Large German study confirms covid-19 risk in young people is lower than the risk from chickenpox
All of us have deep fears of old age, illness, and death. As a hospice doctor for the past 18 years, I have seen that often these fears can cause more harm than the object that we fear, and we are safer than we believe. Regarding covid-19, the incredibly low risk in young people seems impossible, but it is actually just a confirmation of prior results which have appeared in medical journals and government reports continuously since the very beginning, starting in Wuhan, China.
The actual risk in young people is so low that, statistically, it can be referred to as zero-risk because other undiagnosed causes are equally or more likely when something is so exceedingly rare. This is exactly what was found in US college students and I reviewed the college student data in a paper written in autumn 2020. Both of these findings of a risk lower than chickenpox occurred with early variants of the covid-19 virus, which are considered to be more dangerous than the current variants such as omicron. One would think these results would be major headlines, similar to the ones that appeared in 1945 when World War II finally ended, but it is difficult for health authorities and major media to accept such data or even acknowledge its existence.
An explanation for this blindness is provided by a Professor clinical psychology from the University of Ghent in Belgium, Mattias Desmet. He argues that many of the worst societal illnesses are rooted in "crowd psychology". The vulnerability to group psychological effects has been present for millennia, but was made worse by reduction in the number of healthy social relationships over the past century combined with mass media and propaganda. He argues that all of us can help improve this by fostering healthy dialogues and social interactions, including with people who disagree with us. Several interviews of Professor Desmet are available and he has written a book on this subject: Desmet - RFK Jr Interview, Book on mass psychology and totalitarianism.
The astonishingly low risk for young people, when faced squarely, raises serious doubts about the causes of death in older people and people with fragile health, who are at risk of decompensation from any viral illness such as influenza or even a common cold virus, and who suffer more from social isolation protocols. When they had the misfortune of being diagnosed with covid-19, this isolation became complete with solitary confinement for a minimum of 14 days, often in severely understaffed long-term care facilities where staff were already struggling to keep up with the regular duties involved in caring for the very elderly who need assistance with all the activities of daily living.
Below is a discussion of the German study with some quotes and comments. A link to the entire paper is given at the end along with a link to my prior paper on college students. Children have the benefit of their parents being with them during illness and quarantine. Thus, their parents and other caregivers deserve much credit for this incredible safety profile.
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A very thorough study from Germany has confirmed that the covid-19 mortality rate in young people is lower than chickenpox. This study looked at the entire population of Germany, using three different sources of data, giving the largest sample size possible. It was published November 30, 2021, but a similar extremely low mortality was found in US college students the year before, as documented in my paper written in the fall of 2020 (Irwin, 2020).
None of these results were covered in any major news outlets, perhaps because results like these show that the covid-19 virus is similar to other viruses, and the social isolation and solitary confinement policies caused more harm than good. The isolation of healthy and sick people makes their recovery more difficult, especially in people with fragile health, and these measures have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be ineffective. Current estimates are that about 80% of the United States population has already had covid-19, although most of them were not tested due to having mild cases. In May 2021 the CDC estimated 37% of the US population had already had covid-19, again with the earlier variants thought to be more dangerous than current variants (Block, 2021).
We can learn valuable lessons by admitting our mistakes, especially when they are very large mistakes. The fear of our own mortality has driven the rush to follow these harmful isolation practices, and I wrote about this in a paper about the innate human fear of infection, drawing in part on my experience as a hospice physician (Irwin 2021). When there is a strong caregiving team, caring for people who are ill can be extremely rewarding, and reducing misguided fears of infections will help keep a healthy team together.
Our mortality is one of the few inevitable certainties of life, and a healthier awareness of this fact will allow us to think more clearly about quality of life. Fortunately, improvement in quality of life, including maintaining and fostering healthy social relationships and providing high quality care for people who are ill will also help us live longer.
