Thread by @dgurdasani1

So, studies have now shown that 2nd infections in children are 1) associated with the same risk of long COVID as 1st infections 2) the risk is not uncommon (5-16%); and 3) associated with similar risk of hospitalisation.
This is not unexpected 🧵

https://twitter.com/Sandyboots2020/status/1657796725791244291

The study showed "12.1% of CYP infected for the first time, 16.1% of those reinfected and 4.8% who always tested negative (by PCR or self-report) met the research definition of long COVID at both 3- and 6-months."

Many of us fully expected this, given many children don't mount strong adaptive immune responses to COVID because of strong innate responses. This means many don't even seroconvert. Don't develop antibodies & those who do serorevert quite fast.

So, essentially JCVI which essentially said infections in children may boost immunity in adults- repeatedly choosing to delay vaccination in children- implicitly leading to infection in children before they could get vaccinated- have put children in harms way.

These rates of long COVID are not low- 12-16% - compared to symptomaticity of 4.8% in children without COVID- and persisting at 3-6 months.

Imagine repeatedly exposing children to a pathogen that does this, with each infection leading to this level of risk - persistent symptoms for 3 months. And not even offering children boosters, or young children vaccination, when this is available. That's where we are.

Tell me this is science and not ideology. JCVI that has been so concerned about myocarditis with vaccines never considered the impact of long COVID - which remains the same (and is very high) with each infection based on this study - for symptoms lasting 3-6 months.

3-6 months is a very long period in a child's life. So how many children have been re-infected. I guess we'll never know with the end of the ONS survey, but estimates until now have shown 50-60% re-infection in children, and 90% exposed at least once.

What does that mean at population level? Huge impact - if you imagine 5-10% of children impacted for at least 3-6 months post-infection - with infection rates at 160% - you do the math.

I suspect this study will meet with utter silence from the media and most of the UK paeds community who decided long ago that their complicity with mass infection had to be rationalised with constant minimisation and opposition to vaccination of children.

Many of us screamed until we were blue that children shouldn't be exposed to an infection which had concerning long term impacts, when vaccines were available (!) and could've prevented some of this. Many of us advocated for mitigations in schools and were utterly vilified.

We said early on that children don't mount long-term immune responses in the way adults do, and re-infection was not benign. It was common, and needed to be prevented because consequences were not know. No one listened. These were children.

It's not validating in any way to be shown to be right again and again. It's just heartbreaking. All of this could've been prevented. If those who were supposed to protect these children had listened- paid attention to the evidence, and put their egos aside.

JCVI, and a lot in UK paeds are responsible for this. I hope they'll hold up a mirror and take a long hard look at the devastation their cognitive gymnastics and ideology has caused.

And then we see ESPID - who on their board have people like Ladhani, Finn, members of JCVI - platforming Munro to discuss his experienced on twitter. Is this all a celebration of the suffering wreaked on children and families through ideology of UK paeds leadership over science?

Viner, RCPCH- all are responsible. Viner who wrote several extremely flawed 'systematic reviews' - many published by Lancet, BMJ journals with inadequate peer review- with Lancet not accepting any comment - even about huge errors in interpretation. They're all responsible

How much damage did these false narratives do? Epidemiologists who understood the huge biases in these studies rallied very early- people like @DrZoeHyde - and were met with constant targeting and calls for retraction on very legitimate and rigorous critique of these papers.

When we first tried to publish our paper on risk-benefit of vaccines, our paper got rejected on a paediatricians 'personal view' that it could not be valid- no evidence provided. This is the uphill battle.

UK paeds have gatekept information- by actively opposing publication of views that don't fit. It's easy to get papers published minimising COVID impacts in children - making this some sort of 'consensus'- but much harder to get rigorous evidence on the real impacts out.

I'm going to urge journal editors to not become complicit in this- please be aware when you reach out to 'clinical reviewers' for paeds papers - reviews need to cite evidence too, they can't be based on 'personal opinion'... from a clinical community that's heavily biased.

I've also been an expert witness in far too many cases where I've had to watch in horror while UK paediatricians with no epidemiological knowledge gave false evidence - this was not done knowingly, but rather with a false sense of knowing what they didn't.

In one case I remember the paeds saying asthma caused more deaths than covid in a given year- I knew this wasn't true, and challenged it. But there's a general societal bias as well towards believing clinicians over scientists- although these are things I do know more about

My expertise was repeatedly questioned on the basis that I don't 'see patients' even while I was quoting ONS statistics accurately and showing that what was said couldn't have been the case. But guess who gets believed, even when I turn up with numbers and facts.

To be honest, giving false evidence to support the prosecution of parents trying to keep children safe is a low even I hadn't expected- it's been very disturbing. I'll talk about it more when all these prosecutions are over and I can say a bit more.

Between a paeds in scrubs who confidently spouts nonsense in areas they have no actual understand of (they follow their leadership- Viner, RCPCH, JCVI)- and me - quoting ONS data with references- who do you think they believe?