Less deaths in children, infants with lockdown?

[ElizabethB]

https://healthchoice.org/lessons-from-the-lockdown/

"Somehow, the changing pattern of American life during the lockdowns has been saving the lives of hundreds of infants, over 200 per week."

 

Also:

 "So the reduction in childhood deaths during the lockdowns has meant that the lives of black and Hispanic infants and children have been saved at a higher rate."

I haven't seen these numbers elsewhere, but they do have a lot of interesting graphs. Interesting if true. They seem to be anti-vaccination, but the numbers are interesting if true, and they do talk about the possibility of other things causing the decline in deaths.

 

Edited June 23, 2020 by ElizabethB

[Sneezyone]

Babies need their parents but especially their mothers. When mothers are forced, due to financial necessity, to return to work too soon, babies die. A disproportionate numbers of non-white mothers do not have access to maternity leave > 2 weeks. That's not a pro-life issue tho, it's an economic one. /sarc off.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Sneezyone

[Terabith]

I think the fact that parents, and especially mothers, are around more has certainly been part of it.  

And, I'm very pro-vaccination, but I do sorta feel like we probably give too many vaccines too early in life, both because babies are going into public/ day care and also because we're afraid if we don't give them to babies early on, that they won't get them, since infants/ children show up to well child check ups less regularly as they get older.  So public health demands giving infants many vaccinations early in life, but possibly it would be better for individual children's lives to get vaccines spread out more and maybe starting at six months or so, one or two at a time.  

But, I'm far from an expert, so I really don't know.  It's just something that I've wondered about for a long time.  

[ElizabethB]

3 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Please don't get me wrong.  I'd love for this to be true.  But given the source I'm skeptical, and that graph looks just like the one I saw that had the lines for reported flu deaths over time, and you could see how they started out low, and corrected over time.  

I'm skeptical, too!  If true, interesting and worth investigating. It does seem like certain categories of death might decline with Covid--car crashes for one. I would like to see good numbers from a reliable source.

[Carol in Cal.]

I’m wondering about abuse though.  (Tangentially to the vaccine issue.)

I get a daily email with crime listings for my fairly remote county.  Since the population is small, this is pretty detailed—each line has one incident, and a general location for it.  

Before the CIP order, these were mostly thefts with a few fights.  After the SIP, the preponderance switched to spousal/SO assault or battery or ‘inflicting bodily injury’ on a spouse or SO.  It was like turning a switch.  While injury to children did not jump as much, I see it more often, too.  It’s very troubling.

[Katy]

If it's true I'm sure it has to do with child abuse.  Mothers of infants don't often abuse their children to death or forget them in a car.  It's much more frequent that their boyfriends, husbands, or the men in the lives of their babysitters abuse a child than their mothers.  I remember not only reading this in crime statistics when I was younger, but I've noticed it on the news.  If a baby is shaken or punched or forgotten in a car, it's usually a man at fault.  Not always, but often.  Anecdotally I've heard more stories of drunk drivers crashing cars and less stories of fatal child abuse on the news since this pandemic started here.

Also, how many times when one of your children needed to go to the ER was the decision yours and not your DH's?  Every time we've taken someone in I was the one who first realized how serious it was, not DH.   This is just something I'm better at, and it isn't for lack of him going to doctors appointments OR my nursing background (no pediatrics).

[Clemsondana]

2 hours ago, Terabith said:

I think the fact that parents, and especially mothers, are around more has certainly been part of it.  

And, I'm very pro-vaccination, but I do sorta feel like we probably give too many vaccines too early in life, both because babies are going into public/ day care and also because we're afraid if we don't give them to babies early on, that they won't get them, since infants/ children show up to well child check ups less regularly as they get older.  So public health demands giving infants many vaccinations early in life, but possibly it would be better for individual children's lives to get vaccines spread out more and maybe starting at six months or so, one or two at a time.  

But, I'm far from an expert, so I really don't know.  It's just something that I've wondered about for a long time.  

When my kids were babies, we lived in New Mexico.  They have a 'Done by 1' vaccination policy that they say is because so many people only keep up with check-ups in the first year.  When we moved to TN, my younger was 2.  When we went for the 3-year check, they were surprised at how many shots we already had - we didn't need anything until the 'starting school' age booster.  

[PrincessMommy]

My first thought was it was because fewer childhood accidents and car accidents, etc.   Vaccines didn't even come into my equation.  I know my 6mo. grandson has continued with his.  

[Acadie]

A good friend sent me that link, and I found this refutation from what's probably an equally biased source. I don't like the propagandistic tone of either piece, but I did think the look at rates of death in older children and questioning the very small sample size were helpful critiques.

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/06/19/becker-and-blaxill-use-covid-19-to-claim-vaccines-cause-sids/

I'm so exhausted by arguments advanced by people who are either always in support of vaccination, or always opposed. What we need is to do the research on vaccine injuries to identify problematic components and at risk populations, which would make vaccine programs safer for everyone and help rebuild public trust. I often see the argument that "antivaxxers" are opposed to science, but to me insisting that vaccine injury doesn't exist is equally anti-science. 

It's complicated, and I'm quite sure as Sneezy noted that more mothers, especially women of color, being able to care for their own babies has a lot to do with it. Also adults and older children in the family not bringing home as many respiratory and other bugs from work and school.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Acadie

[Katy]

I can't believe I forgot the most obvious thing.  There's far less car accidents and other traumatic injuries when people stay home.  Those are the most frequent causes of death in young children anyway, right?

[RootAnn]

18 hours ago, Katy said:

Also, how many times when one of your children needed to go to the ER was the decision yours and not your DH's?  Every time we've taken someone in I was the one who first realized how serious it was, not DH.

Um. Mostly DH. I'm pretty good at Dr. Google once I realize something is wrong, but I tend to blow everything off until he asks pointed questions.

[ktgrok]

On 6/23/2020 at 7:47 PM, CuriousMomof3 said:

But that graph really looks just like the one with drops over time.  I wish I knew how to search for it.  It had a graph and they showed each year's deaths as they were reported each day, and you could see them starting off like the bottom line and then rising to meet the other lines.  It made the point really well.

yes! Deaths take time to be reported, so if you look at them on a graph where they are plotted by day of death (instead of day reported) they ALWAYS look like then are trending down. After the death there may be an autopsy, test results need to come back ,then the death certificate is filed, then it is reported to the department of health, etc etc - it can take 8 weeks to actually be reported. 

In my state we report deaths that way. So the graph purposely always looks like deaths are decreasing. There is a TINY disclaimer, in a TINY boxy that you have to scroll through to find that info though. So on june 9th I looked at the deaths reported for June 8th. There were 5. If I look now, there are 24 deaths on June 8th. That gradually increased over time...from 5, to 10, to 14, to 22, to now 24. If you only looked on June 9th, you thought they were trending down. 

Worse - if I look now at June 22 there are also 24 deaths. So looks like the same rate from June 4th to now, about. Except....we haven't backfilled the majority of deaths yet for June 22. So if it increases at the same rate that previous days did we are looking at a huge increase. But people don't understand that that is how it works. 

[Ausmumof3]

On 6/24/2020 at 9:07 AM, ElizabethB said:

I'm skeptical, too!  If true, interesting and worth investigating. It does seem like certain categories of death might decline with Covid--car crashes for one. I would like to see good numbers from a reliable source.

Which may be made up for by a post covid increase when we all actually have to drive again and we’ve forgotten how!