Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown • Hacker News Board

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#31

Post by spenczar5 » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #14

spenczar5 wrote: post #3

> "By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and from work, and that might have helped them," Alshaikh said. Ah yes, I'm sure my 7-months-pregnant wife would agree that this has been a lovely, low-stress time. Wouldn't have it any other way.

You seem to be dunking on them for making a qualitative judgement, but they made a comparative one.

No, I'm dunking on them for the comparative judgement, that a reason for fewer preterm births might be less-stressed mothers. I think it's very silly to claim that this is lower stress than your typical year just because you don't have to commute.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#32

Post by kqr » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #27

nostromo wrote: post #8

Heart attacks are similarly down 40-60%. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doc... And cancer diagnoses are down by half. https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0 Of course, no, they aren’t down, it’s just that people that absolutely should be going to the hospital aren’t and they’re endangering their lives trying to avoid COVID-19. Could something similar be at play here? I laughed out loud when they sugge…

So you're saying people are just pushing through heart attacks then going about their business?

I was a bit taken aback at first, too, but then I realised heart attack symptoms fall on a continuous scale, and sometimes people don't even know they had a cardiovascular event. Smaller ones that mainly cause a lot of discomfort but then go away might be ignored now when they shouldn't be. Pure speculation, of course.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#33

Post by tomerico » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

Let's not ignore the possibility that the reduction in pre-term birth could be due to women receiving less pre-natal screening, leading to conditions that would warrant immediate induction going undetected. In fact, data collected from a hospital in the UK indicates a 4X increase in the incidence of stillbirth.

From: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056 edit: Non-paywalled: https://outline.com/MZUPk3

> The incidence of stillbirth was significantly higher during the pandemic period (16 of 1,718 births; 9.31 per 1,000 births) than the prepandemic period (four of 1,681 births; 2.38 per 1,000), a difference of 6.93 stillbirths per 1,000 births.

A hypothesis put forth by the authors on why this is:

> they say the uptick in stillbirths may be due to indirect effects such as a reluctance to go to the hospital when needed (such as in the case of reduced fetal movements), fear of contracting COVID-19, or not wanting to further burden the National Health Service. Changes in obstetric services may also have played a role.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#34

Post by durkie » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

rckoepke wrote: post #26

moralestapia wrote: post #7

Air pollution is something to be taken very seriously, Regarding that (and since we are hackers here), I bought myself one of these last year: https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power-sht20 Pretty affordable and it works really well, readings match another device I have which was much more costly. Since then I turn it on from time to time, I live in an apartment near a highway, I am impressed by: How much…

> I highly recommend getting one of these or a similar sensor. Also, I'm looking to find something similar but capable of measuring CO and CO2, if anyone knows let me know. I have some suggestions for bare boards/chips that you can program yourself and run your own self-hosted IoT cloud over WiFi. CO: $8 [0] + [1] and very very easy. Great place to start, but these sensors have a reputation for being somewhat garbage…

for what it's worth, i wouldn't trust any sensor in the form of the sparkfun CO sensor (link 0 in your comment) -- there was a fellow in denmark who did a ton of research with these sensors to create an electronic nose that exploited their huge lack of sensitivity. most of them are sensitive to a huge range of gases beyond what they are ostensibly labeled for, so he would drive them at different voltages and could basically get fingerprints of various substances: the nose could smell the difference between different types of olive oils or detect different spices. they are also very finicky to changes in temperature / humidity.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#35

Post by klyrs » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #14

spenczar5 wrote: post #3

> "By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and from work, and that might have helped them," Alshaikh said. Ah yes, I'm sure my 7-months-pregnant wife would agree that this has been a lovely, low-stress time. Wouldn't have it any other way.

You seem to be dunking on them for making a qualitative judgement, but they made a comparative one.

I think spenczar5's reaction is fairly understandable in the context. Live in close quarters with somebody in their 7th month of pregnancy and 5th month of lockdown and we'll see if your goto reflex is to explain further.

There's a need for a lot of sensitivity in this conversation. It's easy for us to armchair-expert this to death... that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#36

Post by sloreti » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #5

elevenoh wrote: post #2

Potential upstream causes: "One is social distancing, which may have cut down on the amount of general infection from contact with others. Another is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads." I'd love to see increased incentive for cities to act hastily on reducing <pm2.5 air pollution. Talk about a covert inequality exacerbator.

