Coronavirus Chronicles — Does Anecdotal Mean Untrue?

As outlined in the previous post, “Literal and Figurative Orphans,” many thousands of children have lost one or both parents to the coronavirus, as well as other custodial adults or caregivers, and meaningful, influential grownups who affected their wellbeing and the direction of their lives.

What happens when parents come down with a highly contagious disease? They are separated from the kids, possibly hospitalized. What happens to children in such a vulnerable spot? Anxiety, fear, uncertainty, the stress of being dealt with by different adults, and of course the suspicion that they have been abandoned.

Meals may be irregular and unfamiliar. Adults, eager to help but preoccupied with other matters, are apt to be lax about keeping an eye on food intake. Kids are likely to consume too much of all the wrong things. Hello, comfort eating! They are in the ideal situation to do everything that can lead to obesity.

Crank it up a notch

What happens if one parent dies, or both of them? Problems multiply exponentially. Questions of temporary caregiving and permanent custody are on the table. Kids may be removed from familiar surroundings. Grief-stricken adult relatives are in no fit condition to cope, and of course, children are going through their own grief processes. Strange adults from various agencies may show up. Legal matters must be settled. Money, often desperately needed during pandemic times, is likely to be in an even shorter supply.

In short, one goal is to protect children from getting COVID-19, not least because it can set them up for obesity. Another goal is to prevent them from losing their parents, which is a scenario almost guaranteed to create a dismal set of problems, including but not limited to obesity. One thing that does not help is when people spread the disinformation that children can’t get COVID — which, incredibly, some people still do. Another thing that creates havoc is when people spread the disinformation that healthy, youngish adults are somehow magically protected from the virus.

Is anecdotal the same as baloney?

Maybe some people deliberately lie in the other direction, trying to scare the populace into responsible conduct by planting tales of dead relatives in social media. It sounds unlikely, but this is a weird world and almost anything could happen.

But what if even half of the multitude of anonymous reporters are truthful and sincere? One describes a young man of his acquaintance as 29, healthy, unvaccinated, felled by COVID. “It destroyed his lungs, then stopped his heart, then after resuscitation he was on a ventilator til all his systems failed.” Another reports that two family members in Florida died from COVID; then at the funeral, four more relatives caught it and also died. (None had been vaccinated.)

Somebody’s sister needed her gallbladder removed, but could not have surgery until it ruptured and became an emergency, because Texas hospitals were filled with COVID-19 patients. Someone else knows more than one person who had an entire leg amputated, and ended up dying anyway, and another person knows someone who lost all her fingers. Somebody’s mother personally knows nine people who have died from the virus.

Social media is also where you can find such observations as this one, attributed to an anonymous 14-year-old:

It’s strange that people think a vaccine that has helped millions of people will kill them, but a virus that has killed millions of people won’t.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Navy Medicine/Public Domain

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Knock-On Effects Are Scary

By the end of July, Louisiana hospitals were full to bursting, mainly with victims of the Delta variant. Dr. Catherine O’Neal called the increase “exponential,” a word whose meaning seems to be underappreciated by a large part of the general public. This two-minute animation, which we have recommended before, is not an exact analogy, and is frankly kind of corny, but it really puts across what the concept of “exponential” is all about. Just picture each chessboard square as a hospital. Again, not an exact parallel, but it helps to have a mental picture of what relentless multiplication implies, especially now that a new variant of the Delta variant appears to be even more rampantly contagious than its progenitor.

By mid-August, in Tennessee, at Vanderbilt Health in Nashville, the Emergency Department and the Adult Hospital were bursting at the seams. People who needed surgery or other treatment for anything were pretty much out of luck, and no transfers were being accepted from other institutions. From another hospital in the same state, a spokesperson told the press, “In Middle Tennessee right now it is impossible to find an empty, staffed ICU, ER, or med/surg bed”:

The delta variant has burned through us with a ferocity that’s hard to describe. 6 weeks ago there were 200 Covid patients in hospitals in Tennessee. Today there are 2000.

At the same, competing with COVID kids for very limited resources, a different virus called RSV was putting children into hospitals all over the state, and nobody knows how many because there are no reporting requirements.

Meanwhile, Texas did not have a single unoccupied ICU bed, and the state put in a request to the federal government for five mortuary trailers. In Florida, 12 floors of Tampa General Hospital were devoted solely to COVID-19 patients and most of the state’s morgues were filled to capacity.

By the end of August, no ICU beds were available in the entire states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, and in Utah, the hospitals were overrun with new COVID cases, the overwhelming majority of whom were unvaccinated for whatever reasons. In Alabama, in a case that drew a lot of attention, doctors contacted 43 hospitals in three states, attempting to locate a cardiac ICU bed for a man who ended up dying.

