News Brief by Kip Hansen – 4 September 2020
Despite the best efforts of Journalists from Another Galaxy (The New York Times) to convince the general public otherwise, almost no U.S. children are dying from (or even with) Covid-19.
It is easier just to show the numbers in graphic form. These are the latest figures from the CDC.
We look at All Cause Deaths first, so we have an idea of the magnitudes of general pediatric deaths in the U.S. The horizontal axis is the Week Number of the pandemic period. We just completed Week 34.
Teenagers and College-age kids die the most from all causes, at a rate of 500-800 per week. But you see even Total All Cause Deaths for this age group taper downward after 1 June 2020 (thin vertical yellow line). Under 1’s, infants, are the next most likely to die – this includes all the preemies and low-birth weight babies – infant-hood is a delicate time. Once kids get through their first year, they are pretty tough – and the Total All Cause Deaths for 1-4 and 5-14 are similar and relatively small and steady over the time period shown (the period of the U.S. Covid Pandemic).
How many kids are dying from (or even just with) Covid-19? Almost none.
Over the entire course of the U.S. Covid-19 Pandemic, as of 20 August 2020, only 337 of the reported “180,000” Covid deaths in the U.S. were persons under 25 years of age. If we look at the age group more consistent with the concept of children – we see that only 62 kids 14 and under actually died from and/or with Covid-19. Only 17 infants, Under 1.
Of course, one wishes that no kids ever had to die from anything but they do.
In 2017, the last year with finalized figures, an average of 430 Under 1’s died every week from various causes. This year, during – and in spite of — the pandemic, Under 1’s are running much lower than that. [ see All Cause chart above ]
Even the 14-25 year-olds seem to be coming down off of their higher summer death rate. Notice that the All Cause and the Covid graphs for 14-25 year-olds are different shapes. Deaths from-and-with Covid are not the cause of the rising All Cause graph for this group for weeks 0 through 23 – Covid is adding less than 25 deaths per week even in peak weeks.
Remember, all these numbers are not actual deaths, they are ICD-10 Cause of Death codes reported on death certificates sent to the CDC. Thus they will differ from real world counts of the causes of death for these kids. With pediatric Covid deaths, there are so few that they could be closely researched individually to arrive at a true number. This point is important when you hear some pundit say something like “only 6% of reported Covid deaths were caused by Covid”. That is a false representation of the CDC data.
That’s the news brief – just to keep the journalists and pundits honest.
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Author’s Comment:
My father was a pediatrician – a “baby doctor”. Every mother in our suburban Los Angles neighborhood knew where the doctor lived and our house was the “neighborhood emergency room” for all health and accident problems involving kids. I can’t tell you how many kids got stitches put in on our living room coffee table and how many times my brothers and I were called upon to be minor-surgery assistants. The mothers generally had to be taken to another room and served coffee as they were usually panicked by all the blood.
Growing up in such a home meant getting used to the idea of kids dying. And they did, rather a lot of them in those days when antibiotics were just coming into the forefront after WWII. Kids died from all sorts of things that are unthinkable in today’s Western societies. “During the 1950s an annual average of greater than 500,000 cases of measles and nearly 500 deaths due to measles were reported in the United States.“ [ source ] And that’s just measles. Our modern kids are vaccinated against almost all the “childhood illnesses” that nearly every child experienced as a matter of course when I was young.
And kids still die from the annual flu. 2016-2017 = 110 flu deaths. 2017-2018 = 188 flu deaths. 2018-2019 = 144 flu deaths. 2019-2020 = 188 flu deaths. [ source ].
Covid-19 – not so much. Even with Covid-Death-Inflation, Covid-19 is sparing the children – for which we should be grateful.
Read more – Read widely – Read critically
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It’s not about children dying, it’s about preventing clusters and hubs.
Every additional social contact linking one cluster to another opens the road into new feeding grounds for the virus.
Schools are particular bad in this regard. Nowhere else so many people who would otherwise have never any contact with each other come together to sit down in a closed room for 6+ hours five times a week. Except big common space offices eventually but those are not about to open any time soon.
Ron ==> If we were talking about ebola or something truly dangerous, you would be right.
many places have had no lockdowns.
Testing is showing that nearly everyone has been exposed. There is no path to stopping normal spread of SARS-CoV-2.
“Testing is showing that nearly everyone has been exposed.”
Simply not true. The big serological studies in Italy, Spain and UK show otherwise.
Ron ==> Opinions vary , , , , , positive tests does not translate to exposure. Positive tests as high as we are seeing in the US does translate to nearly full exposure. Of course, we are or will all be exposed over and over.
