15 ms·

Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown

204 points by breitling 6y ago

elevenoh 6y ago
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.
- stevenwoo 6y ago
  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.
  - eggsome 6y ago
    Don't forget about break pads: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/urai-bda010720.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/urai-bda0107...
    - kentlyons 6y ago
      Regenerative breaking with the right EV could make a huge difference here. I use my breaks way way less now than with a traditional car.
  - peter5878 6y ago
    The contribution of tire and brake pad wear is really quite low compared to other sources of air pollution. From Evangeliou et al. (2020), Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions, page 3: "Surface concentrations of tire wear particles (TWPs) range between a few ng.m−3 and 20 ng.m−3 for PM2.5 and up to 50 ng.m−3 for PM10 (Supplementary Movie 1). Brake wear particle (BWP) surface concentrations reach 50 ng.m−3 at maximum (Supplementary Movie 1). The highest concentrations were calculated for eastern USA, Europe and South-eastern Asia. All concentrations (TWPs 0.4 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.8 μg.m−3 for PM10; BWPs 0.8 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.4 μg.m−3 for PM10) were far below air quality limits for PM (annual mean 10 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, double for PM10) and lower than typical black carbon (BC) concentrations in remote regions." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9
    - swsieber 6y ago
      But the type of pollution does matter. An important question is does it have a greater impact. And given the studies linking health to distance from the freeway, I think that question needs further investigation.
      - novok 6y ago
        Electrics have less brake wear and probably more tire wear due to weight increases.
    - stevenwoo 6y ago
      You are correct but the particles from tires make a signficant contribution to pollution in the ocean! I neglected to separate that out from the GP's air pollution discussion. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-02/california-microplastics-ocean-study https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-02/califor...
  - sloreti 6y ago
    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 https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/Vol3-Chapter5.pdf
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      Why should we be using mass transit? Wouldn't a bus be heavier than a car? And n^4 with weight would mean the increase in weight would likely be much worse than the gain from the n reduction in number of cars.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    Electric (both fully and hybrid) vehicles have the advantage over fuel cell, LNG/CNG and conventional ICE engines in that they can massively reduce brake pad wear/dust by regenerative braking, so only tire wear remains as an issue.
spenczar5 6y ago
> "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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  You seem to be dunking on them for making a qualitative judgement, but they made a comparative one.
  - spenczar5 6y ago
    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.
    - Jolter 6y ago
      Maybe we should all refrain from speaking for all pregnant women without having any facts to support it.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    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.
    - erulabs 6y ago
      I mean, "armchair quarterback" doesn't really apply to posing a hypothesis, does it?
jariel 6y ago
The stress of non-cummuting may have been offset by the stress of 'OMG there's a pandemic' - a more existential kind of things. The Scientologists have some very aggressive rules about 'quiet' around baby and birth, rather extremist, but I think there is something to it. Even in the womb, we are picking up information - imagine all the noise, hormones, moving around etc. we get from pre-birth to age 1. I wonder if we should head out to the countryside 3 months before and after. It would be powerful to see more research into this, because the results could be revelatory not just in relation to birth, but in other life activities. Edit: I'm not suggesting there's any 'Science' in 'Scientology', rather, it's an expansive and odd cult with just a ton on out-of-the-box thinking, a lot of it initiated way back when treatment of mental illness was actually draconian (ie lobotomies, arbitrary detention, brutal treatment) and there are often 'kernels of truth' in some of these things. The 'quiet during and around birthing' always struck me as something actually rational in a way. Not scientific either but Glenn Gould attributed his musical genius to the fact his mother would play softly while he was still the womb (thus he's literally been playing 'before he was born') and I don't think it's unreasonable at all to think 'maybe there is something to it'. Early childhood events have incredible impact on our lives. I think of it like 'the time when the kernel code is established' and things gone wayward at that level cause idiosyncrasies for the rest of one's life.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  I am pretty sure most people don't remember whether someone said something during their birth. Generally, people remember very little from their first years. For a child below 5 years, if you talk about something that happened a year ago, from their perspective it never happened (unless you remind them of the thing repeatedly, in which case they actually remember your repetition, not the original event). Also, the babies themselves contribute some of the noise. The "something is to it" part is probably that you shouldn't play loud metal music in the hospital. Which probably no one does anyway. But being afraid to say a word... that's just superstition.