————
Here are some comments and quotes, and immediately below that a link and reference:
1) For all children, including ones with underlying illnesses and co-morbidities, "case fatality was 0.09 per 10,000." - This fatality rate is less than 1 in 100,000, even lower than the mortality rate for chickenpox which is usually cited as 1 in 60,000. A similar mortality rate, actually even lower, was found in US college students, as discussed in my paper from autumn 2020 (Irwin, 2020b). My previous paper on restarting school, youth athletics, and performing arts from summer 2020 quoted extremely low mortality, which was already approaching chickenpox levels. At that time I predicted that the estimates from summer 2020 would drop significantly as more data came in, which is exactly what happened (Irwin, 2020b). Please note that there are many other causes of death in children and college students. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine on this found that in 2016 there were more than 12,000 deaths in children aged 0-19 in the United States, mostly from preventable causes which could use more attention and more funding (Cunningham, 2018). Unfortunately, many of these causes, such as drug and alcohol-induced deaths and suicide, were made significantly worse by the covid-19 social isolation and solitary confinement beliefs (Briand 2021, Graph 12).
2) There were zero fatalities in elementary school-aged kids with no underlying illnesses, despite at least several hundred thousand "cases" of covid-19 in this age group:
"Children without comorbidities were found to be significantly less likely to suffer from a severe or fatal disease course. The lowest risk was observed in children aged 5-11 without comorbidities. In this group, the ICU admission rate was 0.2 per 10,000 and case fatality could not be calculated, due to an absence of cases."
In other words, there was zero mortality in kids aged 5-11 diagnosed with covid-19 in Germany who did not have significant pre-existing illnesses, despite about 500,000 covid-19 cases in this age group. This suggests that covid-19 was not actually the cause of death in most or all of the children who did die, and that the "comorbidities" were the primary cause.
3) Although this German study helps quiet exaggerated fears, the authors fail to mention the tendency for false positive PCR tests in people with inflammatory conditions, including other infectious illnesses such as Influenza and RSV, as well as Pediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome, abbreviated in their article as "PIMS-TS". The covid-19 PCR test tends to test positive in people with these conditions because of the extremely large amounts of RNA being generated by people's own immune system. I wrote a literaure review 20 years ago showing how common false positive PCR tests are when used to look for HIV RNA fragments, which can be viewed here.
References - with comments:
1: AL Sorg, M Hufnagel, M Doenhardt, N Diffloth, H Schroten, R v. Kries, R Berner, J Armann (2021, November 30). Risk of Hospitalization, severe disease, and mortality due to COVID-19 and PIMS-TS in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection in Germany. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.30.21267048
Mortality rates were lower than 1 in 100,000, and the results included children with advanced underlying illnesses. This data all came from earlier variants considered more dangerous than the current omicron variant.
Risk of Hospitalization, severe disease, and mortality due to COVID-19 and PIMS-TS in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection in Germany
2: Cunningham, R., Walton, M., & Carter, P. (2018). The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 379(25). This study discussed the causes of the more than 12,000 deaths in children in the US in 2016, most of which were from preventable causes. They included over 2000 suicide deaths, listed under different headings based on method used. This vastly outnumbers covid-19 deaths in children in 2020 and unfortunately the covid-19 social isolation policies increase the risk from these other more common causes of death.
http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/michigan/files/201812/NEJMsr1804754.pdf
3: Irwin (2020a). Mortality rates in college students were found to be less than 1 in 100,000 back in autumn 2020, also with older variants of covid-19 which are believed to be more dangerous than the newer omicron variant. This risk is very similar to the what was found in Germany by Song et al.
Extremely low mortality in US college students and Swedish schools.
4: Irwin (2020b). This earlier paper from summer 2020 focused on restarting school, sports and performing arts. The official survival rates were already extremely high, but they increased by several orders of magnitude after I wrote this paper, as always happens in new epidemics, because selection bias was better accounted for in later studies. My paper on US college students and Swedish schools from autumn 2020 found lower risk using a much larger and better quality data sample.
Restarting School, Performing Arts, and Youth Athletics
5: Block J. (2021). Vaccinating people who have had covid-19: why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US? BMJ 2021; 374n2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2101 (Published 13 September 2021). This paper included a table (Table 1) showing that, as of May 2021, more than 120 million people in the United States had already had covid-19, which is 37% of the population, or more than one in every three people. This indicates the complete failure of the social isolation policies and the solitary confinement of people who test positive on the covid-19 test, making their harms even more significant.
