The below is a very rough transcript of an extended point he made about child deaths. It is not word for word but I believe I have caught the central points and not misrepresented anything. The extract below begins at 8:55 in on the podcast linked above if you wish to listen for yourself.
"if we really let this spread through the child population, which could happen quite rapidly in late November and in December, it could mean a lot of child hospitalisations and some child deaths. Now, we've already had one... [a 14 year old, some detail followed]... in the UK 110 children have died.. associated with Covid19 and there are debates as to how many of them died with Covid vs from Covid but you know you're not dealing with elderly people here, you are dealing with teenagers and children. A lot of them had pre-existing conditions, I found it quite disturbing that most of the media tried to explain away child covid deaths by saying that they had a pre-existing condition. Now a lot of us have preexisting conditions... asthma is a preexisting condition, eczema is a pre-existing condition, I mean a lot of our children have these and it doesn't make them.. their deaths any less important or tragic. The issue is that if the UK continue to spread this virus in the younger population somewhere between 600 and 700 children British children could potentially die. In Ireland that number would be somewhere between 60 and 70 but that's probably not going to happen because we are not going to allow the virus - I hope - to spread through our schools before we start vaccinating children... ... I would put a particularly grim number on the table which is that imagine we reached the level of child infection the UK has already reached... that would mean that there are 8 or children alive in Ireland that would not be alive in February when we get to start vaccinating children, if we get to the same level of infection as the UK".
The above is extremely alarming. But I have some questions. He makes a fair point about people with pre-existing conditions being valuable, and their deaths sad, I agree with that. However, he then cites asthma and eczema as two pre-existing conditions many children have. This is true, but the way he presents it here he seems to be linking these particular conditions with deaths of children due to Covid or at the very least being careless as to the implication his words must convey. This must have been most alarming to all parents listening. How could you not think, listening to Ryan, that your little boy or girl with asthma or eczema was at serious risk in school?
The below is an extract from the Telegraph regarding a recent study in the UK on child death and covid:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medica ... li=AAJt1k3The study of childhood deaths was carried out by experts from NHS England, Public Health England and several universities and hospitals, who analysed mortality figures between March 2020 and February 2021.
They found just six healthy children with no underlying health conditions died as a direct result of catching Covid, including two who developed a Kawasaki-like inflammatory condition called Pims-TS.
Separate data show that on average, about 900 children die annually from infectious diseases, with about 90 deaths from flu or pneumonia among children in 2019 in England.
The study showed that more than 3,100 children died in the year following the first lockdown, but only 61 were infected with Covid.
Of those, 25 died as a result of the virus, including 19 who suffered from a chronic health condition, most of which were “life-limiting”.
Just six deaths involved children without underlying health problems.
Researchers said that during the study period, almost half a million under-18s contracted Covid, giving an infection fatality rate of five per 100,000 people.
That means that if a child tests positive for the virus, they have a 99.995 per cent chance of surviving. With more than 12 million under-18s in England, the researchers said Covid kills two children per million.
While the research was comprehensive and spanned England, it looked only at a time period where the alpha and original strains of the virus were present as the delta variant had yet to take off in the UK.
Researchers said they expected the findings would broadly hold, when they are updated, with children at extremely low risk of death from the virus.
One of the authors is quoted (in the Daily Mail unfortunately) as follows:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... veals.htmlStudy author Professor Russell Viner, an expert in child and adolescent health from University College London, said the findings demonstrated the comparatively small risk Covid posed to children.
'There were only 25 deaths in this age-group from Covid in the year, compared with over 100,000 amongst adults,' he said.
'Any death of a child is one too many — but we sadly must recognise there are over 3,000 deaths of children and young people in England in ordinary years.'
Professor Viner also said the majority of the children that did die from Covid were vulnerable to similar diseases that circulate during the year.
'The great majority of those who died were children and young people we know are sadly at much higher risk of death due to other serious medical conditions,' he said.
'I emphasise that this doesn’t mean children with allergies or asthma but those very small groups who were vulnerable to winter viruses in any previous year.'
Of the 25 children that died the majority (72 per cent) were over 10, with 15 having a life-limiting condition and 16 having two or more comorbidities.
I also looked up the links with conditions like eczema and death or serious illness from covid. The British Association of Dermatologists’ Risk Stratification Grid is linked below, and basically, it says you should act the same as anyone else unless it is really serious or you have other serious conditions.
https://www.bad.org.uk/shared/get-file. ... nt&id=6946
So when people talk about "pre-existing conditions" in child covid deaths, I think it is fair to say that it is not the likes of asthma or eczema they are referring to, but rather more serious illnesses. I thought Ryans's contribution here was a most disingenuous display of scaremongering.
