Coronavirus Chronicles — The Kids Over There

Coronavirus, the best friend obesity ever had… or is obesity the best friend coronavirus ever had? Either way, they have teamed up to become the scourge of humanity, all around the globe. Combined with the fact that the virus seems to have discovered how delicious younger people are, the result is a mess.

In January, Israel sounded the alarm and passed the word that schools might not open. Suddenly, more than 50,000 children and teens were diagnosed within a month. Furthermore, kids were accounting for around 40% of new cases, with the biggest increase occurring in the six- to nine-year-old age group.

Most of this outburst was attributed to the new and much more infectious British variant of the virus. Although the majority of young victims had mild cases, and few were hospitalized, the school opening question became paramount. Of the country’s 200,000 educational staff members, only 34% had been vaccinated.

At the same time, things were getting out of hand in Italy. In the little town of Corzano (in the region known as Lombardy), 24 children and adults at one school tested positive for COVID-19. After a total of 189 townspeople had been tested, 139 were certified positive (although most remained asymptomatic). By great good fortune, only one person needed to be hospitalized, and once again, the growing numbers were attributed to the British variant.

But do not underestimate the virus, authorities warned:

Italy was the first European country to be hit by coronavirus a year ago and so far 90,000 people with COVID-19 have died.

France has been having a very rough time, and the press was told that the majority of new patients — like 90% — have the British variant. This crowd is “significantly younger” than the victims of the first and second wave so, initially at least, their bodies can fight off the effects better. Consequently, they tend to be at home one day, and in Intensive Care the next. ICU doctor Benjamin Clouzeau told the press,

They’re between 30 and 65 years old. They have few or no underlying health conditions. Some are overweight — but they’re not obese, they’re simply overweight… A fair share of them have diabetes, but that’s far from the majority… Now we are down to 200, 300 deaths a day, but it’s not old people dying anymore. These are people who still had 30 or 40 years to live.

Meanwhile, Ottawa, the capital city of Canada, had by early March suffered 14,950 confirmed cases and 442 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. They have not only the British variant, familiarly known as B.1.1.7, but the new and exotic South Africa variant called B.1.351.

In the early rounds of vaccination, the province of Ontario included people experiencing homelessness, a relief for everyone including the staff members of those institutions. In Ottawa itself, the sickness is having a “significant impact,” with more than 200 shelter residents testing positive since January.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Spike in kids with COVID-19 means Israel unlikely to open schools,” JPost.com, 01/26/21
Source: “Outbreak of UK virus variant detected in Italian town,” MedicalXpress.com, 02/04/21
Source: “COVID-19 now killing more younger people, French doctor tells Euronews,”
EuroNews.com, 03/29/21
Source: “COVID-19: Key virus indicators creep up in Ottawa, with 80 new cases; Province reports 994 new cases,” OttawaCitizen.com, 03/04/21
Image by United Nations/Public Domain

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Virus, the Stats, and the Young

For a while, COVID-19 got away with disguising itself as the type of predator that mainly seemed to prefer older humans. But looking back at how the virus has been treating America’s people, it is obvious that the big, major trend over the past few months has been toward younger victims.

For instance, in the first week of December, the state of Florida was posting up well over 9,000 new cases a day, and in each county, the median age of the new patients was in their 40s. In one county, the new-case median age was 27. These were not the tottering, decrepit, ancient folk we had been led to visualize as the virus’s prime victims.

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study concerning the difference between expected and actual deaths. This is a rough way of approximating how many COVID-19 fatalities occurred, without relying on totals that may have been late, inaccurate, intentionally misreported, or in some other way lacking. The authors wrote,

Excess mortality reflects the full burden of the pandemic that may go uncaptured due to uncoded COVID-19 and other pandemic-related deaths. Accordingly, we examined all-cause excess mortality and COVID-19–related mortality during the early pandemic period among adults aged 25 to 44 years.

The research team was interested in the statistics concerning the mid-adult age group, over a designated five-month period. They took the 2019 total, before the virus was even heard of, and subtracted it from the corresponding 2020 number. Between the beginning of March and the end of July, the target age demographic lost 11,899 more members than would have been expected, going by the previous year.

This led to a suspicion that the virus was probably to blame in more than half those fatalities. The report explained:

Only 38% of all-cause excess deaths in adults aged 25 to 44 years recorded during the pandemic were attributed directly to COVID-19. Although the remaining excess deaths are unexplained, inadequate testing in this otherwise healthy demographic likely contributed. These results suggest that COVID-19–related mortality may have been underdetected in this population.

