Hepatitis Outbreak in Children.

It appears from reports that there is currently an outbreak of Hepatitis in children. The World Health Authority (for what it's worth) report on the outbreak here. The circumstances surrounding the outbreak and the current theory for the reason: that due to lockdowns there's been less exposure to Adenoviruses out in the wild, seem highly implausible.

First thing to realise is that the "normal" Hepatitis virus strains are not involved, or at least haven't been detected in the children affected.

The second thing is that the outbreak started in the West. In the UK actually, and has spread to other Western countries. Almost like the spread of an entirely new virus strain.

It's now in the past few days been reported in Asia.

It's interesting in the WHO report that there are various suggestions regarding this new viral mechanism. It's virtually unheard of for healthy children to contract Hepatitis unless the usual viruses and methods of infection are involved.

This is yet another entirely new phenomenon. The mechanism that causes the Hepatitis hasn't yet been identified.

Adenovirus 41 seems to be implicated in the report, but it looks like number 41 isn't present in all cases, just the majority. So that may not be the actual infection at play.

The interesting fact are the countries involved: The UK tops the list and Spain and Israel come second in case numbers. But what is common between those three countries? And what part in the mechanism has lockdown played?

Being facecious, could it be linked to hot tub or swimming pool use? After all Hot Tubs had a bit of a boost in the UK during lockdown, and Israel and Spain use similar chemicals to hot tubs in their very popular swimming pools. Could it be prolonged exposure to clorine or other chemicals like algae-killing ones that produce the reduction in resistance to hepatitis-causing viruses or bacteria. Or could this be a new virus incubated in Hot tubs or swimming pools a-la Legionaire's disease?

Of course there are already conspiracies that the Covid-19 vaccine is involved, with no evidence that the children involved had been vaccinated. Although truth be told, the three top countries have some of the highest global vaccination rates in children so it's worthy of further study.

More needs to be done to fully investigate the links and come up with the definitive mechanism at play here. It does seem as if the scientists are clueless at the moment, sadly.

Virology is currently at a pretty early stage in understanding the roles that viruses play in secondary infections and things like triggering cancer, MS and immune system illnesses.