It’s possible one of the worst long term pollution problems is from tire wear which is not addressed by cleaner running vehicles, so there’s multiple avenues to address there but most solutions only address the fuel/exhaust, was a hacker news story earlier this year.

Road wear scales n^4 with vehicle weight [1]. If tire wear is anything similar, it makes an additional strong argument that we should be using fewer (mass transit) and lighter (bicycles) vehicles.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/Vol3-Chapter5.pdf

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#37

Post by spenczar5 » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

ninjanomnom wrote: post #17

spenczar5 wrote: post #3

> "By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and from work, and that might have helped them," Alshaikh said. Ah yes, I'm sure my 7-months-pregnant wife would agree that this has been a lovely, low-stress time. Wouldn't have it any other way.

From a purely personal perspective I have genuinely been less stressed recently and like the current situation. Obviously I know this pandemic is an awful event for many people and you were (I think?) being sarcastic. But I would be surprised if there wasn't at least some portion of mothers feeling similarly. Is it enough to account for the changes we're seeing? I suspect it's more than one factor.

Believe me, I get it. I kind of have preferred this myself. But for pregnancy, which is already a terrifying ordeal, consider:

- Can't go to the hospital for ultrasound or other routine procedures; the hospital is too dangerous. Gotta fly pretty much blind.

- Haven't met any other first-time parents, haven't been able to do PEP classes. We feel pretty alone.

- Going to need to take parental leave... indefinitely? Early childcare doesn't look like an option. But can we risk our jobs by taking a lot of leave? Maybe we have to.

- We can't see her parents since they work in the healthcare industry. She has a great relationship with her mom, so this is really tough while pregnant.

- Nobody really knows how bad CoVID is for a newborn, or what its effect on gestation is. It's easy to get sucked into spirals of terror about this. While we'd (probably) be fine if we caught it, the effects on the baby, even from asymptomatic infection, are unknown, and there are hints of brain damage which are _really_ scary.

So, it's pretty damn stressful, at least for us.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#38

Post by tasogare » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

dzink wrote: post #10

Here is entirely anecdotal speculation as to why this is happening (credentials - mom of two). In the late stages of pregnancy the uterus starts preparing for birth by doing Braxton hicks contractions. The uterus flexes its muscles. They get stronger and physically push the baby down like a ping pong ball coming out of a balloon. BH contractions are also like clock ticks to pregnancy, the closer you get to delivery t…

> Late stage pregnancy mothers legitimately need less physical strain and more opportunity to take care of their bodies or the baby comes early. Keeping the same active pace of work for a few weeks in the third trimester can cost years of additional effort and suffering as a premature baby may accrue permanent damage.

You are rediscovering why in traditional societies woman stop working when getting pregnant. This is not a plot by the so-called patriarchy but something that have been intuitively understood by humanity for millennia: woman need lot of rest before and after the baby is born.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#39

Post by Gibbon1 » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #7

Air pollution is something to be taken very seriously, Regarding that (and since we are hackers here), I bought myself one of these last year: https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power-sht20 Pretty affordable and it works really well, readings match another device I have which was much more costly. Since then I turn it on from time to time, I live in an apartment near a highway, I am impressed by: How much…

I should dig for it, but I saw a study from the 1960's where the researcher exposed dogs to high levels of pm2.5 uranium oxide dust. It collected in the dogs lungs. But a lot also ended up in associated lymph nodes. Doesn't leave you with a warm feeling about things like diesel exhaust.

Re: Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

#40

Post by nostromo » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #27

nostromo wrote: post #8

Heart attacks are similarly down 40-60%. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doc... And cancer diagnoses are down by half. https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0 Of course, no, they aren’t down, it’s just that people that absolutely should be going to the hospital aren’t and they’re endangering their lives trying to avoid COVID-19. Could something similar be at play here? I laughed out loud when they sugge…

So you're saying people are just pushing through heart attacks then going about their business?

That’s exactly what the NYTimes piece I linked to postulates:

“The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer rather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus. This theory suggests that Covid-19 has instilled fear of face-to-face medical care. As a result, many people with urgent health problems may be opting to remain at home rather than call for help. And when they do finally seek medical attention, it is often only after their condition has worsened. Doctors from Hong Kong reported an increase in patients coming to the hospital late in the course of their heart attack, when treatment is less likely to be lifesaving.”