  - jariel 6y ago
    "whether someone said something during their birth. Generally, people remember very little from their first years" You're missing the context here. Babies don't understand speech, so it's not like words are going to matter. And this has nothing to do with 'memories'. Loud noises, unnatural humming sounds like vehicles, the constancy of it all - is highly unnatural. The possibility that hormones can alter our development is implied in the article, it's not entirely unreasonable that other stressors can affect us as well. We were 'designed' to come into a very quiet world (granted, it was a rugged place) but it was audibly very quiet. Since all of us - adults, children, react in a variety of ways to sound (stressing, soothing etc.) I suggest that audio, in the very earliest phases of one's life can possibly be a stressor.
moralestapia 6y ago
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 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 air quality changes between days, during the day and depending on whether there's traffic or not, how much it changes due to household activities (cooking, cleaning). and how it changes when someone is smoking, even outside of my unit. Thanks to this I have developed a routine of opening/closing windows at certain times that allows me to improve the average air quality inside my place. If I had the time (and some actuators) I could probably automate that, that would be cool yeah :D. 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.
- rckoepke 6y ago
  > 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 (see downthread discussion for more detail). I wouldn't use it as an emergency carbon monoxide alarm but it'll do sensitive measurements (10 to 500ppm), even if it's not accurate and I'd guess not particularly repeatable over time. There are more expensive ones available which may be more reputable. Just need an arduino or any other micro controller. I personally like [2] because it has built-in WiFi but still very cheap. I run a basic web server on them that exposes the data to Prometheus/Grafana. See [3]. CO2[4]: $60 here and you'll want a $10-20 ESP32 or ESP8266 to go with it. Arduino libraries are already written for it and the Arduion IDE has good support for ESP32 so I doubt it would be much work at all to test on / port to ESP32 and fix any porting bugs when they pop up. Alternatively if you feel like writing the interface from scratch you can go down the $40 for equivalent parts from Arrow, DigiKey, or Mouser. Honestly - interfacing with these things is generally not complicated at all as long as there aren't hardware bugs or undocumented behavior. tVOC: $20 here[5] It looks like your PM 2.5 sensor does not also measure total VOC, so this could be handy. For a very scientific breakdown of how a metal-oxide detecting chip can be used to calculate VOC's, see the following[6]. Thankfully, there is free firmware supplied by sparkfun which does all the heavy lifting, but whenever you're using a chip cross-purposes its good to double-check the math and science. I personally combine these kinds of sensors with the WiFi-enabled ESP8266 or ESP32 microcontrollers, which make for ~$20+ USB-flash drive sized sensors I can litter around the apartment/outside. I like controlling my own cloud, because I can't stand how Nest only provided 7 days of historical data, or reliance on cloud servers for things like itead.cc / EWeLink apps. It's stupidly simple to set up Prometheus and Grafana to self-host your own cloud. See mine here[7] If anyone decides to go this route and gets stuck anywhere, feel free to ping me. Email in profile. 0: (CO sensor) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403 1: (Board for easy soldering/mounting) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891 2: (Cheap ESP32) https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland-esp32-wroom-32d-module https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland-esp32-wroo... 3: (HTTP server running on $10 microcontroller) http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/ http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/ 4: (CO2 sensor) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112 5: (MOx sensor which is programmed to output tVOC -- I would not trust the CO2 though) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193 6: https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441-2019.html https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441... 7: http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home-office?orgId=1&refresh=5s&from=1595306888709&to=1595911688709 http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home-off...
nostromo 6y ago
Heart attacks are similarly down 40-60%. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doc... And cancer diagnoses are down by half. https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0 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 suggested that this is a “low stress” time to be pregnant. All indicators show the opposite.
