World
Ebola more deadly for young children: Study
Washington: Ebola is more likely to be fatal for children under five, an international team of scientists led by Imperial College London and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday, a media report said on Thursday.
The team analyzed data on Ebola cases in children under 16 during the current outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and found that young children who get the disease have a lower chance of surviving it, although the rate of infection is lower in children than adults, as per reported.
As of March 2015, nearly 4,000 children under 16 have been affected by Ebola in the current epidemic, around a fifth of all confirmed and probable cases, according to the WHO.
The study found that Ebola has affected young children most severely, killing around 90 percent of children aged under a year and around 80 percent of children aged one to four years who are infected.
Older children are much more likely to survive the disease. It has killed 52 percent of infected children aged 10 to 15. For adults aged 16 to 44, the case fatality rate is 65 percent.
The incubation period, the time between becoming infected and showing symptoms, was 6.9 days in children under a year and 9.8 days in children aged 10 to 15.
Younger children also had shorter times from the onset of symptoms to hospitalization and death, they found.
There were also differences in the symptoms experienced by children.
Children were more likely to have a fever when they first see a doctor, and less likely to have pain in the abdomen, chest, joints, or muscles; difficulty breathing or swallowing; or hiccups.
“These findings show that Ebola affects young children quite differently to adults, and it’s especially important that we get them into treatment quickly. We also need to look at whether young children are getting treatment that’s appropriate for their age,” said Christl Donnelly of the Imperial College London and a co-author of the study, in a statement.
The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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