Some psychologists and educators worry that such impairment in facial processing can lead to a spate of challenges with socialization and communication. Kids may find reading people’s emotions through masks particularly difficult. And for children who are meeting new classmates for the first time while masked, recognition difficulties can slow down the getting-to-know-you process and, in the long run, hinder the development of trust. England opted not to require children to wear masks in elementary school, at least for the time being; according to The New York Times, both the Conservative and Labour Parties are concerned that masks make communication harder for kids. The World Health Organization also recommended that schools weigh potential “psychosocial development” concerns when deciding mask requirements for children ages 6 through 12.
Tag: Children
Evidence shows that children are not at risk of COVID-19 nor are they a vector of transmission. However, their mental and physical health and education has suffered due to the measures in place.
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
The mortality data for England and Wales from ONS from 1 May 2021 until 17 September 2021 shows a significant excess, particularly in the 15-19 year age group. Depending on the baseline chosen, the excess for 15-19 year olds is between 16% and 47% above expected levels (see table 1 and 2). COVID-19 deaths were too small in number to account for the excess. A disproportionate number of these excess deaths were in males. A certain amount of variation by random chance would be expected but an increase of this proportion is large enough not to be dismissed without further investigation.
…Mortality has risen in younger age groups since 1st May 2021. The increase in the 15-19 year old age group is particularly noticeable, especially as deaths in this age group are uncommon. The excess deaths have a marked male predominance. An increase in ambulance call outs for patients who have had a cardiac arrest or are unconscious showed a coincidental noticeable rise from May 2021. The period also coincides with the rollout of vaccination. Finally, ONS have reported on a striking rise in age adjusted mortality rates in those with only one dose that accelerated in May 2021 to levels far exceeding those in the unvaccinated.
https://www.hartgroup.org/recent-deaths-in-young-people-in-england-and-wales/
Some parents are now questioning if Israel moved too fast in jabbing their children. And several health professionals and politicians are demanding the abolition of a policy expected to go into effect next month, which states that the Green Pass will be given only to those who receive a third dose of the vaccine six months after getting a second vaccination.
Young children, as the world has known for months now, just aren’t prone to contract or transmit the coronavirus. Even the few who contract it are rarely symptomatic.
And masking is terrible for many of them: They’re still at a stage of growth where seeing faces and expressions is vital to developing cognitive and social skills. Children with certain disabilities, in particular, need to see teachers’ faces and lips to learn.
And the CDC’s own research indicates masks do nothing for kids: Its key study in December failed to show a statistically significant benefit to masking kids in school. And a former dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Flier, noted recently, “We lack credible evidence for benefits of masking kids aged 2 to 5, despite what the American Academy of Pediatrics says.”
The ONS antibody studies suggest that nearly half of 16 and 17 year olds have been previously infected. We don’t know the equivalent figure for 12 to fives but it is likely to be similar. That means the vaccine effect relative to all unvaccinated (previously infected and not) will be drastically lower than the figure used in the modelling paper. In turn, even the 15 minutes of prevented lost schooling will be a significant overestimate.
British funeral undertaker John O’Looney speaks to independent journalist Lindie Naughton about all the elderly people who are supposedly dying from “covid” in care homes and hospitals.
Lindie Naughton is an Irish journalist living in Dublin. She writes regular columns on running and minority sports for the Evening Herald. She also writes for the Irish Garden and Irish Runner magazines and is a judge for the Irish Times Sportswoman of the Year awards.
Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19, a major study has found.
Children who face the highest risk of a “cardiac adverse event” are boys aged between 12 and 15 following two doses of a vaccine, according to new research from the US.
JCVI member Professor Adam Finn said that the latest data from paediatric cardiologists in the US shows that there are concerns about the long-term side effects of COVID-19 vaccine for children.
We spoke to Professor Anthony Harnden, the deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and asked him why they had ruled out vaccines for healthy 12 to 15-year-olds.
Backup mirrors:
The CDC did not include its finding that “required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional” in the summary of its report.
We write as concerned doctors, nurses, and other allied healthcare professionals with no vested interest in doing so. To the contrary, we face personal risk in relation to our employment for doing so and / or the risk of being personally “smeared” by those who inevitably will not like us speaking out.
Pfizer’s Covid vaccine may pose more of a risk to boys, a study claimed today amid growing calls for No10 to rethink plans to dish out jabs to children.
New research has suggested boys are 14 times more likely to be struck down with a rare heart complication called myocarditis.