- uuilly 6y ago
  Difference is you can't "hold in" a pre-term birth b/c you're afraid of covid.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    Half of premature babies are delivered via c-section and many more are induced, usually because there is some risk to the mother or baby at holding the baby to term.
    - wahern 6y ago
      Such as inducement for preeclampsia, which in prior years accounted for ~15% of premature births in the U.S.: https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/preeclampsia.aspx https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/preeclampsia.aspx Like with coronary and cardiovascular diseases, I imagine long-term impacts won't be known for several years.
    - DangitBobby 6y ago
      I find it doubtful that the people researching this phenomenon didn't think of that, don't you?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
dzink 6y ago
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 the more frequent and stronger they get. If you get dehydrated, they accelerate. If you get stressed out or exhausted, they accelerate. If you skip a meal, they accelerate. 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. Remote work allows for your body to rest while your brains can work at full speed for longer. It is challenging to make “remote“ work right now, but for my part, I’m constantly prototyping and brainstorming ways to make the experience better. We can do so much more in our lifetimes if reduce the dangerous commutes.
- garmaine 6y ago
  I would think that stress levels are higher now...
  - dzink 6y ago
    Mental stress may be high, but you can also turn off the news. Physiological stress is much lower when you have drinks, food, and bathroom within reach every 20 minutes for most of the day. It also helps not having to strut around an office for 10 hours with a giant ball of water and human resting on your internal organs and sloshing back and forth with every movement, throwing you off balance. During pregnancy your body is a machine taken over by a different process you have zero control over, and any resource shortage hits that process first. Meds you take, foods you eat, lack of sleep or other deprivations. You are really an observer of someone else’s work (evolution) and the months of pregnancy teach you to pay attention to your contractions and body reactions, to the baby’s kicks, and any other data outputs, and how they affect the baby. Your amigdala grows and your empathy remains high for life (it grows equally in men who become primary caregivers too). Empathy in this case is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes, foresee deeper into layers of potential consequences and prevent undesirable circumstances.
ulrikrasmussen 6y ago
Here's a study from Denmark showing a 90% drop in the rate of extremely premature births (gestational age below 28 weeks - the HN article talks about 32 weeks, so the drops cannot be directly compared): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v...
wrnr 6y ago
Interesting, their is also a big difference of % premature births between rich countries up to a factor of 3: https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0528.14273 https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-...
jb775 6y ago
My guesses (in order of likelihood): 1) More sleep, and easier to respect their circadian rhythm 2) Reduced un-conscious stress levels related to: the comfort of being at home in a safe place...the comfort of knowing they won't go into labor early while far from home and around non-family members...the comfort of knowing they're eliminating unforeseen risks that come with venturing out into the world 3) Significant reduction of non-natural movements/processes such as: getting in/out of car, sitting in stiff desk chair all day, work-schedule dependent restroom use, commuting related stress 4.) Reduced air pollution
tomerico 6y ago
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 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056 edit: Non-paywalled: https://outline.com/MZUPk3 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.
- barbegal 6y ago
  This is the most reasonable explanation I have heard and I'm surprised it was not discussed in https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.03.20121442v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.03.20121442v... The increase in stillbirths roughly matches the reduction in pre-term births but the proof would be in the reduction in medically induced births during lockdown for which we don't seem to have the data.
- irjustin 6y ago
  Interesting, is the data there to show COVID infections of stillbirth? Can that account for at least some of them to offset?
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    Considering only 0.4% of the UK population has gotten covid ( 300,000 cases / 68,000,000 population) I would say it's incredibly tenuous to blame the 400% stillbirths increase on covid infections.
- throw57382 6y ago
dependenttypes 6y ago
So both the taxpayer and the employer have to fund their decision to become pregnant, huh? This is quite sad, I am glad that I do not live in Australia, especically when combined with its politicians saying "genius" things such as https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathematics-dont-apply-here-says-australian-pm/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema..., its new encryption law, and its porn censorship.
- i_cannot_hack 6y ago
