Thread by @globalhlthtwit

On Children and Long Covid.
No. You are being disingenuous with these studies. We agree the Swiss study is worthless because of type 2 error. Let us now look at the Zoe and the Australia studies...(1)

People are rightly worried about Long Covid and possible effects on children's developing brains. The Zoe study shows 4.4% of 1,734 infected children (588 younger 1,146 older children) get headache, fatigue and anosmia (three neurological signs) lasting more than one month. (2)

Worrying. If children are now to be exposed to infection by the UK government failure with public health/vaccination measures, + say another 50% of children up to 16 become infected, we're looking at 8.8 million x 0.5 x 0.044 = 193,600 kids facing prolonged symptoms. (3)

And what about the recent Lancet Oxford/Imperial study of adults showing brain changes in many infected adults? We don't know what is happening to the brains of children yet. More worry. (4) iflscience.com/brain/covid19-…

Then you say that 'severity of symptoms was worse in the comparator group' but don't mention these were just 15 children, or 0.9% i.e FIVE times less than the affected positive children. So I am not reassured at all. The Zoe study is actually worrying. (5)

So what about the 'larger, well-conducted' Australia study? It's not a paper. It's a letter discussing follow-up of 171 kids from a tertiary hospital, 95% with mild disease or no symptoms. Two had inflammatory syndrome. 12 (8%) of children had longer term symptoms, gone by 6m.(6)

None of these studies give us a reliable estimate of Long Covid, but all show more than 2% of children had prolonged symptoms. So what does the ONS data tell us with their very large datasets? They looked at 313,000 people aged 2 or over, surveyed in the month to June 6. (7)

On July 1 the new data shows 962,000 people in private households in the UK (1.5% of the population) were experiencing self-reported "long COVID" (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks). (8) ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

856,000 (89.0%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 385,000 (40.0%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously. (9)

They estimate that 13000 children aged 2-11, 20,000 aged 12-16 and 71,000 aged 17-24 had Long Covid of any duration. Most in these 3 age groups had had symptoms for AT LEAST 12 weeks (10,000, 16000, 65000 respectively). (10)

Perhaps most worrying is that the latest UK Long Covid estimate for children aged 12-16 who experience prolonged symptoms for at least ONE YEAR is 0.12% (0.06-0.17) or 1 in 830, with possible but unknown effects on developing brain structure based on recent adult studies. (11)

Despite the extremely low risk of myocarditis in vaccinated children, all of whom recovered, the USA, European Union, Israel + others judge benefit-risk to strongly favour vaccination of older children. The UK is an outlier. Why are we exposing children to these risks? (12)

The argument to donate our children's vaccines supplies to Africa are spurious. Africa needs technology transfer, a patent waiver + finance so their companies can make their own vaccines. Not almost expired donations from the G7 +UK, which blocked the patent waiver. (13)

Worse, the government boast it is good to 'live with the virus', Minister Javid, 'it's good for our health', + SAGE/NERVTAG advisers on TV say children have a very mild illness. We need to look at the population data evidence, not clinical opinions. There are real risks (14)

This is a response to

https://twitter.com/apsmunro/status/1411764018004516866?s=20

@ProfCalumSemple @adamhfinn @SMHopkins @CMO_England @chrischirp @Kit_Yates_Maths @SusanMichie @martinmckee @GabrielScally @apsmunro