With around 100,000 Americans hospitalized because of COVID-91, Dr. Peter J. Hotez wrote,

Patients with non-COVID-related illnesses and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, and trauma are paying the price of unavailable hospital beds and emergency rooms.

[I]t’s not only an influx of patients but also the accumulating losses of trained health professionals that is so worrisome. Burnout has been a problem throughout the pandemic. Yet overwhelmed nurses and other hospital staff are leaving the profession and their posts due to a combination of factors that include exhaustion and the demoralization of taking care of so many dying young and middle-aged patients who refused vaccines.

To sum up, as an anonymous Twitter user put it, “Millions of people will suffer physical, psychological and financial consequences that will last months or years, a toll difficult to quantify.'”

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Louisiana doctor says ‘exponential’ surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations ‘isn’t a controllable thing at this point’,” BusinessInsider.com, 07/29/21
Source: “‘Impossible to find’ empty ICU, ER beds in Middle Tennessee, hospital chief medical officer says,” Tennessean.com, 08/12/21
Source: “The Latest COVID-19 Surge Is Just the Start of a New Nightmare,” TheDailyBeast.com, 09/07/21
Image by Mark Bonica/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — More About Knock-On Effects

What happens when the cue ball connects with the other balls? They go all over the place, in unpredictable directions, and some even fall into holes. The rest are distributed randomly, waiting for the stick of fate to send them off to the next event. In the analogy, COVID-19 is the initial blow that creates chaos and uncertainty for everybody. This continues the discussion of how children all over the world have been deprived of their custodial adults and introduced to chaos.

For the Miami Herald, Katie Camero wrote about a paper published by The Lancet:

Before the pandemic stripped the world of millions of people, there were about 140 million orphaned children globally. Now, an additional 1.5 million kids have lost their parents, grandparents or other caregivers… Every 12 seconds a child under the age of 18 loses their caregiver to COVID-19.

In April 2021, India alone experienced about an 8.5-fold jump in the number of newly orphaned children (43,139 kids) compared to the month prior (5,091).

Mexico, with an estimated 141,000 COVID orphans, and Brazil, with around 130,000, lead the way. India is only third, with a total of about 119,000, and then comes the United States, with an estimated 113,700 children deprived of their primary caregivers by the virus. Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton tweeted that one out of every 500 American kids has lost a parent or caregiver to the disease. Not surprisingly, Black and other minority families have been hit the hardest.

Bear in mind, that the Lancet report was published three months ago, based on data collected even earlier. Plus, according to Dr. Juliette Unwin, co-lead author of the study, the researchers’ estimates were low because the team’s tracking ability was unable to encompass all the possible demographic, epidemiological, and healthcare factors. She also notes,

And as data has shown throughout the pandemic, more men have died from the disease than women in nearly every country. Because of this, up to five times more kids have lost their fathers than their mothers.

In August, it was announced that almost 120,000 American children had lost the adults in charge of taking care of them. Since the pandemic began, there was already a lot of family separation, with the main money-earner, often the father, living in the garage or some corner of the workplace to avoid the possibility of carrying contagion into the home. Healthcare workers were and still are particularly careful to make sure their very presence does not spread the virus. With so many men dying, many of them fathers, more women are shouldering the burden of single parenthood, trying to support themselves, along with one or more children.

A hard row to hoe

With one or both parents victims of the plague, who is taking care of bereaved children now? Distraught, overwhelmed aunts, uncles, and friends. Social workers with impossibly heavy caseloads. Foster parents. A whole lot of grandparents, who thought they were out of the child-rearing field, have had to revise their dreams and change their lives drastically. Some are giving up their hard-earned retirement years. Worse yet, others are still working, in addition to being responsible for a child or children.

Surviving adults have their own grief to cope with, as well as dealing with the devastating emotional toll that strikes children when parents are suddenly gone. In addition, the newly responsible grownups are supposed to make sure these kids adhere to healthful diets and get the appropriate amount of exercise to prevent them from becoming obese children and then obese adults facing the lifetime of misery that state often implies.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “US is No. 4 in the world with most orphaned children by COVID deaths, study finds,” MiamiHerald.com, 07/21/21
Source: “Nearly 120,000 children in the US have already lost a primary caregiver due to COVID,” ABCNews.go.com, 07/20/21
Image by Patsmith photography/CC BY-ND 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Orphanhood and Other Knock-On Effects

The thing is, it’s not just that people are dying from COVID-19. There is a lot of spillover, an enormous amount of chain reaction, a huge pile of consequences that result from so many illnesses and deaths, and so much societal disruption.

Hospitals have reported turning away patients with urgent medical needs, including women in labor, because there was just nowhere to put them. In Austin, when a man with two guns was arrested outside a school, local residents speculated on what would have happened if he had not been apprehended.