  If the parents do not have the resources to give the child a stable and healthy upbringing (becouse you want to save money), it will lead to a much higher risk of destructive outcomes like poverty, disease and crime. All of which you will have to pay for later via your taxes, in one way or another. It's my firm belief that you are short-sighted in this regard, and that your way of prioritizing will lead to worse outcomes for everyone involved, including yourself. Not to mention you seem a bit indifferent to the suffering of children, but that is beside the point. Giving our children a good start in life is an investment for the future, just like spending money to educate children in school is an investment for the future.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    > If the parents do not have the resources to give the child a stable and healthy upbringing ... they should use birth control or abort. > All of which you will have to pay for later via your taxes This is true only for crime, but it should still be cheaper per person compared to the alternatives. > Not to mention you seem a bit indifferent to the suffering of children I simply do not consider the suffering of children above the suffering of adults - forcing taxpayers and employers to pay maternity leave causes that. > our children "our" children? I would gladly pay for my children if I had kids, but I do not. > just like spending money to educate children in school is an investment for the future. One that should be left up to the parents to pay for (I would also consider school to be child abuse but this is besides the point).
    - 6y ago
aaron695 6y ago
> By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and from work Classically in Psychology the stress of planning a holiday is more than the stress of the death of a loved one. This might now be considered wrong (?), but you are taught this because stress is not what the average person thinks it is. That said, shopping and going out is now really stressful, it's an ongoing changing conditions we are not used to, so surely they mean physical stress, but not sure why they did not say that? Is it because you can't politically say if women rest at home when pregnant it's better for the baby?
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Another is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads. "This might actually help because studies in the past showed that air pollution actually increases the risk for preterm birth," Alshaikh said. One takeaway that doesn't involve arguing about the so-called Patriarchy and what not: Let's just try to lower pollution rates generally. It's good for everyone, including but not limited to pregnant women.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
learnstats2 6y ago
'Don't give birth during a plague' is reasonable as a biological imperative.
feralimal 6y ago
Nevermind the 3 causes they are looking at. I think that this is very likely due to removal/lessening of the impact of doctors on what is a natural process. If doctors are less involved, things take their natural course without problems. Let's not forget, that the third largest cause of death (higher than covid) is iatrogenic death: https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-disorders-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-and-britain/5626283 https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-disord... There is, in fact, a strong case to be made for closing doctors, hospitals, etc down, in order to increase the populations health! EDIT - I don't know why my comment is being downvoted. I think I'm making a rational, reasonable argument! If you disagree, no problem! But perhaps state why you think what I'm suggesting is wrong.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Hospitals furloughing workers and fewer premature babies are definitely outcomes I did not expect.
ThomPete 6y ago
My son was born 10 weeks (started having issues 14 weeks) too early. One of the primary reasons he was born that early was that my wifes Cervical was expanding too fast. The remedy lay down don't move. A simple explanation could simply be that by people having stayed at home they are less likely to be physically active and stressed. I'll bet you that's the primary reason.
a0-prw 6y ago
A similar thing has been reported in Denmark ("big fall in extremely premature births"). https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i-ekstremt-tidligt-foedte-boern-under-coronanedlukningen https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i-ekstremt-...
desktopninja 6y ago
I theorize its because the "pace of (modern) life" has slowed down.
jonathanlydall 6y ago
I have some anecdotal experience here which is not in the same trend. Our baby was born 10 weeks premature on the 4 June, although her being premature seemed to be entirely unrelated to COVID-19. I'm happy to say they've been doing super well and we expect them to come home this week. Although not related to prematureness, of interest in regards to pregnancy and COVID-19 was that the gynaecologist mentioned during pregnancy that they had anecdotally noticed that during our lockdown here babies in utero were on average noticeably bigger than usual. They supposed that it might be related to moms on average being more relaxed due to not needing to do things like stressful work commutes. Our baby was quite a bit bigger than average for their maturity which was quite fortunate given how early they arrived.