The actual risk in young people is so low that, statistically, it can be referred to as zero-risk because other undiagnosed causes are equally or more likely when something is so exceedingly rare. This is exactly what was found in US college students and I reviewed the college student data in a paper written in autumn 2020. Both of these findings of a risk lower than chickenpox occurred with early variants of the covid-19 virus, which are considered to be more dangerous than the current variants such as omicron. One would think these results would be major headlines, similar to the ones that appeared in 1945 when World War II finally ended, but it is difficult for health authorities and major media to accept such data or even acknowledge its existence.
An explanation for this blindness is provided by a Professor clinical psychology from the University of Ghent in Belgium, Mattias Desmet. He argues that many of the worst societal illnesses are rooted in "crowd psychology". The vulnerability to group psychological effects has been present for millennia, but was made worse by reduction in the number of healthy social relationships over the past century combined with mass media and propaganda. He argues that all of us can help improve this by fostering healthy dialogues and social interactions, including with people who disagree with us. Several interviews of Professor Desmet are available and he has written a book on this subject: Desmet - RFK Jr Interview, Book on mass psychology and totalitarianism.
The astonishingly low risk for young people, when faced squarely, raises serious doubts about the causes of death in older people and people with fragile health, who are at risk of decompensation from any viral illness such as influenza or even a common cold virus, and who suffer more from social isolation protocols. When they had the misfortune of being diagnosed with covid-19, this isolation became complete with solitary confinement for a minimum of 14 days, often in severely understaffed long-term care facilities where staff were already struggling to keep up with the regular duties involved in caring for the very elderly who need assistance with all the activities of daily living.
Below is a discussion of the German study with some quotes and comments. A link to the entire paper is given at the end along with a link to my prior paper on college students. Children have the benefit of their parents being with them during illness and quarantine. Thus, their parents and other caregivers deserve much credit for this incredible safety profile.
————
A very thorough study from Germany has confirmed that the covid-19 mortality rate in young people is lower than chickenpox. This study looked at the entire population of Germany, using three different sources of data, giving the largest sample size possible. It was published November 30, 2021, but a similar extremely low mortality was found in US college students the year before, as documented in my paper written in the fall of 2020 (Irwin, 2020).
None of these results were covered in any major news outlets, perhaps because results like these show that the covid-19 virus is similar to other viruses, and the social isolation and solitary confinement policies caused more harm than good. The isolation of healthy and sick people makes their recovery more difficult, especially in people with fragile health, and these measures have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be ineffective. Current estimates are that about 80% of the United States population has already had covid-19, although most of them were not tested due to having mild cases. In May 2021 the CDC estimated 37% of the US population had already had covid-19, again with the earlier variants thought to be more dangerous than current variants (Block, 2021).
We can learn valuable lessons by admitting our mistakes, especially when they are very large mistakes. The fear of our own mortality has driven the rush to follow these harmful isolation practices, and I wrote about this in a paper about the innate human fear of infection, drawing in part on my experience as a hospice physician (Irwin 2021). When there is a strong caregiving team, caring for people who are ill can be extremely rewarding, and reducing misguided fears of infections will help keep a healthy team together.
Our mortality is one of the few inevitable certainties of life, and a healthier awareness of this fact will allow us to think more clearly about quality of life. Fortunately, improvement in quality of life, including maintaining and fostering healthy social relationships and providing high quality care for people who are ill will also help us live longer.
