Re: A Quick (Corrected) Calculation on Child Covid Deaths (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Ah.  Good reasoning.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:20:21 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 >  > Subject: A Quick (Corrected) Calculation on Child Covid Deaths
 >  > From: FAIR<http://www.fair.org/~fair>
 >  > Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2020 19:09:03 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?e=6ed8ef48d7&u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=dd4587d42a
 >  > 
 >  > FAIR
 >  > View article on FAIR's website (
 >  > https://fair.org/home/a-quick-corrected-calculation-on-child-covid-deaths/)
 >  > A Quick (Corrected) Calculation on Child Covid Deaths Jim Naureckas (
 >  > https://fair.org/home/a-quick-corrected-calculation-on-child-covid-deaths/)
 >  > 
 >  > Jacobin: We Need a Radically Different Approach to the Pandemic and Our 
 >  > Economy as a Whole
 >  > 
 >  > Jacobin (9/19/20 (
 >  > https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=e647c55b43&e=6c4beb1555) )
 >  > platforms two epidemiologists who argue that "
 >  > exposures [to coronavirus] in young, healthy people contribute to the herd 
 >  > immunity that will ultimately benefit all"—without spelling out the 
 >  > massive death toll such a policy implies.
 >  > 
 >  > I posted an angry piece on Wednesday (9/23/20) about an interview that was 
 >  > published by Jacobin (9/19/20 (
 >  > https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/covid-19-pandemic-economy-us-response-inequality) )
 >  > —and then immediately took it down, because it was based on a 
 >  > misreading of a chart (
 >  > https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm) from the Centers 
 >  > for Disease Control.
 >  > 
 >  > While I’m sorry I didn’t catch the mistake before publishing (and 
 >  > grateful to the reader who pointed out my error), I’m glad to be wrong, 
 >  > because my error was thinking that children are considerably more vulnerable 
 >  > to the coronavirus than they actually are.
 >  > 
 >  > Looking at the correct numbers (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#
 >  > demographics) provided by the CDC on Covid-19 cases and deaths, one can 
 >  > calculate the percentage of reported cases for each age group that result in 
 >  > death. For the 0–4 years group,  there have been 89,224 reported cases and 
 >  > 34 deaths, for a 0.04% fatality rate. For ages 5–17, it’s 332,192 cases 
 >  > and 58 deaths, or 0.02% fatality. For 18–29, it’s 1,171,828 and 766 
 >  > deaths, which is 0.07%.
 >  > 
 >  > By way of comparison, the CDC reports (
 >  > https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/meas.html) a case fatality rate 
 >  > for measles of 0.2%, and for chicken pox (
 >  > https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/varicella.html) , for children 1� >  > �14, of about 0.01%.
 >  > 
 >  > The line in the Jacobin interview I took issue with was Harvard 
 >  > epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff saying, “Children and young adults have 
 >  > minimal risk, and there is no scientific or public health rationale to close 
 >  > daycare centers, schools or colleges.” While my rebuttal to this claim was 
 >  > based on exaggerated numbers, the question remains: Does a disease that 
 >  > kills two, four or seven young patients in 10,000 qualify as a “minimal 
 >  > risk”? Would epidemiologists say that a new strain of chicken pox that was 
 >  > twice as lethal or more, depending on the age group, and for which we had no 
 >  > immunity to or vaccine for, provided “no scientific or public health 
 >  > rationale” for closing schools?
 >  > 
 >  > When Kulldorff assures Jacobin that there is “a more than thousand-fold 
 >  > difference in mortality risk by age,” the interview links to a study by 
 >  > Kulldorff (published on LinkedIn, 4/10/20 (
 >  > https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/covid-19-counter-measures-should-age-specific-martin-kulldorff/) )
 >  > that finds extremely low risks of death for children 
 >  > and young adults. But he achieves this through sleight of hand, combining a 
 >  > low risk of infection when exposed with a low risk of death when infected. 
 >  > The policy Kulldorff seems to be advocating, however, is to not try to 
 >  > prevent infection in most children—because, as his colleague Katherine Yih 
 >  > says, “exposures [to the coronavirus] in young, healthy people contribute 
 >  > to the herd immunity that will ultimately benefit all.” So the fact that 
 >  > it may take more exposures to infect a young person than an older person is 
 >  > irrelevant to the question of how risky the policies proposed by Kulldorff 
 >  > and Yih would be.
 >  > 
 >  > As FAIR (3/17/20 (
 >  > https://fair.org/home/to-defeat-coronavirus-media-need-to-look-at-real-world-examples-not-play-simulitis/)
 >  > , 5/27/20 (
 >  > https://fair.org/home/us-media-failed-to-factcheck-swedens-herd-immunity-hoax
 >  > ) ) has argued before, people who promote the idea of accepting Covid 
 >  > infection in pursuit of herd immunity rarely acknowledge the high death toll 
 >  > that such a policy necessarily entails. There are about 20 million children 
 >  > under the age of five in the United States, according to the Census (
 >  > https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-kits/2020/population-estimates-detailed.html)
 >  > ; if no steps are taken to prevent them from being infected with the 
 >  > coronavirus, a fatality rate of 0.04% implies a worst-case scenario of 8,000 
 >  > deaths among them.
 >  > 
 >  > There are an estimated 62 million children between the ages of 5–19; 
 >  > applying the 0.02% death rate for reported cases among 5-17-year-olds 
 >  > suggests a possible death toll of 12,000 were they all allowed to be 
 >  > infected. For the 45 million between the ages of 20–29, the 0.07% fatality 
 >  > rate for reported cases among 18-29-year-olds indicates a worst case of 
 >  > 32,000 deaths.
 >  > 
 >  > If the US truly tried to pursue a herd immunity strategy, the actual number 
 >  > of deaths among children and young adults would almost certainly be less 
 >  > than these numbers; herd immunity would in fact kick in at some point before 
 >  > every child was infected. And there are no doubt cases of Covid in children 
 >  > and young adults that are not reported to medical authorities, so the true 
 >  > case fatality rates are likely not as high as the figures used in these 
 >  > calculations. But how much lower they might be is based on guesses about 
 >  > when herd immunity would be reached, and how many Covid cases there are that 
 >  > we don’t know about.
 >  > 
 >  > It’s safe to say, when almost a hundred children have died when less than 
 >  > 1% of the youth population has reportedly been infected, that a policy that 
 >  > deliberately allows a majority of children to be infected will cause a scale 
 >  > of deaths among children that few parents would consider a “minimal risk.� >  > �
 >  > Read more (
 >  > https://fair.org/home/a-quick-corrected-calculation-on-child-covid-deaths/)
 >  > 
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