204 points by breitling 6y ago

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.

stevenwoo 6y ago
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.
- eggsome 6y ago
  Don't forget about break pads: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/urai-bda010720.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/urai-bda0107...
  - kentlyons 6y ago
    Regenerative breaking with the right EV could make a huge difference here. I use my breaks way way less now than with a traditional car.
- peter5878 6y ago
  The contribution of tire and brake pad wear is really quite low compared to other sources of air pollution. From Evangeliou et al. (2020), Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions, page 3: "Surface concentrations of tire wear particles (TWPs) range between a few ng.m−3 and 20 ng.m−3 for PM2.5 and up to 50 ng.m−3 for PM10 (Supplementary Movie 1). Brake wear particle (BWP) surface concentrations reach 50 ng.m−3 at maximum (Supplementary Movie 1). The highest concentrations were calculated for eastern USA, Europe and South-eastern Asia. All concentrations (TWPs 0.4 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.8 μg.m−3 for PM10; BWPs 0.8 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.4 μg.m−3 for PM10) were far below air quality limits for PM (annual mean 10 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, double for PM10) and lower than typical black carbon (BC) concentrations in remote regions." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9
  - swsieber 6y ago
    But the type of pollution does matter. An important question is does it have a greater impact. And given the studies linking health to distance from the freeway, I think that question needs further investigation.
    - novok 6y ago
      Electrics have less brake wear and probably more tire wear due to weight increases.
  - stevenwoo 6y ago
    You are correct but the particles from tires make a signficant contribution to pollution in the ocean! I neglected to separate that out from the GP's air pollution discussion. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-02/california-microplastics-ocean-study https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-02/califor...
- sloreti 6y ago
  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 https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/Vol3-Chapter5.pdf
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    Why should we be using mass transit? Wouldn't a bus be heavier than a car? And n^4 with weight would mean the increase in weight would likely be much worse than the gain from the n reduction in number of cars.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Electric (both fully and hybrid) vehicles have the advantage over fuel cell, LNG/CNG and conventional ICE engines in that they can massively reduce brake pad wear/dust by regenerative braking, so only tire wear remains as an issue.

spenczar5 6y ago

> "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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anoncareer0212 6y ago
You seem to be dunking on them for making a qualitative judgement, but they made a comparative one.
- spenczar5 6y ago
  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.
  - Jolter 6y ago
    Maybe we should all refrain from speaking for all pregnant women without having any facts to support it.
- klyrs 6y ago
  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.
  - erulabs 6y ago
    I mean, "armchair quarterback" doesn't really apply to posing a hypothesis, does it?

jariel 6y ago

The stress of non-cummuting may have been offset by the stress of 'OMG there's a pandemic' - a more existential kind of things. The Scientologists have some very aggressive rules about 'quiet' around baby and birth, rather extremist, but I think there is something to it. Even in the womb, we are picking up information - imagine all the noise, hormones, moving around etc. we get from pre-birth to age 1. I wonder if we should head out to the countryside 3 months before and after. It would be powerful to see more research into this, because the results could be revelatory not just in relation to birth, but in other life activities. Edit: I'm not suggesting there's any 'Science' in 'Scientology', rather, it's an expansive and odd cult with just a ton on out-of-the-box thinking, a lot of it initiated way back when treatment of mental illness was actually draconian (ie lobotomies, arbitrary detention, brutal treatment) and there are often 'kernels of truth' in some of these things. The 'quiet during and around birthing' always struck me as something actually rational in a way. Not scientific either but Glenn Gould attributed his musical genius to the fact his mother would play softly while he was still the womb (thus he's literally been playing 'before he was born') and I don't think it's unreasonable at all to think 'maybe there is something to it'. Early childhood events have incredible impact on our lives. I think of it like 'the time when the kernel code is established' and things gone wayward at that level cause idiosyncrasies for the rest of one's life.

