Pediatric COVID-19 Mortality
All statements in this article should be attributed to myself, not any organization I represent or my employer. This article will discuss a topic that is very uncomfortable to present and may be distressing to some readers. The article presents a medical perspective - not a statement intended to be for or against any public policy or politician. This article is not meant to scare or cause distress. I will be sharing statistics and medical facts in this and subsequent articles about kids being killed and seriously harmed by SARS-CoV-2. I apologize in advance for any grief this article may cause. I do not think of these kids and their families as just numbers. Please understand it is not my intention to be callous to their suffering.
The majority of kids who get COVID-19 will have mild illness and eventually recover completely. Compared to older people they are at very low risk for severe disease, but they are not at no risk. A heartbreaking number of children are dying of COVID-19.
It is difficult to know for sure how many kids have died of COVID-19 but there are at least 3 sets of statistics. The American Academy of Pediatrics has been trying to keep track of pediatric deaths by accessing state level data from public sources. The CDC is compiling data based on death certificates. Both of these sets of data have limitations; for example not all states have been reporting deaths by age or making the data public, submission of death certificates takes time and probably not all death certificates get submitted to the CDC.
A third set of statistics can be found on the CDC website. The public can download data in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is used to tally up by age group COVID-19 deaths as they are being reported to the CDC from health departments. You can find this page by searching the title of the page: “Demographic Trends of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US reported to CDC”. On the page look for the section labeled: “Deaths by Age Group”. You can click on data download to get an Excel spreadsheet that details deaths by age group.
The total they have as of 10-21-2022 is 1,823. Since the pandemic started 1,823 kids have been reported to the CDC from health departments of dying from COVID-19 in the United States.
585 lives of kids under the age of 5 have ended because of COVID-19. 438 kids in the US between the ages of 5 and 11 are no longer with us. 456 twelve through fifteen year olds have already died from this virus. The families of 344 - 16 and 17 years olds have had a child taken from them.
Over a million people in the United States have already died of COVID-19. 1,823 kids might seem insignificant in comparison. It is not insignificant to 1,823 families.
To put the number of kids who are dying of COVID-19 in perspective; you can compare that number to those who are dying of influenza every year.
On the CDC website you can view statistics for pediatric influenza related deaths. I went back and compiled and summarized a list of the last 18 seasons of pediatric influenza related fatalities. I have included a link in the supplementary website to these articles so you can see the numbers.
On first look you may see the eye-opening statistic that there was only 1 (one) reported pediatric influenza death in the United States during the first full season the influenza virus shared space with SARS-CoV-2. That was the season that mitigation efforts around the world resulted in astonishing collateral effects on influenza. Transmission of the influenza virus was tremendously suppressed that season. What we did to slow down SARS-CoV-2; seems like it worked way better at limiting the spread of influenza. Unfortunately in the 2021-2022 season (through 10-15-2022) we have had 43 pediatric influenza associated deaths.
There have been 2,054 pediatric influenza associated deaths total in the last 18 influenza seasons in the United States. That works out to be an average of 114 pediatric influenza associated deaths per influenza season.
Doing the gruesome math that means that more children in the United States have died of COVID-19 in the past 2 and a half years than have died of influenza in 15 years.
Another way to look at the COVID-19 pediatric COVID-19 deaths is to see how the numbers have changed with time. If you look back at the data from 8-13-2021 there were 457 COVID-19 deaths of 0-17 year olds reported to the CDC. As of 10-21-2022 there have been 1,823 deaths of school aged kids. In the span of 434 days, 1,366 kids have died of COVID-19. In just a little over 14 months more kids have died of COVID-19 than almost 12 seasons of influenza. Kids are still dying of COVID-19 at alarming rates. Back on 9-25-2022 there were 1,792 pediatric deaths tallied up. That’s a child dying every day of COVID-19 in the United States this past month.
Kids are at a very low risk of dying of either COVID-19 or influenza. However, it is a tragedy every time a child dies of COVID-19 or influenza.
Vaccination is effective in protecting your child from severe COVID-19.
One study that affirms what makes sense to be true was reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. Investigators assessed data obtained at 31 hospitals in 23 states to determine the real-world effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against severe disease among adolescents between 12 and 18 years of age. In the study 180 kids were admitted to an ICU, and 127 required life support. Only 2 patients who had been admitted to an ICU and none of the 7 children who died had been fully vaccinated. The researchers used matched control groups to calculate vaccine effectiveness. The vaccine effectiveness was 94% for the prevention of COVID-19 hospitalization and 98% for the prevention of both ICU admission and need for life support (100% at preventing death).
Not all kids who have died of COVID-19 have had “predisposing conditions”. As is painfully obvious, kids who are not at risk of dying of influenza are at risk for dying of COVID-19. By what seems like a cruel bad roll of the dice some kids die or otherwise suffer long term consequences of being infected. Parents can load the dice in their child’s favor by arming them against this virus through vaccination.
Go to vaccines.gov to find a location to arm your child against COVID-19.
Russ Coash, PA-C
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