Northern Europe during Pandemic -- Summers 2020 & 2021 & onwards

[Dockhead]

I'm sailing with a very weak connection, so won't post the Our World in Data charts, but the situation in our neck of the world continues to develop the same way. Huge increases in infections in Denmark and UK, and big increases elsewhere. Even Sweden now has 300 daily infections per million. But just as before, no increase in death or hospitalisation rates. Denmark with 1600 infections, still has less than 2 deaths, and the line is flat. UK even has declining deaths.

So far so good, in this new era.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

Could be vaccine-induced too, who knows.

Probably: Gilbert G.G.Donders M.D., Ph.D., and associates know.
Likewise, it could be related to the number of Nicolas Cage movies the participants had seen, but I doubt that, also.

[laird]

Looks like the UK is getting close to the one million a day vaccinations ,Monday's figures were reported as 850k

The other big negative in the covid mix is that crooks are offering covid passports for sale

[Zippee]

I'd happily lose a few sperm, lol...

Were it only that sperm count were the only risk! Once again, we have a tendency to rightfully worry about death and hospitalization for severe illness which of course, are quite bad enough. Less than 1% will die (but that has been estimated at already over a million deaths in the US. This leaves out many people who needlessly die from other causes who have been unable to get proper treatment or prompt admission, or are even refused admission to overcrowded hospitals.

Add a few more percent for long hospitalizations and severe outcomes. But the real problem – not at all sufficiently discussed in the media – are the long haul effects. These affect – I’m serious – around a third of all cases, including so-called “mild cases” that were never hospitalized.

And the long term effects include younger people and even children: heart inflammation, multi-inflammatory syndrome in children and so on. Many people experience PTSD, and something called PICW (post-ICU syndrome) that follow them after care.

This third of all infections include lasting fatigue, memory loss, serious and permanent major organ damage, serious psychological anxiety and depression, insomnia, loss of smell or taste, alcoholism, loss of home or income, and more. People are at odds, angry, fighting. Domestic violence, and confrontations in public.

“Researchers will learn more about how and why the coronavirus affects different people in such a variety of ways, and why some people experience no symptoms at all while others have life-threatening organ damage or lasting disability. New insights will provide avenues for therapies and hope for people living with long-term COVID-19 effects.”

Our focus on death is really way too narrow and is actually the lowest risk we face. For one-third of us who experience a mild case, or even a modest hospital stay may live with serious sequelae for years. And none of this even begins to address the incredible damage to our economies that may take a decade to address.

Sperm count is perhaps the least of our worries. Thoughts?


https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heal...cts-of-covid19

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Zippee

Sperm count is perhaps the least of our worries. Thoughts?


https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heal...cts-of-covid19

My biggest concerns are about the psychological effects on young children, unable to run free, play with their friends, feel the anger and frustration of helpless parents who unwittingly transmit xenophobic signals to their children.

Our future generation have turned completely inward.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

My biggest concerns are about the psychological effects on young children, unable to run free, play with their friends, feel the anger and frustration of helpless parents who unwittingly transmit xenophobic signals to their children.

Our future generation have turned completely inward.

There’s no real evidence to suggest that has or is happening. Kids are resilient

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I'm sailing with a very weak connection, so won't post the Our World in Data charts, but the situation in our neck of the world continues to develop the same way. Huge increases in infections in Denmark and UK, and big increases elsewhere. Even Sweden now has 300 daily infections per million. But just as before, no increase in death or hospitalisation rates. Denmark with 1600 infections, still has less than 2 deaths, and the line is flat. UK even has declining deaths.

So far so good, in this new era.

Hard to know. The concern now is that with so many cases all at once even if most are mild will result in hospitals overflowing

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Zippee

. . . Our focus on death is really way too narrow and is actually the lowest risk we face. For one-third of us who experience a mild case, or even a modest hospital stay may live with serious sequelae for years. And none of this even begins to address the incredible damage to our economies that may take a decade to address.. .

Originally Posted by Pelagic

My biggest concerns are about the psychological effects on young children, unable to run free, play with their friends, feel the anger and frustration of helpless parents who unwittingly transmit xenophobic signals to their children.

Our future generation have turned completely inward.

Indeed. You get absolutely perverted policies if all you think about is death. There are many, many consequences of the disease short of death, and many, many consequences of the measures we use to fight the pandemic.



