Omicron sending more young children to hospital says South Africa official

[Carla_Sinclair]

Originally published at: Omicron sending more young children to hospital says South Africa official | Boing Boing

…

[Papasan]

“the value of vaccination in the adult protecting the children in the homes.”

Roger That, read you 5 x 5

[docosc]

@Carla_Sinclair

young children, who are being hospitalized in one South African town for Covid five times more now than they were in May.

Well, shit, this is not the news I was hoping to hear.

@Carla_Sinclair

She said this showed “the value of vaccination in the adult protecting the children in the homes.”

But this is spot on, and will carry no weight at all with the antivaxx crowd.

[drinkingcoffee]

In a recent press conference, government adviser Waasila Jassat said that in May of this year, less than 20 children in South Africa’s city of Tshwane Metro were hospitalized for Covid, according to Daily Beast. But last month, from November 14–27 — in just a two-week window — the city saw more than 100 children hospitalized for Covid.

in the summary here vs this in the linked article

She said, for example, that in the city of Tshwane Metro, more than 100 children under the age of 5 were admitted to hospitals with COVID in the first two weeks of the new fourth wave (Nov. 14 to 27). In the first two weeks of the country’s third wave, in May of this year, fewer than 20 children were admitted to hospitals.

That is, both numbers of children hospitalized were during a two week period. That’s fucking awful enough either way that there’s no need to make it seem like the 20 was for a full month and the 100 was just two weeks.

Also, I keep hearing people mention that omicron cases are mild so far, but the articles mentioning that talk about younger or vaccinated/previously infected people (that’s good, but not the same thing):

Symptoms from omicron, Covid’s new variant, seem to be mild so far, according to scientists studying the outbreak in South Africa.

in the summary here vs this in the linked article:

South Africa is seeing an increase in COVID-19 reinfections due to the Omicron variant but symptoms for reinfected patients and those infected after vaccination appear to be mild, a scientist studying the outbreak of the new strain said.

I dunno. Things move fast, so I think clarity is important.

[Bobo]

@docosc

But this is spot on, and will carry no weight at all with the antivaxx crowd.

Well, that’s because kids don’t get it, and it’s like the flu anyway. Don’t you know that they’re faking the death numbers and just labeling everything as COVID related so that they can control you with masks/vaccine microchips/5g/whatever? (and I fucking refuse to put a sarcasm marker because that’s what the Qanon conspiracy theorists actually believe).

[fuzzyfungus]

I’m fairly sure that “now better at targeting children!” is not what you want to hear about a disease notorious for having a long, eclectic; and unpleasant list of possible sequelae.

[AnthonyC]

So, just to be clear, is anyone saying the fraction of cases among children leading to hospitalization is higher for omicron? Because when you have a more rapidly spreading strain leading to higher overall case loads, that’s a very important question when trying to show that the strain is more virulent, in a given population or overall.