Viliam1234 6y ago
I am pretty sure most people don't remember whether someone said something during their birth. Generally, people remember very little from their first years. For a child below 5 years, if you talk about something that happened a year ago, from their perspective it never happened (unless you remind them of the thing repeatedly, in which case they actually remember your repetition, not the original event). Also, the babies themselves contribute some of the noise. The "something is to it" part is probably that you shouldn't play loud metal music in the hospital. Which probably no one does anyway. But being afraid to say a word... that's just superstition.
- jariel 6y ago
  "whether someone said something during their birth. Generally, people remember very little from their first years" You're missing the context here. Babies don't understand speech, so it's not like words are going to matter. And this has nothing to do with 'memories'. Loud noises, unnatural humming sounds like vehicles, the constancy of it all - is highly unnatural. The possibility that hormones can alter our development is implied in the article, it's not entirely unreasonable that other stressors can affect us as well. We were 'designed' to come into a very quiet world (granted, it was a rugged place) but it was audibly very quiet. Since all of us - adults, children, react in a variety of ways to sound (stressing, soothing etc.) I suggest that audio, in the very earliest phases of one's life can possibly be a stressor.

moralestapia 6y ago

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 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 air quality changes between days, during the day and depending on whether there's traffic or not, how much it changes due to household activities (cooking, cleaning). and how it changes when someone is smoking, even outside of my unit. Thanks to this I have developed a routine of opening/closing windows at certain times that allows me to improve the average air quality inside my place. If I had the time (and some actuators) I could probably automate that, that would be cool yeah :D. 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.

rckoepke 6y ago
> 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 (see downthread discussion for more detail). I wouldn't use it as an emergency carbon monoxide alarm but it'll do sensitive measurements (10 to 500ppm), even if it's not accurate and I'd guess not particularly repeatable over time. There are more expensive ones available which may be more reputable. Just need an arduino or any other micro controller. I personally like [2] because it has built-in WiFi but still very cheap. I run a basic web server on them that exposes the data to Prometheus/Grafana. See [3]. CO2[4]: $60 here and you'll want a $10-20 ESP32 or ESP8266 to go with it. Arduino libraries are already written for it and the Arduion IDE has good support for ESP32 so I doubt it would be much work at all to test on / port to ESP32 and fix any porting bugs when they pop up. Alternatively if you feel like writing the interface from scratch you can go down the $40 for equivalent parts from Arrow, DigiKey, or Mouser. Honestly - interfacing with these things is generally not complicated at all as long as there aren't hardware bugs or undocumented behavior. tVOC: $20 here[5] It looks like your PM 2.5 sensor does not also measure total VOC, so this could be handy. For a very scientific breakdown of how a metal-oxide detecting chip can be used to calculate VOC's, see the following[6]. Thankfully, there is free firmware supplied by sparkfun which does all the heavy lifting, but whenever you're using a chip cross-purposes its good to double-check the math and science. I personally combine these kinds of sensors with the WiFi-enabled ESP8266 or ESP32 microcontrollers, which make for ~$20+ USB-flash drive sized sensors I can litter around the apartment/outside. I like controlling my own cloud, because I can't stand how Nest only provided 7 days of historical data, or reliance on cloud servers for things like itead.cc / EWeLink apps. It's stupidly simple to set up Prometheus and Grafana to self-host your own cloud. See mine here[7] If anyone decides to go this route and gets stuck anywhere, feel free to ping me. Email in profile. 0: (CO sensor) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403 1: (Board for easy soldering/mounting) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891 2: (Cheap ESP32) https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland-esp32-wroom-32d-module https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland-esp32-wroo... 3: (HTTP server running on $10 microcontroller) http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/ http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/ 4: (CO2 sensor) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112 5: (MOx sensor which is programmed to output tVOC -- I would not trust the CO2 though) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193 6: https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441-2019.html https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441... 7: http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home-office?orgId=1&refresh=5s&from=1595306888709&to=1595911688709 http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home-off...

nostromo 6y ago

Heart attacks are similarly down 40-60%. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doc... And cancer diagnoses are down by half. https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0 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 suggested that this is a “low stress” time to be pregnant. All indicators show the opposite.

