A bit of good news for 2020: Fewer children have died in the U.S. than would be expected in a non-pandemic year https://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

Something similar has been happening in other affluent nations.

22 of the 29 countries with weekly data for 2020 in the Human Mortality Database have seen deaths in the 14-and-under age group decline this year. Here’s a selection http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

What's causing the decline in childhood deaths?

“The overall picture that is emerging is that stay-at-home orders have provided stresses but also some protection,” sociologist Michel Guillot told @foxjust http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

For young children, the added protection may have been due to:

Less exposure to viruses
Fewer accidents
More attentive child care
Breastfeeding
Expectant mothers at home
http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

For infants in the U.S. the top cause of death every year is “certain conditions originating in the perinatal period.”

Reports of a sharp drop in premature births in the early months of the pandemic should reduce those deaths http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

For kids ages 1–14 the top cause of death in the U.S. is accidents.

Being stuck at home with parents likely reduces the chances of those. France reported a drop in under-25 deaths in France in March/April, which was “probably due to containment measures” http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

Economist @lymanstoneky, one of the first people to point out the children’s mortality decline in the U.S., cites school closures as the crucial containment measure.

“Going to school may expose kids to mortality risk on the way,” he told @foxjust http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

Also, kids get sick at school.

99.9% of the time they’re fine. Sometimes they aren’t. It turns out, school-age deaths of infectious disease are much more seasonal than adult deaths of infectious disease http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

By taking kids out of school in the spring, it may have kept a few from getting fatally ill from diseases other than Covid.

When comparing Denmark, which closed schools in March, and neighboring Sweden, where schools never closed, the difference is clear http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

This may be in part a continuation of existing trends.

In the U.S., for example, the mortality rate for children ages 1 through 14 declined almost 30% from 1999 through 2018, mainly because the number of accidental deaths went down http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

One possible takeaway is that the rise in so-called helicopter parenting is saving some youngsters’ lives.

Covid-19 school shutdowns and work-from-arrangements would seem to have brought the helicoptering to a new level of intensity http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

Happily, not many children ages 1 through 14 in the U.S. die in any case.

Further declines in these mortality rates would be great, but surely not great enough to merit keeping schools closed and parents stuck at home with their kids indefinitely http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

Infants, in contrast, have a high mortality rate than any other age group under 55.

If something can be learned from the pandemic that would reduce infant deaths in the U.S. significantly, that could be a really big deal http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

In the U.K., mothers get 39 weeks of paid maternity leave.

That’s quite different from how things work in the U.S., which may help explain why the England and Wales infant mortality rate was about two-thirds that of the U.S. in 2018 http://trib.al/1OJQIHt 

Lower child mortality is something to applaud, but there’s one caveat:

Covid-19 is the disease has mostly spared children’s lives, but the pandemic-induced disruptions to health care, nutrition and mental health could prove to be dire for them http://trib.al/1OJQIHt