The overall damage to most economies turns out to be not as bad as feared. There could have been a general collapse; that didn't happen thank God. But the damage to disadvantaged people, and especially to children is incalculable. Policy has been made by and large by middle class people who don't live paycheck to paycheck, who can easily work from home. Often older middle class people with nothing to fear from the disruption of society, and everything to fear from the virus.


A lost year of education and social interaction for a young child can never be gained back -- the stages of development run past whether or not the child is locked up at home. There is more and more science on this -- the World Health Organization has published a bunch of it. Even masking, which seems like a really low cost measure to us, can be devasting for child at that stage of development learning to connect words with non-verbal communication.

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

There’s no real evidence to suggest that has or is happening. Kids are resilient

??? This is not correct. There is on the contrary a ton of evidence for the widespread and very serious harm to children which has occurred during the pandemic.



Children are exactly NOT resilient the way adults are. An adult can have a year of his or her life disrupted, and bounce back. Every year of a child's development is literally irreplaceable; lose just one and the negative effects are more or less permanent. Ask any developmental psychologist.



Of course not all children suffered equally. Children in better off families with plenty of technology and educated parents with time and ability to provide some instruction, and children in happy families with a happy life at home, suffered much less, some perhaps not at all. But children in struggling families, particularly one-parent households, with the parent struggling to survive, or on alcohol or drugs, were DEVASTED by school closings, entirely losing an entire year or more or education, lost an entire year of social interaction, and sometimes interaction with the only adults who provide a positive role model, with huge numbers of such children not even returning to school after schools reopened. A significant number of families in different countries (especially the U.S.) depend on school lunches for basic nutrition even for their children. So this damage extends even to malnutrition in millions of cases.



There is a ton of literature, but you can start with this:



https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55863841


https://khn.org/news/article/covid-p...alth-setbacks/


The World Health Organization and UNICEF have been particularly outspoken about this:



https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educat...e/consequences

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Hard to know. The concern now is that with so many cases all at once even if most are mild will result in hospitals overflowing

To say nothing of the vast number of people unable to attend work due to being isolated (quarantined?) while inflected - surely having significant numbers of the workforce on sick leave has a large negative effect on the economy.

[Exile]

Along with low cases of serious illness & hospitalization, the doctor who first started treating Omicron patients in S. Africa announced today that cases are already starting to come down. "We are over the curve," according to Dr. Angelique Coetzee.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/20...newday-vpx.cnn

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Zippee

I'd happily lose a few sperm, lol...

Were it only that sperm count were the only risk! Once again, we have a tendency to rightfully worry about death and hospitalization for severe illness which of course, are quite bad enough. Less than 1% will die (but that has been estimated at already over a million deaths in the US. This leaves out many people who needlessly die from other causes who have been unable to get proper treatment or prompt admission, or are even refused admission to overcrowded hospitals.

Add a few more percent for long hospitalizations and severe outcomes. But the real problem – not at all sufficiently discussed in the media – are the long haul effects. These affect – I’m serious – around a third of all cases, including so-called “mild cases” that were never hospitalized.

And the long term effects include younger people and even children: heart inflammation, multi-inflammatory syndrome in children and so on. Many people experience PTSD, and something called PICW (post-ICU syndrome) that follow them after care.

This third of all infections include lasting fatigue, memory loss, serious and permanent major organ damage, serious psychological anxiety and depression, insomnia, loss of smell or taste, alcoholism, loss of home or income, and more. People are at odds, angry, fighting. Domestic violence, and confrontations in public.

“Researchers will learn more about how and why the coronavirus affects different people in such a variety of ways, and why some people experience no symptoms at all while others have life-threatening organ damage or lasting disability. New insights will provide avenues for therapies and hope for people living with long-term COVID-19 effects.”

Our focus on death is really way too narrow and is actually the lowest risk we face. For one-third of us who experience a mild case, or even a modest hospital stay may live with serious sequelae for years. And none of this even begins to address the incredible damage to our economies that may take a decade to address.

Sperm count is perhaps the least of our worries. Thoughts?


https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heal...cts-of-covid19

Least of our worries, yes. Didn't understand why it was even posted about . . . more than once!

Up to one-third of Covid cases resulting in various longer-lasting symptoms, i.e. "long Covid," may be correct. But I'm not sure this necessarily translates over to the Omicron variant with its reported milder symptoms. I suppose there's really no way to know for awhile. Do you have additional info on this?