This is not an easy problem to fix. About two months ago, the Ohio Department of Health announced that “as many as 4,000 COVID-19 deaths may have been underreported through the state’s reporting system.” Last year’s months of October, November and December were a mess, and the numbers need to be reconciled somehow. The experts may never be able to discover the exact numbers for many areas in difficult time periods.

Less than a month ago, the results of the biennial National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were made known. The information is collected via phone surveys and is considered to be very accurate. In this case, the 10,000 respondents drew a grim picture. In America, obesity among children and teens has never been higher — close to 19%, which pretty much translates to almost one in five.

The percentages tallied by each age group show that the rate becomes progressively worse as the children get older. You hardly ever hear anyone speak of “outgrowing their baby fat” anymore. The children are instead growing into their adult fat at an increasingly alarming rate. As the numbers escalate, other factors hold steady. More boys than girls are obese, and more Black and Hispanic kids than white.

Illnesses are not always gotten over, and morbidity can last a long time. Meanwhile nurses and even doctors, unable to find another outlet for their frustration, take to Twitter to scold the unheeding public for its indifference, and assure them COVID-19 is real.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Florida’s daily average for COVID-19 cases climbs to 9,300 to start December,” News4jax.com, 12/08/20
Source: “All-Cause Excess Mortality and COVID-19–Related Mortality Among US Adults Aged 25-44 Years, March-July 2020,” JAMANetwork.com, 12/16/20
Source: “Ohio to add approximately 4,000 COVID-19 deaths to death total,” Ohio.gov, 02/10/21
Source: “Childhood obesity rates hit all-time high, survey finds,” BeckersHospitalReview.com, 01/25/21
Image by Mario A.P./CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Are the Kids All Right?

The young are very much in the coronavirus news lately. Hopefully, by now, most people realize that COVID-19 is real, and that children and young people can catch it, and also transmit it. A well-informed citizen also understands that the virus attacks different populations disproportionately.

It’s a race thing, and an economic inequality thing, and also a big risk for people who are overweight or obese. Extra body fat, in and of itself, seems to be very attractive to the virus, which also specializes in victimizing people affected by diabetes and other co-morbidities linked with obesity. Last August it was reported that although the United States contains only about 4% of the world’s people, it had up to that point been the site of around 25%, or one-quarter, of the world’s coronavirus deaths.

So, things are much better now, right? Wrong. Things are just very slightly better. According to researchers from Johns Hopkins, in a news item less than a week old,

The United States has suffered nearly one-fifth of the world’s covid-19 deaths […] even as it accounts for just over 4 percent of the world’s population. Twenty-three percent of the world’s recorded coronavirus cases have occurred among Americans.

In September, as schools tried to reopen, Ed Yong wrote in The Atlantic,

Thanks to magical thinking and misplaced moralism, the U.S. already has at least 51,000 confirmed infections in more than 1,000 colleges across every state. These (underestimated) numbers will grow, because only 20 percent of colleges are doing regular testing, while almost half are not testing at all.

The Centers for Disease Control released a report destined to ruffle the complacency of Americans by stating that “the percentage increase in excess deaths so far this year compared to other years is highest among people age 25 to 44, at 26%.” In other words, any notion that COVID-19 only went after the elderly, the infirm, and the out-of-shape, would have to be revised.

Try, try again

In the schools that did regain some semblance of normalcy, by December it was obvious that academic ground had been lost. Most kids were not doing well, and children affected by racism and poverty were doing worse than most. A study determined that “the shift to remote school in the spring set White students back by one to three months in math, while students of color lost three to five months.” Students were not applying for college like before — at least, not the ones from the lower socio-economic stratum.

Millions of children still coped with remote learning, and journalists Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson wrote,

This setup privileges children who have quiet places to work, parents at home to help and reliable Internet service. Many of those who don’t have those advantages continue to struggle, and even some families with resources find it difficult to keep children engaged online and emotionally healthy.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The U.S. has 4% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s COVID-19 cases,” Logically.ai, 8/19/20
Source: “The Health 202: Here’s how the U.S. compares to other countries on the coronavirus pandemic,” WashingtonPost.com, 04/12/21
Source: “America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral,” TheAtlantic.com, 09/09/20
Source: “Increase in Death Rate Highest Among People Age 25 to 44,” Medium.com, 10/21/20
Source: “‘A lost generation’: Surge of research reveals students sliding backward, most vulnerable worst affected,” WashingtonPost.com, 12/06/20
Image by Elvert Barnes/CC BY-SA 2.0