The data, from the US, will likely fuel an already fierce debate over Britain’s decision to press ahead with inoculating all 16 and 17-year-olds.
Schools are not spreading Covid, according to an official study that has boosted hopes that the return to class will not trigger an autumn surge in infections.
Pupils sent home in class bubbles were highly unlikely to pass on the virus to their parents even when they did pick up it from a fellow pupil, the research found.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/75136706-f171-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979
The kids are safe. They always have been.
It may sound strange, given a year of panic over school closures and reopenings, a year of masking toddlers and closing playgrounds and huddling in pandemic pods, that among children the mortality risk from COVID-19 is actually lower than from the flu. The risk of severe disease or hospitalization is about the same.
This is true for the much-worried-over Delta variant. It is also true for all the other variants, and for the original strain. Most remarkably, it has been known to be true since the very earliest days of the pandemic — indeed it was among the very first things we did know about the disease. The preliminary mortality data from China was very clear: To children, COVID-19 represented only a vanishingly tiny threat of death, hospitalization, or severe disease.
Yet for a year and a half we have been largely unwilling to fully believe it. Children now wear masks at little-league games, and at the swimming pool, and when school reopens in the fall they will likely wear masks there, too. But the kids are not at risk themselves, and never were. Now, thanks to vaccines, the vast majority of their parents and grandparents aren’t any longer, either.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/the-kids-were-safe-from-covid-the-whole-time.html
The overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from Covid is extremely low, a new analysis of Covid infection data confirms.
Scientists from University College London, and the Universities of York, Bristol and Liverpool say their studies of children are the most comprehensive yet anywhere in the world.
They checked England’s public health data and found most of the young people who had died of Covid-19 had underlying health conditions:Around 15 had life-limiting or underlying conditions, including 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities
Six had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years – though researchers caution some illnesses may have been missed
A further 36 children had a positive Covid test at the time of their death but died from other causes, the analysis suggests
Though the overall risks were still low, children and young people who died were more likely to be over the age of 10 and of Black and Asian ethnicity.
Researchers estimate that 25 deaths in a population of some 12 million children in England gives a broad, overall mortality rate of 2 per million children.
Epidemiologist and public health professor Michael Baker used the metaphor of forest brushfires: if a year or two have passed without fire, there is more fuel on the ground to feed the flames. When a fire finally comes, it burns much more fiercely. “What we’re seeing now is we’ve accumulated a whole lot of susceptible children that have missed out on exposure – so now they’re seeing it for the first time,” Baker said.
…“The lack of immune stimulation… induced an “immunity debt” which could have negative consequences when the pandemic is under control and [public health intervientions] are lifted,” the doctors wrote. “The longer these periods of ‘viral or bacterial low-exposure’ are, the greater the likelihood of future epidemics.”
25 CYP died of SARS-CoV-2 during the first pandemic year in England, equivalent to an infection fatality rate of 5 per 100,000 and a mortality rate of 2 per million. Most had an underlying comorbidity, particularly neurodisability and life-limiting conditions. The CYP who died were mainly >10 years and of Asian and Black ethnicity, compared to other causes of the death, but their absolute risk of death was still extremely low.
Prof Bhattacharya said: “If lockdown was a primary driver of good Covid outcomes Florida would have come out far worse. It is no good to say that it did not have variants – Florida had the Alpha and Delta variant. Lockdowns don’t protect against coronavirus. And they certainly have collateral harm. Children have suffered, especially poor children. Unemployment mental health all the harm is hard to ignore and it is very hard to find any benefit to lockdown measures.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1457984/lockdown-britain-protected-rich-working-class
The Associated Press recently ran a story they said debunked the dissenting Covid concerns of pathologist, Dr. Roger Hodkinson. In their article titled, “Pathologist falsely claims COVID-19 is a hoax, no worse than the flu,” they misrepresented several of Dr. Hodkinson’s statements. The also wrote specifically saying they were planning to debunk him, not understand what he meant. Dr Hodkinson is a medical specialist in pathology and graduate of Cambridge University, UK. He is a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He was previously the President of the Alberta Society of Laboratory Physicians, an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta, and CEO of a large community based medical laboratory with a full menu of testing for infectious disease and virology. He is currently the Chairman of an American biotechnology company active in DNA sequencing.
One of the UK’s leading childhood health experts has said there is not enough evidence to support vaccinating children against Covid, and the body that will make the decision on whether to jab under-18s has indicated it will take a cautious approach.
Prof Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said there was “rock-solid data” to show that the risk of severe harm to children from Covid was “incredibly low”.