A mass casualty event is not a farfetched possibility. Nationwide, more than 1,000 children and teens have been killed by guns this year so far. Plenty of thoughts and prayers are available — just nowhere near enough medical care. In Austin on that day, there were no emergency room beds, no intensive care beds, indeed no empty hospital beds of any kind, within miles.

To the point

This post is about dead parents, who are not just COVID patients. They are mothers and fathers with other medical emergencies, who in many places have been unable to get treatment because COVID patients absorb all the resources.

The stories become more specific, like the one Newsweek published last month, of a California couple, both in their late 30s, who died within two weeks of each other. They were survived by five children under the age of seven, and the sixth was delivered while her mother was being treated for the virus. The woman’s brother told a reporter that his sister had been reluctant to be vaccinated because she was pregnant. The most recent Childhood Obesity News post, by the way, is about the benefits and safety, for mothers and babies, of vaccination against COVID-19.

We hear one horrendous story after another, like that of a Tennessee mother of three who was hospitalized for months; who went deaf and had to have her hands and feet amputated because of COVID. A nurse’s social media account mentions a friend who is on oxygen because of COVID, and who is also taking care of the three children her sister left behind. The grandparents are unable to offer help, because they died too. So many of these deaths hurt children, and while all are tragic, some are tinged with painful irony, like the Georgia nurse and anti-vaxxer who died in August leaving five kids.

Seth Flaxman, co-lead author of a recent paper about children orphaned by the plague, says, “Out of control COVID-19 epidemics abruptly and permanently alter the lives of the children who are left behind.” Journalist Katie Camero elaborates on the theme:

Based on what researchers have learned from the Ebola and HIV epidemics, orphaned children face high risks of short- and long-term negative effects on their health, safety and well-being after losing caregivers. Consequences include poverty, mental health problems, sexual violence, teenage pregnancy and higher risks of suicide, heart disease, diabetes, cancer or stroke.

Each and every one of those physical and psychological problems can lead to obesity.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Parents of 5 Children Including Newborn Die 2 Weeks Apart From COVID,” Newsweek.com., 09/12/21
Source: “US is No. 4 in the world with most orphaned children by COVID deaths, study finds,” MiamiHerald.com, 07/21/21
Image by Marco Verch/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — COVID-19 and Pregnant People

In June, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance to American employers confirming that they can require both existing workers and new hires to be vaccinated against COVID-19. At the same time, employers must comply with provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But, says journalist Elizabeth Nolan Brown,

In some circumstances, Title VII and the ADA require an employer to provide reasonable accommodations for employees who, because of a disability or a sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance, do not get vaccinated for COVID-19 [… ] ncluding pregnancy-related conditions that constitute a disability.

What do medical authorities say? In August, Israel approved booster shots for people over 40 and pregnant women over 18. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control, having found that there is no increased risk of miscarriage, recommended vaccination for pregnant women, and for women trying to conceive, and also for breastfeeding mothers.

Journalist Katie Kerwin McCrimmon interviewed family medicine practitioner Dr. Molly Hoss, who has delivered hundreds of babies, and learned that concern is natural because pregnant women are more likely to have a severe case of COVID-19, and the disease also makes preterm birth more likely. Dr. Hoss firmly believes in vaccination for all. Vaccination is not only safe for mother and child, but antibodies are passed along through breastfeeding.

Backing up a step

The specter of infertility has spooked a lot of people, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that such fears are not supported by scientific evidence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention position is,

There is currently no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause female or male fertility problems or problems getting pregnant.

Their experts have confirmed that in men, being vaccinated does not influence sperm counts, and scientists have “tested ovarian reserves and function before and after the vaccine and they also showed no difference.”

In September, another study, published by the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, confirmed that “Pregnant women who get mRNA vaccines pass high levels of antibodies to their babies.” Further studies are underway to determine how long into a baby’s life this advantage lasts.

Sadly, according to the CDC’s September numbers, among pregnant women ages 18 to 49, only 30% have been vaccinated. Study co-author Dr. Ashley Roman told reporter Anushree Dave, “Right now we’re recommending all pregnant women receive the vaccine for maternal benefit.”

Professor Linda Eckert, who teaches obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington, says research is finding “very encouraging levels of antibody in cord blood,” referring to the umbilical cord through which a fetus receives nourishment. She says,

This is another reason pregnant women should get vaccinated, as we are seeing more disease in younger infants and this is a proactive choice pregnant individuals can make to protect their infants.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Employers Can Require Workers To Get COVID-19 Vaccine, Says EEOC,” Reason.com, 06/03/21
Source: “In world first, Health Ministry approves COVID boosters to all Israelis over 40,” TimesOfIsrael.com, 08/20/21
Source: “Infertility and COVID-19 vaccines: Get the facts,” UCHealth.org, 08/10/21
Source: “Vaccinated Pregnant Women Pass Protection to Babies in Study,” Bloomberg.com, 09/22/21
Image by Julita B.C./CC BY-SA 2.0