What you are saying is that not everyone tests positive for Covid. Quite a different matter.
Testing can only show infection. Exposure cannot be detected by testing. The positive numbers by testing are by far not sufficient to make the claim “nearly everyone has been exposed”. 6 million of 330?
Ron ==> You do understand sampling and extrapolation?
Kip, that is true and opinions do vary and those in charge disagree with you. I doubt posting on WUWT is going to change their mind probably try a more reasoned letter to those in charge.
LdB ==> Your faith in reasoned letters to “those in charge” is endearingly naive.
I write here and elsewhere because proper professional-grade journalism is needed to keep the public informed of the broader issues in our society. In the US, they are generally getting bombarded by only one side of each issue. And that “side” is often simply some weird “from another galaxy” propaganda.
When people have a better understanding of what’s going on, they make better personal, social, and political decisions.
You would be surprised how many people read here and how many times pieces originally published here are re-published elsewhere.
I have no faith in them Kip but I also don’t believe in wasting time on stuff that isn’t going to have any impact at all .. I am a pragmatic. There are all sorts of other issues like workers insurance and whose liability a death would be, which you don’t touch on. It’s all well and fine to say I reckon it’s safe until the first person to die from a work contracted death sues you.
LdB ==> I’m not sure what kind of impact you are expecting from journalism. Truth is, I did not write anything abut school re-openingsin the essay — it is simply not about that. I do have a personal opinion.
Whose liability is it at this moment, in your locality, if someone (heaven forbid) gets sick with Covid-19 and dies? Who does their family sue? I suspect the answer is “No One”.
Why is that if it is such an important issue?
Millions of people in the US are happily going to work every work day. They are not suing their employers .
Covid-19 is not some magical disease that requires special, different, societal response.
In Australia if you are in a covid hotspot you aren’t allowed to work unless you are a determined essential service. If you died from covid which could be directly linked to your workplace you are covered by workers compensation and even timeoff and hospital is covered. It varies slightly from state to state but as an example here is NSW
https://wiro.nsw.gov.au/covid-19-frequently-asked-questions
You see all you have to establish (which government contact tracing nicely does)
Does that make it more clear the sort of problems that exist.
LdB ==> Good luck on proving that the illness was contracted at work instead on the bus going to work — or from the babysitter looking after the kids — or from just bad luck….
LDB, and the newly unemployed, who then suffers a divorce, who then suffers a stress induced disease, or death, or suicide, who sues for him.
Don’t know or care it isn’t part of our system … You seem confused in thinking I am advocating something. I am not it’s how our law works which is what I was explaining and what you or I think of it doesn’t come into it.
How come this video reminded me of Climate Change Fear?
Run by basically the same people , is why !
Things people do when they are bored of isolationism.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-04/coronavirus-bin-isolation-outing-viral-costume-facebook-group/12116574
Coronaphobia is now a new religion. It even has its mandatory dress code of the veil/muzzel/mask to demonstrate your adherence to the religion.
Whereas older religions had their health ordnances based on species of animals (thou shalt not eat pig), now the health ordnances are just as stupid but are “thou shalt social distance”.
The high priests of this new religion are people like Fauci and the academics of SAGE, the prophets are those with their models.
And like many religions, they feed on the pain and suffering of other to claim “it was the Lord God Covid that caused your son to die of gunshot, just believe in the gods Burn Loot & Riot and you shalt be saved by the archangel Fauci”. And the Sheeple, like the sheeple always have, just go along with it.
Amen.
Have you not seen Moshers post?!!
Steven Mosher September 4, 2020 at 12:56 am
https://youtu.be/_TECf3xSFbU
Flatten the curve? How about we flatten the chief medical officers, the Faucis, the academics, the modellers, the polticians, and all the other assorted idiots and incompetent fools who have created this phoney pandemic.
I saw no rant. Yet rather a comparison of Cov19 illness and deaths to a business as usual scenario, you know, the kind of information an insurer would want.
Unwinnable argument. The fear overlords can always claim that their attacks on society saved kids’ lives. While making them fearful for their very lives over schools and other people at an early age, based not on experience or meaningful fact, but on technocrats’ models. Win-Win for them.
Unlike hurricanes, where you can shelter in place until it passes in a day or so, this virus is not going away just because we hide from it. It will be there when the world opens up again. I understand the original need to not overwhelm the medical system but that ship has now sailed. It is up to those with a greater risk of death to do what they must but everyone else needs to get on with their lives.