uuilly 6y ago
Difference is you can't "hold in" a pre-term birth b/c you're afraid of covid.
- nostromo 6y ago
  Half of premature babies are delivered via c-section and many more are induced, usually because there is some risk to the mother or baby at holding the baby to term.
  - wahern 6y ago
    Such as inducement for preeclampsia, which in prior years accounted for ~15% of premature births in the U.S.: https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/preeclampsia.aspx https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/preeclampsia.aspx Like with coronary and cardiovascular diseases, I imagine long-term impacts won't be known for several years.
  - DangitBobby 6y ago
    I find it doubtful that the people researching this phenomenon didn't think of that, don't you?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

dzink 6y ago

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 the more frequent and stronger they get. If you get dehydrated, they accelerate. If you get stressed out or exhausted, they accelerate. If you skip a meal, they accelerate. 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. Remote work allows for your body to rest while your brains can work at full speed for longer. It is challenging to make “remote“ work right now, but for my part, I’m constantly prototyping and brainstorming ways to make the experience better. We can do so much more in our lifetimes if reduce the dangerous commutes.

garmaine 6y ago
I would think that stress levels are higher now...
- dzink 6y ago
  Mental stress may be high, but you can also turn off the news. Physiological stress is much lower when you have drinks, food, and bathroom within reach every 20 minutes for most of the day. It also helps not having to strut around an office for 10 hours with a giant ball of water and human resting on your internal organs and sloshing back and forth with every movement, throwing you off balance. During pregnancy your body is a machine taken over by a different process you have zero control over, and any resource shortage hits that process first. Meds you take, foods you eat, lack of sleep or other deprivations. You are really an observer of someone else’s work (evolution) and the months of pregnancy teach you to pay attention to your contractions and body reactions, to the baby’s kicks, and any other data outputs, and how they affect the baby. Your amigdala grows and your empathy remains high for life (it grows equally in men who become primary caregivers too). Empathy in this case is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes, foresee deeper into layers of potential consequences and prevent undesirable circumstances.

ulrikrasmussen 6y ago

Here's a study from Denmark showing a 90% drop in the rate of extremely premature births (gestational age below 28 weeks - the HN article talks about 32 weeks, so the drops cannot be directly compared): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v...

wrnr 6y ago

Interesting, their is also a big difference of % premature births between rich countries up to a factor of 3: https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0528.14273 https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-...

jb775 6y ago

My guesses (in order of likelihood): 1) More sleep, and easier to respect their circadian rhythm 2) Reduced un-conscious stress levels related to: the comfort of being at home in a safe place...the comfort of knowing they won't go into labor early while far from home and around non-family members...the comfort of knowing they're eliminating unforeseen risks that come with venturing out into the world 3) Significant reduction of non-natural movements/processes such as: getting in/out of car, sitting in stiff desk chair all day, work-schedule dependent restroom use, commuting related stress 4.) Reduced air pollution

tomerico 6y ago

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

barbegal 6y ago
This is the most reasonable explanation I have heard and I'm surprised it was not discussed in https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.03.20121442v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.03.20121442v... The increase in stillbirths roughly matches the reduction in pre-term births but the proof would be in the reduction in medically induced births during lockdown for which we don't seem to have the data.
irjustin 6y ago
Interesting, is the data there to show COVID infections of stillbirth? Can that account for at least some of them to offset?
- dahfizz 6y ago
  Considering only 0.4% of the UK population has gotten covid ( 300,000 cases / 68,000,000 population) I would say it's incredibly tenuous to blame the 400% stillbirths increase on covid infections.
throw57382 6y ago

dependenttypes 6y ago

So both the taxpayer and the employer have to fund their decision to become pregnant, huh? This is quite sad, I am glad that I do not live in Australia, especically when combined with its politicians saying "genius" things such as https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathematics-dont-apply-here-says-australian-pm/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema..., its new encryption law, and its porn censorship.