[Dockhead]

Just a few random samples of literature on the profound damage to children from school closings and stay at home orders:

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/...ished-learning

"Our analysis shows that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year. The pandemic widened preexisting opportunity and achievement gaps, hitting historically disadvantaged students hardest. In math, students in majority Black schools ended the year with six months of unfinished learning, students in low-income schools with seven. High schoolers have become more likely to drop out of school, and high school seniors, especially those from low-income families, are less likely to go on to postsecondary education. And the crisis had an impact on not just academics but also the broader health and well-being of students, with more than 35 percent of parents very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.
"The fallout from the pandemic threatens to depress this generation’s prospects and constrict their opportunities far into adulthood. The ripple effects may undermine their chances of attending college and ultimately finding a fulfilling job that enables them to support a family. Our analysis suggests that, unless steps are taken to address unfinished learning, today’s students may earn $49,000 to $61,000 less over their lifetime owing to the impact of the pandemic on their schooling. The impact on the US economy could amount to $128 billion to $188 billion every year as this cohort enters the workforce."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/o...orylines_guide

One million students in the U.S. didn't come back to schools when they reopened.

"The effects of closed schools go far beyond learning loss. We have a full-on child mental health crisis on our hands. The proportion of pediatric hospital visits for mental health reasons increased significantly in 2020 as the pandemic hit and schools closed, and the trend only worsened as 2020 wore on.
"Schools are the place where we first detect trouble at home, including neglect and abuse. Even short-term closings have steep consequences. In just the first three months of the pandemic, an analysis of data from New York City found a drop of nearly 8,000 in expected reports of allegations of child maltreatment. When researchers extrapolated that to the rest of the country, they estimated that more than 275,000 cases would have otherwise been reported.
"My colleagues and I wrote last fall about how school closings were preventing 14 million kids from getting the food they need. Low-income children get more than half of their calories from school meals. Kids with food insecurity are twice as likely to be in poor health askids who are food-secureand are more likely to be hospitalized.
"And it’s not only children who suffer when there is no school. Kids doing school at home also meant many parents couldn’t be at work. This additional home work disproportionately fell on women, and differences in labor force participation between women and men, already stark, grew 5 percentage points from 2019 to 2020 in states offering primarily remote instruction.
"All of these effects were predictable and, in fact, predicted. And they must not be repeated." New York Times, op. cit.

From Harvard:

https://jbcc.harvard.edu/sites/defau..._families_.pdf

Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Children Youth and Families, by the Evidence Based Policy Institute.

"Social Isolation
"While in quarantine, youth are largely isolated from their
peers—a particularly problematic situation since youth rely
heavily on peer interaction for identity formation and
validation.14 Peer support at this developmental stage is
crucial, and social isolation is associated with an increased
risk for depression and anxiety (with duration of loneliness
as the factor most strongly associated with anxiety).
Isolation has also been linked with suicidal ideation, self-
harm, and eating disorder risk behaviors.15 Notably, social
isolation may have long-term effects on mental health and
has been associated with mental health problems up to
nine years later."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.10.21261846v1.full.pdf Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Child Cognitive Development: Initial Findings in a
Longitudinal Observational Study of Child Health

23% drop in Early Learning Composite Mean Result among younger children during 2020, showing severe damage to cognitive skills, with the damage concentrated in children of poorer families.


This is stunning:

[Pelagic]

[QUOTE=Dockhead;3541473]...
.... This is not correct. There is on the contrary a ton of evidence for the widespread and very serious harm to children which has occurred during the pandemic.

Children are exactly NOT resilient the way adults are. An adult can have a year of his or her life disrupted, and bounce back. Every year of a child's development is literally irreplaceable; lose just one and the negative effects are more or less permanent. Ask any developmental psychologist.
[QUOTE]


Exactly, that is why they are called the "Formative Years"

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Wotname

To say nothing of the vast number of people unable to attend work due to being isolated (quarantined?) while inflected - surely having significant numbers of the workforce on sick leave has a large negative effect on the economy.

Currently no as seemingly the economy has done well with people working from home

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Currently no as seemingly the economy has done well with people working from home

Economies have not collapsed, and thank God for that. But we haven't yet paid the price for the unprecedented QE which was thought to be required to prevent it. The price will be inflation, with consequences which could be pretty bad. Worse than a global economic collapse? Possibly not, if that's what it took.

Also if whole economies did not collapse, that doesn't mean that some sectors did not experience something like collapse. They say a whole generation of actors has been lost in New York.