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Children are always an at-risk group in respiratory illnesses.
The CMO and CSA explicitly said yesterday children were not an at risk group, which formed part of the rationale for keeping schools open.
What source data are you looking at to say they are an at risk group? I skimmed the article in the NJEM, and didn't say anything pertinent to children being at risk in the other links you posted.
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Sorry for a slow reply. Also @Fox
You have correctly called me out for incorrectly using the absolute. Nothing in medicine is Always or Never. For this I apologize.
However- what I had meant- is from clinical experience, and a vague understanding of the complex pathophysiological and physiological differences between adults and children, I would (as does the vaccination program) always see children as an at-risk group from respiratory infectious diseases.
They are likely to represent a large number (25% of all primary care appointments), and though they often do well- even when 'in extremis'- we have a truism in medicine which is that Kids do nothing slowly- so deterioration or recovery happens at a rate that can be quite shocking.
I have read the CMO's highlights (we are receiving daily briefings), but as always- I prefer primary sources- hence the above article posted.To sum up:
I am not suggesting that you should treat it as an impending threat to your children.
CONJECTURE
I do however think that the low numbers suggest that there is flawed data gathering/analysis, skewing to a more frightening set of figures in one category and an understatement of another. /CONJECTURE.
For those interested in how the figures stated by our CMO were arrived at:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30144-4/fulltext
For those interested in the paediatric cases:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2003717
Conjecture:
This highlights some interesting case-identification/data-gathering errors in the overall stats it is gathered from (and suggests that we may be seeing a combination of C19 and other infections in the data-set- and looking for C19).
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From memory this is about the date China added detection based on CT and radiological evidence
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This is the WHO sit-rep- updated daily:
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/
(please note the definitions: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/global-surveillance-for-human-infection-with-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov) )
I would highly urge you to read as much primary source as possible.
Children are always an at-risk group in respiratory illnesses.
We are looking at a manageable pandemic. Effects will be widespread, and you will know someone who has been directly affected.
The UK government's approach is different to how I anticipated it would be, but as pointed out in the first paper- it is difficult to see how the spread could have been more expediently curtailed given the efflux out of Hubei when travel restrictions were announced. This pattern undoubtedly repeats itself throughout countries with similar restrictions
. It is therefore a difficult political choice as to attempt to shut down a population used to freedoms, or to assume inevitable widespread disease load and educate the public to recognise the cases that need medical attention- with the intention of reducing health-care load, and attempting to stabilise the fallout from an economic standpoint.