At the end of April, the SKWAWKBOX revealed an urgent NHS alert to front-line medical staff warning them to be on the look-out for a worrying and potentially lethal ‘toxic shock’ syndrome in children, similar to Kawasaki disease but linked to the coronavirus, known by the shorthand ‘PMIS’ (paediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome). The disease results in severe inflammation of the circulatory system including the heart and at least three children have died. Its visible symptoms include fever, rash and abdominal pain.
The PMIS syndrome, first discovered in London, has since appeared in the US and five other countries, with the US seeing more than 130 cases so far. It affects children of all ages and all ethnicities – and Italian research suggests that it hits around one in a thousand children infected with the virus.
But the UK has a problem.
In the UK, children are said to represent around 2% of the confirmed ‘C-positive’ population of over 236,000 (as of Worldometer data at the time of writing). Put simply, that means fewer than 5,000 children confirmed with the virus.
But that means that at the rate of one child per thousand, the UK should have five cases of the PMIS syndrome.
And it already has more than one hundred, in just the two weeks or so since coronavirus-linked PMIS was discovered.
There are two possible explanations:
- either the incidence of PMIS among infected children is far higher than 1:1000, or
- UK coronavirus Infections among children are 20 times higher than the Italian data have led authorities to conclude
The most likely option is probably a combination of both factors, especially given the UK government’s appalling record on testing – but part of that equation is then that progression to PMIS is much higher than thought, as well as far more children being infected with the virus.
Whichever particular combination it is, it is one more reason that any decision to send children back to school before the specific circumstances, mechanism and risks are fully understood is an unforgivable gamble with our children’s lives and the lives of the people with whom they come into contact.
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Jumping on the Johnson Panic bandwagon again, Skwawkbox?
See the recent ‘Lancet’ article :
“Although the Article suggests a possible emerging inflammatory syndrome associated with COVID-19, it is crucial to reiterate—for parents and health-care workers alike—that children remain minimally affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection overall”
You don’t grind society to a halt on the basis of this sort of speculative evidence. Nowhere near.
There would – as I suggested in connection with Liverpools mayor’s incoherent babbling – be far more rationale for banning the use of the internal combustion engine immediately if you were serious about such a level of danger.
Who was it, representing the interests of ”Entrepreneurs’ (whatever they are) on BBC Question Time last night? It seems that the cure or the pill is worse than the ill or the football season finished too soon. Let normality return & ‘Let it Rock’ as only the strong survive. If you don’t like it, go hide away in the shadows……..it’s the economy stupid! Real Tory logic ………..besides Covid 19 is so mild, most people won’t know they’ve had it, so what’s all the fuss about people dying?
Seen the Mail’s disgusting frontpage today?
In my opinion, this Government is wrong about many things.
This Government’s general wrongness, continues to be exposed by the pandemic.
RE: Tory dangerous rush to end lockdown before reliable testing, tracing, tracking AND retesting, as well as their already inexcusable negligence of failing to screen rigorously at ALL ports air and sea, particularly Heathrow, … and as if those failings were not enough, attempting to justify their failure to quarantine with the most illogical and science poor excuse. –
Within 14 days of ending lockdown BEFORE the above measures are established, this country will see a steady rise of contagion and avoidable deaths.
The world is a global village. How much more then is one country as ours. We are as a national household. This is far beyond the instinct of the Conservative Party. Yet it is obvious that deaths “downstairs” cannot be isolated from their imagined gilded salons “upstairs”.
The cooks, cleaners and carers can carry Covid-19 from John o’ Groats to Lands End. How narrow minded of this Tory government… how lacking in foresight, to believe that they could recklessly push nannies, cleaners and train and bus workers out to toil with no duty of care, yet remain unaffected forever?
How lacking in morality does one have to be to pursue such callousness? What coldness could freeze the ideology of Tories so much to needlessly let an EXTRA fifty…sixty thousand or more people die? Mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, friends, grandparents… what is it that prevents Tories from valuing the lives of the many?
Will Tories only find decency when their 1% chums start to die❓❓❓
My daughter is not sending her boys back to school. I’m glad. Until the HoC is full and operational I won’t believe a word this government says.
There has been 1 death from Kawasaki sickness in the UK. That’s out of 67 million people. If those are odds that people won’t send their children to school over they should give up. Mortality from accidents at home far more than that.
It’s a disease found predominately in children, so your 67 million figure is misleading for starters.
There’s ‘only’ been the one death? Are we meant to ‘celebrate’ that fact or summit? How many kids have developed/contracted the illness?
It was only the other week kids they said didn’t get C19.