————
Here are some comments and quotes, and immediately below that a link and reference:
1) For all children, including ones with underlying illnesses and co-morbidities, "case fatality was 0.09 per 10,000." - This fatality rate is less than 1 in 100,000, even lower than the mortality rate for chickenpox which is usually cited as 1 in 60,000. A similar mortality rate, actually even lower, was found in US college students, as discussed in my paper from autumn 2020 (Irwin, 2020b). My previous paper on restarting school, youth athletics, and performing arts from summer 2020 quoted extremely low mortality, which was already approaching chickenpox levels. At that time I predicted that the estimates from summer 2020 would drop significantly as more data came in, which is exactly what happened (Irwin, 2020b). Please note that there are many other causes of death in children and college students. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine on this found that in 2016 there were more than 12,000 deaths in children aged 0-19 in the United States, mostly from preventable causes which could use more attention and more funding (Cunningham, 2018). Unfortunately, many of these causes, such as drug and alcohol-induced deaths and suicide, were made significantly worse by the covid-19 social isolation and solitary confinement beliefs (Briand 2021, Graph 12).
2) There were zero fatalities in elementary school-aged kids with no underlying illnesses, despite at least several hundred thousand "cases" of covid-19 in this age group:
"Children without comorbidities were found to be significantly less likely to suffer from a severe or fatal disease course. The lowest risk was observed in children aged 5-11 without comorbidities. In this group, the ICU admission rate was 0.2 per 10,000 and case fatality could not be calculated, due to an absence of cases."
In other words, there was zero mortality in kids aged 5-11 diagnosed with covid-19 in Germany who did not have significant pre-existing illnesses, despite about 500,000 covid-19 cases in this age group. This suggests that covid-19 was not actually the cause of death in most or all of the children who did die, and that the "comorbidities" were the primary cause.
3) Although this German study helps quiet exaggerated fears, the authors fail to mention the tendency for false positive PCR tests in people with inflammatory conditions, including other infectious illnesses such as Influenza and RSV, as well as Pediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome, abbreviated in their article as "PIMS-TS". The covid-19 PCR test tends to test positive in people with these conditions because of the extremely large amounts of RNA being generated by people's own immune system. I wrote a literaure review 20 years ago showing how common false positive PCR tests are when used to look for HIV RNA fragments, which can be viewed here.
References - with comments:
1: AL Sorg, M Hufnagel, M Doenhardt, N Diffloth, H Schroten, R v. Kries, R Berner, J Armann (2021, November 30). Risk of Hospitalization, severe disease, and mortality due to COVID-19 and PIMS-TS in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection in Germany. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.30.21267048
Mortality rates were lower than 1 in 100,000, and the results included children with advanced underlying illnesses. This data all came from earlier variants considered more dangerous than the current omicron variant.
Risk of Hospitalization, severe disease, and mortality due to COVID-19 and PIMS-TS in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection in Germany
2: Cunningham, R., Walton, M., & Carter, P. (2018). The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 379(25). This study discussed the causes of the more than 12,000 deaths in children in the US in 2016, most of which were from preventable causes. They included over 2000 suicide deaths, listed under different headings based on method used. This vastly outnumbers covid-19 deaths in children in 2020 and unfortunately the covid-19 social isolation policies increase the risk from these other more common causes of death.
http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/michigan/files/201812/NEJMsr1804754.pdf
3: Irwin (2020a). Mortality rates in college students were found to be less than 1 in 100,000 back in autumn 2020, also with older variants of covid-19 which are believed to be more dangerous than the newer omicron variant. This risk is very similar to the what was found in Germany by Song et al.
Extremely low mortality in US college students and Swedish schools.
4: Irwin (2020b). This earlier paper from summer 2020 focused on restarting school, sports and performing arts. The official survival rates were already extremely high, but they increased by several orders of magnitude after I wrote this paper, as always happens in new epidemics, because selection bias was better accounted for in later studies. My paper on US college students and Swedish schools from autumn 2020 found lower risk using a much larger and better quality data sample.
Restarting School, Performing Arts, and Youth Athletics
5: Block J. (2021). Vaccinating people who have had covid-19: why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US? BMJ 2021; 374n2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2101 (Published 13 September 2021). This paper included a table (Table 1) showing that, as of May 2021, more than 120 million people in the United States had already had covid-19, which is 37% of the population, or more than one in every three people. This indicates the complete failure of the social isolation policies and the solitary confinement of people who test positive on the covid-19 test, making their harms even more significant.