I am one who is at greater risk. Over 65 with latent TB. I am not working at my part time job this week because one of our employees flew to New York for 2 weeks and is now back. She won’t self isolate so I wont be going back until she has cleared 10 days without being ill. Over reaction? Perhaps but it is my decision not to take the chance. I still go on with the rest of my life as usual.
Herd immunity is for cattle, not human beings. This is not 1348. I’m a teacher, and I won’t be a part of your %$^^%&& Dr. Mengele experiment!
Edward Bergonzi ==> You need to do what you feel is best for you and yours, That’s what everyone does.
Many nations and US States have opened schools without problems, either for the students or the teachers.
Of course, I’m sure you have read the entire essay above — and realize that I have not said a single word about opening schools –I do however, think they should.
If you don;t think you should teach, to protect your health, then I can support your personal decision.
Good for you! McD is hiring, so is your local trash collection company, good luck with your future well away from anyone’s children.
Epilogue:
Quite few strong opinions about school openings. I did not write about school openings, of course, and many of the comments show that some people did not read beyond the headline. Not reading beyond the headline and/or the lede is a very common failing and a large part of the reason that so many people are overly imfluenced by the media.
Headlines and ledes are meant to be punchy and not truly informative. The details, the important stuff that would help readers understand the news, come far down in a story — or, at least, they used to. Now days journalists are activists and propagandists and don’t give any details that might weaken their political/social activist position.
If you have children or grandchildren, you should be comforted by the knowledge that this flu, Covid-19, is sparing the kids.
Thanks for reading.
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From the article: “How many kids are dying from (or even just with) Covid-19?”
Another question to ask is will children suffer long-term adverse health effects from the Wuhan virus even though they don’t get very sick and few die from the virus?
I read an article tonight where doctors are suggesting that bloodclots may be an *early* sign of the Wuhan virus and that these can crop up in about seven days from initial infection, and are appearing in people who do not require hospitalization, and some of them have no other signs of the Wuhan virus, just the bloodclots. I also read where doctors are questioning whether a cytokine storm is doing the serious damage rather than the virus itself.
SARS-Cov-1, a coronavirus, has caused very long-term (years) adverse health effects for those who survived the infection, and SARS-Cov-2 (Wuhan) looks to be doing something similar.
In other words, just because you don’t get very sick from the Wuhan virus does not rule out complicating factors arising later in life, and this may even apply to children.
The death rate is not the only thing we need to look at with regard to the Wuhan virus.
The HCQ treatment could probably eliminate the long-term adverse health effects of the Wuhan virus if given right after a positive test. That one set of doctors said bloodclotting started around the seventh day of the infection. The HCQ treatment can supposedly rid the body of the Wuhan virus in about a week, give or take a day or two. So it would seem that a timely administration of HCQ would interrupt the Wuhan virus course at just about the right time, when it is starting to do damage to the body.
I read an article tonight where it was claimed that the perscriptions for HCQ had increased by 800 percent from March to June of this year.
I see where a group of doctors are suing the FDA to release the huge store of hydroxychloriquin it has stockpiled, and lift restrictions on its use.
The HCQ treatment could save many lives and help people to avoid long-term adverse health effects, but it has been demonized to the point that it is hard to get for the average person. And many people don’t even thing to use it because of the climate that has been created around it.
All the studies of the HCQ treatment that show success are those which give the HCQ treatment to patients when they are initially infected.
All the studies the FDA uses to suppress HCQ are those that are given to people who have already been hospitalized, meaning very sick people. These studies also either don’t use the entire HCQ treatment which includes an antibiotic and zinc, or they give very large, unnecessary, harmful doses of HCQ.
For people who take it immediately after being infected, it works fine. One doctor said he had a 100 percent success rate at keeping his patients out of the hospital.
The HCQ demonization is truly a crime against humanity.
Tom ==> On long-term effects — since there has not been a “long-time” yet, we don;t know — bit all serious diseases (literally) have some lingering effects — the childhood diseases are notorious for this. There will always always be some children who get “name-any-disease” that end up with what may be a “long-term effect” from that disease or may be just something that the body did to itself while fighting off that disease. That is of interest to those who treat the follow-up problems — but is not something that we can change at this time.
We can’t change how many children will eventually get ill from the SARS-CoV-2 virus — it is out there now in the human population and will run its course despite anything we do. That is the harsh reality. qhen and if an effective vaccine is developed, SARS-CoV-2 virus will still circulate and infect adults and children — hopefully fewer of them.
Viruses are tricky and do things that modern medicine does not understand.
And, yes, there is a crime against humanity underway — the suppression of HCQ-Azi-Zn treatment for Covid-19.
