https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56696907

"Dr Marinho calculated the excess of deaths by unspecified acute respiratory syndrome during the pandemic, and found that there were 10 times more deaths by unexplained respiratory syndrome than in previous years. By adding these numbers, she estimates that the virus in fact killed 2,060 children under nine years old, including 1,302 babies."

Sounds scary...

Just to provide some perspective:
Around 3 million babies are born in Brazil annually, that's 27 mln below age 9.

Undoubtedly each death is a tragedy. But with 0.01% annual death rate by covid there are more pressing matters.

Its someone's baby or a family member. The sad truth is that it only becomes significant when it happens to you or someone you know.

All these researches, calculations and evidence will help to control the situation and should not be taken lightly. At the end every life matters

Lets hope nobody ever refers to one of your family members or dear friends/colleagues in such a way if tragedy strikes them. May not be pressing to you but it is to others!!!!!

Other perspective is the infant mortality rate is 3-4 times higher than developed economies. No single illness causes this, but when you add 0.01% + 0.01% +.... + n you get a nasty surprise.

Ironically, people thinking about the 0.01% is what brought down infant mortality to the current levels in developed economies.

The same applies to all the 380'000 covid-related deaths Brazil registered so far. Yet they get ignored.
That happens to everybody, all the time. Including after death.

Let's face it, for the people who don't know you you're just a number.

49, or is it 46?

42 of course. Always 42.

Will say only this - its clear you don't have children. Would feel sorry for you, but then there are more pressing matters.

You don't have to have children to find Urs Max's comment unsympathetic.

I DO have children, and I agree 100% with Urs Max.

Tom

I don't find it particularly appealing either. Unfortunatly that doesn't change it, facts don't care about feelings.

2-3 people die every second, on average, around the clock. Are you saying you empathise with each and every one?

I personally do not. While it is sad on personal basis the reason I posted the news was also from concern point of view.

I have an impression most people believe it is harmless to children. Even though this is not first news about effects on children it is interesting to note that among children babies appear do be significantly more vulnerable.

Also it is very difficult to protect babies. They can't wear masks; have their hands in mouth all the time; potential medicine is likely to be more harmful to them in long term... Yet many parents don't have many good options than sending their children to nurseries for example.

I personally think that after vulnerable people the next in line for vaccination should be people who take care of babies/toddlers, let it be someone working in a nursery or a parent.

Why? The are workers are mostly young and by the time the children are old enough for Kita they are at a very low risk.

As a reminder. Deaths from Covid in Switzerland:

0-9: 2 deaths
10-19: 1 death
20-29: 3 deaths
30-39: 9 deaths

...

80 and older: 7018 deaths.

The only rational ordering is by age. To be honest I wouldn't even let the diabetics etc. jump the queue too much (say bump them up by 10 years - priorising a 25 year old diabetic over a healthy 60 year old will statistically not make sense).

Not trying to minimise Covid - know numerous people healthy in their early 30s who've had it and had a miserable time, but as a healthy young person your chances of death are minute (the above stats include people with comorbidities remember).

No, it does NOT!

Tom

The babies' most effective protection is if the parents protect themselves. That's who they have the most contact with, and thus who they're most likely to get infected by.

Even if your suggestion made sense it wouldn't work. The willingness to vaccinate among Swiss healthcare and care personnel is an absolute disgrace, it's continuously in the 20-30% range. Perhaps it's a bit higher now for the covid vaccine, but either way the pandemic should be used to make vaccination according to BAG recommendations a condition for continued employment.

Just a final remark:
Infant mortality in Brazil is 13/1000.

That's 351'000 deaths among the 27 mln children of age 9 or less.

Compared to an estimated 2'060 dead from covid.

It seens highly implausible they have that many dead from Covid.

If they are using the usual method of defining a Covid death as dead within X days of a diagnosis, infant mortality is generally high and Covid mortality is low then they are bound to be drastically overcounting.

In CH, of 643k confirmed cases 11.5k were children younger than 10, that's 1.8%. Assuming the same for Brazil's 14.3mln cases that's 252k infants who tested positive. The mentioned mortality would result in 3281 deaths from among them. Since covid is 14 months old whereas the mortality is counted over 12 months, that results in an expected 3828 infant deaths.

However that's definitely an overcount, because 14 months ago virtually all "normal" infant deaths must have been without covid. For lack of better approximation, halving the computed number of infant covid deaths seems reasonable. Well, the resulting 1914 basically the same as what OP mentions, and given we're talking ballpark numbers it isn't that much higher than what BBC mentions here.

Looks like you're on to something.

Hmm, calculating with 12 months would have been closer to reality, so the number of
infant deaths due to "normal" mortality should be something like 3281 and 1640, respectively.

But the implied linear increase (implied by halving the number) is pretty much spot on, according to the data by Tagesanzeiger (behind paywall):