it's out there. Also, old people can be vaccinated now, so fears over children spreading it to vulnerable population is becoming a moot point.
vlunkr 5y ago
Sure, but that wasn't really the point of the article.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
But the old people are now all vaccinated so they won't get it or at least won't get really sick. I'm sure some will but a lot of the risk has been mitigated. There will always have to be some measure of risk we have to accept. We can't eliminate it completely. I'm a bit worried that because of a year and a half of mass fear even the slightest risk of covid will be blown up. I saw this effect here in Barcelona. There was an article on young people thinking they could not get covid. And an ICU nurse was quoted saying that's not true and they have a girl there who is bad. But this doesn't take into account that the numbers are so low. Many young people die because of traffic accidents and the like. There has to be a point where we say it's mitigated enough and just move on with life. I'm not saying we're there yet but we should start talking about where that point is.
- wussboy 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

f38zf5vdt 5y ago

We've known this since the beginning of the pandemic. The danger with children is them spreading with mild or asymptomatic disease in academic settings, not them succumbing to it.

rossdavidh 5y ago

The difference between British and U.S. mainstream news sources, in regards to covid-19, is that you would be a lot less likely to see the NYTimes or Washington Post or etc. run any story with anything resembling positive news. While the BBC, Guardian, etc. can certainly make mistakes, I don't get nearly as strong an impression of a heavy-handed filter on what information I'm being given. With U.S. mainstream news, I very much do.

wutbrodo 5y ago
I don't know that that's true. I quickly spot-checked this with NPR (a closer analogue to the BBC) by Googling "npr children covid". The first two results were neutral factual information about current CDC guidelines, and the very first result with a narrative angle was "In kids, the risk of covid-19 and flu are similar, but the risk perception isn't". https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/999241558/in-kids-the-risk-of-covid-19-and-the-flu-are-similar-but-the-risk-perception-isn https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/999241558/in-kids-the-risk-of...
- swiley 5y ago
  Right, a closer British analogue for the NYT would probably be the daily mail.
  - rossdavidh 5y ago
    You may be correct. Once upon a time, in my lifetime, the NYTimes _was_ the analog to the BBC, and at least to the Guardian, but perhaps what has changed is that the place in the American news spectrum that the NYT and WashPo are occupying is different.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      It's much more like the guardian than the BBC.
      - 5y ago

jamses 5y ago

Article lead: The overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from Covid is extremely low, a new analysis of Covid infection data confirms. As far as I can tell the linked report mentions nothing about severity of illness, only mortality. Edit: Second study is linked to further down the page which addresses the severe illnesses, as ricardobeat points out.

ricardobeat 5y ago
Looks like they are reporting on multiple studies. There is a second paper that includes hospitalization rates linked under the “Hospital stays are rare” section.
mikro2nd 5y ago
Also mentions nothing at all about the rapidly-rising Delta strain that appears to hit younger people much harder than other/earlier strains and in preference to older folk. Ugh. This virus is horrible.
- anoncake 5y ago
  All strains affect younger people more than older ones. Because they aren't vaccinated.
  - throwaway8689 5y ago
    I'd like to think that was accounted for in the analysis. We can compare children infected last year when other strains were dominant, with children infected this year in UK (likely to get the Delta variant).
    - anoncake 5y ago
      I'd also like to think that no one publishes garbage studies, but there we are.

fatsdomino001 5y ago

Knowing this, why are we so willing to risk our children's safety by injecting them with emergency-authorized vaccines? When we know that it's not about helping them at all. Whatever happened to protect the children?

foobarbazetc 5y ago

I've seen 4 other studies that say the exact opposite.

random_slayer 5y ago

Why is the BBC posting on Hacker News? How is this article Hacker News? I avoid the BBC for good reason. It’s enough that I have to pay the license but I don’t consume it because I don’t want to be misinformed.

throwaway1_1 5y ago

detaro 5y ago
Who is "we"? In many places, vaccines for children are restricted or not recommended.

parrellel 5y ago

Since there've been studies attributing Covid's lung and circulatory damage to bad immune response to the virus, I'm looking forward to seeing the numbers on juvenile diabetes. Anecdotally, Type 1's exploding along with other auto-immune disorders. The problem is, of course, we've got a 6-12 month lag on type 1 diagnosis, and various often long delays on other auto-immune failures.