“There will always always be some children who get “name-any-disease” that end up with what may be a “long-term effect” from that disease or may be just something that the body did to itself while fighting off that disease. That is of interest to those who treat the follow-up problems — but is not something that we can change at this time.”
I don’t agree with that, Kip. There is something we can do about it now: Administer the HCQ treatment. It is safe and it works when given early in the infection.
If the Wuhan virus follows the same path as SARS-Cov-1, then we can expect a lot of adverse health effects appearing down the road. Doctors are currently warning about epidemics of kidney, heart and lung and sepsis disease from the effect of the Wuhan virus.
One recent study was done of 100 people who were infected with the Wuhan virus but did not require hospitalization, and had subsequently recovered from the infection. Of these 100 people with mild cases of the Wuhan virus who had recovered, they found 72 people who were showing inflamation of their hearts and lungs.
Now we don’t know if this damage is just temporary and the body may heal itself, but they could also be permanent, similar to the SARS-Cov-1 virus.
We don’t know one way or another about the long-term damage now, but my point is we have what appears to be a safe and effective treatment for the Wuhan virus, the HCQ treatment, and we should be using it until we find out one way or another about any long-term adverse health effects from the Wuhan virus.
I’m curious to know how nations like Turkey, who give the HCQ treatment to everyone who tests positive, treat their children with the drug. Or do they? The nations that automatically treat people with HCQ when they test positive have a lower death rate than those who do not.
If you want to read about long-term adverse health effects from the Wuhan virus do a search on “long haulers”. Alyssa Milano, a famous actress, has been suffering with complications from the Wuhan Virus for over six months. I read her story yesterday. You don’t want to go through what she has been going through, and it seems to me this could be prevented with the HCQ treatment. Unfortunately, Alyssa is a die-hard leftist so I assume taking the HCQ treatment for her would be like validating Donald Trump, and she can’t have that. So she has to suffer.
Tom ==> I support HCQ-Azi_Zn treatment for all.
Here’s something I ran across tonight, Kip.
https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-post-covid-syndrome-is-severely-damaging-kids-hearts-new-study-shows
Mysterious Post-COVID Syndrome Affecting Kids Appears to Be Even Worse Than We Thought
PETER DOCKRILL 7 SEPTEMBER 2020
“A mysterious, new disease called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C, and also known as paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome or PIMS) has affected hundreds of children around the world since it was first discovered earlier this year.
The condition, thought to be somehow linked to COVID-19, can emerge in kids even after very mild coronavirus infections. But a light case of coronavirus is no guarantee that a subsequent case of MIS-C won’t be very serious, and sometimes even fatal.”
“Nonetheless, while there’s still a lot we don’t know about MIS-C, the picture that’s starting to emerge is something we have to take very seriously: a disease associated with COVID-19 that for many children who experience it is much worse than the COVID-19 they’ve already encountered.”
end excerpt
I think this is the kid’s version of the adverse effects older adults are experiencing after having recovered from the Wuhan virus infection.
The Wuhan virus looks like a nasty virus, indeed.
The HCQ treatment could stop the progression of this disease in short order, and that would seem to me to be the objective. The longer the virus is in the body, the more damage it does.
It’s really a crime that people don’t have this medicine readily available to them. Cutting the Wuhan virus infection short might eliminate all these long-term health problems.
One complicating factor is it is estimated that some people could be infected with the Wuhan virus for 14 days before they start showing symptoms. I saw a study the other day where doctors were talking about a bloodclot problem that had developed in a child, in his legs, and they said this problem had developed seven days after the patient showed symptoms. But the infection could have possibly been going on for two week prior to the showing of symptoms.
I just wonder what the level of system damage is with each advancing week of infection.
Interrrupting the normal course of the Wuhan virus infection should be the objective. That can be done using the HCQ treatment.
I heard tonight that HCQ, Vitamin D, and the Z-pack were also a good combination. No mention of zinc with this combination, for some reason.
Tom Abbott ==> hen reading these studies and reports, it is very very important to read with your critical thinking knob turn to Full Power.
Any piece with a head line that includes “Even Worse Than We Thought” can probably be discounted immediate a– as least chalked up as a rabid exaggeration.
The next indicator that something is amiss is “The condition, thought to be somehow linked to COVID-19,” — there is, as yet, no definite connection between Covid-19 illness and subsequent MIS-C or PIMS.
There is a lot of rumor mongering going on — much of it intended to feed fuel to Covid-Panic.
There is nothing particularly unusual with viral diseases causing follow-on or long-term results.
The science will eventually sort out once the 2020 Presidential election is over — and medial people begin to fight back against the politics.