i_cannot_hack 6y ago
If the parents do not have the resources to give the child a stable and healthy upbringing (becouse you want to save money), it will lead to a much higher risk of destructive outcomes like poverty, disease and crime. All of which you will have to pay for later via your taxes, in one way or another. It's my firm belief that you are short-sighted in this regard, and that your way of prioritizing will lead to worse outcomes for everyone involved, including yourself. Not to mention you seem a bit indifferent to the suffering of children, but that is beside the point. Giving our children a good start in life is an investment for the future, just like spending money to educate children in school is an investment for the future.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  > If the parents do not have the resources to give the child a stable and healthy upbringing ... they should use birth control or abort. > All of which you will have to pay for later via your taxes This is true only for crime, but it should still be cheaper per person compared to the alternatives. > Not to mention you seem a bit indifferent to the suffering of children I simply do not consider the suffering of children above the suffering of adults - forcing taxpayers and employers to pay maternity leave causes that. > our children "our" children? I would gladly pay for my children if I had kids, but I do not. > just like spending money to educate children in school is an investment for the future. One that should be left up to the parents to pay for (I would also consider school to be child abuse but this is besides the point).
  - 6y ago

aaron695 6y ago

> By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and from work Classically in Psychology the stress of planning a holiday is more than the stress of the death of a loved one. This might now be considered wrong (?), but you are taught this because stress is not what the average person thinks it is. That said, shopping and going out is now really stressful, it's an ongoing changing conditions we are not used to, so surely they mean physical stress, but not sure why they did not say that? Is it because you can't politically say if women rest at home when pregnant it's better for the baby?

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Another is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads. "This might actually help because studies in the past showed that air pollution actually increases the risk for preterm birth," Alshaikh said. One takeaway that doesn't involve arguing about the so-called Patriarchy and what not: Let's just try to lower pollution rates generally. It's good for everyone, including but not limited to pregnant women.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

learnstats2 6y ago

'Don't give birth during a plague' is reasonable as a biological imperative.

feralimal 6y ago

Nevermind the 3 causes they are looking at. I think that this is very likely due to removal/lessening of the impact of doctors on what is a natural process. If doctors are less involved, things take their natural course without problems. Let's not forget, that the third largest cause of death (higher than covid) is iatrogenic death: https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-disorders-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-and-britain/5626283 https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-disord... There is, in fact, a strong case to be made for closing doctors, hospitals, etc down, in order to increase the populations health! EDIT - I don't know why my comment is being downvoted. I think I'm making a rational, reasonable argument! If you disagree, no problem! But perhaps state why you think what I'm suggesting is wrong.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Hospitals furloughing workers and fewer premature babies are definitely outcomes I did not expect.

ThomPete 6y ago

My son was born 10 weeks (started having issues 14 weeks) too early. One of the primary reasons he was born that early was that my wifes Cervical was expanding too fast. The remedy lay down don't move. A simple explanation could simply be that by people having stayed at home they are less likely to be physically active and stressed. I'll bet you that's the primary reason.

a0-prw 6y ago

A similar thing has been reported in Denmark ("big fall in extremely premature births"). https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i-ekstremt-tidligt-foedte-boern-under-coronanedlukningen https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i-ekstremt-...

desktopninja 6y ago

I theorize its because the "pace of (modern) life" has slowed down.

jonathanlydall 6y ago

I have some anecdotal experience here which is not in the same trend. Our baby was born 10 weeks premature on the 4 June, although her being premature seemed to be entirely unrelated to COVID-19. I'm happy to say they've been doing super well and we expect them to come home this week. Although not related to prematureness, of interest in regards to pregnancy and COVID-19 was that the gynaecologist mentioned during pregnancy that they had anecdotally noticed that during our lockdown here babies in utero were on average noticeably bigger than usual. They supposed that it might be related to moms on average being more relaxed due to not needing to do things like stressful work commutes. Our baby was quite a bit bigger than average for their maturity which was quite fortunate given how early they arrived.