Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

Coronavirus Chronicles — Grade School Daze

Pat Hartman April 19, 2021 No Comments

The American Rescue Plan provides $130 billion to make schools safe, and authorities emphasize that there is great concern for children who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. We know what that means: Children whose lives are dominated by obesity, poverty, minority status, or any combination of those.

Volume 1 of the Department of Education’s COVID-19 Handbook, published in February, provided grades K through 12 with instructions in five crucial areas — masks; physical distancing; hand-washing and respiratory etiquette; and contact tracing. Those are matters of individual participation and responsibility.

The last element, providing a healthful indoor environment through proper ventilation and other means, is usually not within the purview of parents, teachers, or most staff. In this case, the grownups might want to educate themselves about such matters, and insist on having their voices heard before decisions are made. Learning about this stuff is not enjoyable, but being blindsided by it is even less fun.

It is both a health issue and a financial issue. If everyone is breathing the same recirculated air all day, there may be little point in paying for the daily disinfection of chairs.

Just breathe

But what about places where winter lasts for months? If air is constantly brought in from outdoors, does everyone just freeze, or what? Do the students have to wear their gloves all day? What about places that might have battled hard to get air conditioning? Will they have to go back to trying to learn in sweltering heat? How can air be exchanged six times per hour, while maintaining enough warmth or coolness to avoid everyone feeling too uncomfortable to do their jobs?

How much does it cost to run a climate control system where safety from a virus must take priority over the inhabitants’ comfort? Might the coronavirus revolutionize the HVAC industry? All these questions will be settled by trial and error. Parents might want to get ready to hear the answers.

The Department of Education recently released Volume 2, showing schools how to get the most bang for their buck, and also addressing the other important matters:

[T]he Department is encouraging communities to implement strategies that address the social, emotional, and mental-health needs of students, including the disproportionate toll COVID-19 has had on underserved communities, and address inequities in our education system that predate and have been made worse by the pandemic.

Recommendations have been made not only by school authorities, but by organizations that support education, civil rights, and research. A goal is to make sure students have everything they need in order to accomplish learning, including adequate nutrition and necessary technological support, as well as resources to address their social, emotional, and mental health issues. The needs of educators and school staff members, to maintain their social, emotional, and mental health, are also taken into account.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “U.S. Department of Education Releases “COVID-19 Handbook, Volume 2: Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting All Students’ Needs,” Ed.gov, 04/09/21
Image by Pat Hartman

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Ambiguous State of School

Pat Hartman April 16, 2021 No Comments

Every day, some other crazy thing comes along. Now, it’s mutant virus strains that don’t play by the few rules we thought we had discovered. The newcomers are more transmissible and spread faster. They make people sicker, defy preventative barriers, and enthusiastically go after younger and younger victims.

Nevertheless, just about everybody wants all schools to be open, all the time. Even kids want to go back to school. They seem to need to be around other kids, and some of them haven’t been eating well since in-person school was disrupted. Many have trouble staying fit.

How is Europe doing?

In Italy, schools opened nationwide, and about three weeks later, the coronavirus numbers went up a lot. Now, the schools in many regions of Italy are closed. In France, they are closed until at least April 26. In the Czech Republic:

From 12 April, primary schools are reopening for lower-grade pupils. Higher primary grades, high schools and universities will continue with distance-learning. Kindergartens will reopen for the pre-school year only.

In Poland, schools are closed, period. Portugal might reopen secondary schools and universities on April 19. Belgium also hopes that date will mark the reopening of its primary and secondary schools, along with its universities. In the Netherlands, secondary schools are open for business at least one day a week, and on April 26, universities will be as well.

And the U.S.?

In the United States, says The New York Times, most school districts are ready for…

[…] significant expansions of in-person instruction as a majority of the nation’s districts have now begun to reopen school buildings, many of which have been closed for more than a year.

A company called Burbio, which keeps track of such matters, says that 53.1% of American students belong to schools that offer in-person classes each day — although there are resisters. They say that “for the first time, the proportion of students attending school virtually or in hybrid classes had dropped.” However, the West Coast could be in trouble:

Surging infections in Southern California after the winter holidays were partly to blame for a slow rebound in the Los Angeles school system.

Public schools in California’s top three districts by enrollment — Los Angeles, San Diego and Fresno — have said they will begin to allow grade-school students back onto campus later in April…

[O]n Monday, Long Beach […] began allowing about 14,000 elementary students back into school buildings for about 2½ hours each day, five days a week.

Three weeks ago, the University of Vermont had 41 cases of COVID-19. Then last week, 80 cases. Doubling in two weeks is not a good sign. Fortunately, even though the state’s overall statistics are getting worse, college students do not seem to be especially responsible; only the general public, including adults who are not responding to the crisis in a mature way.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Covid: How are European countries tackling the pandemic?,” BBC.com, 04/09/21
Source: “Covid-19 News: In-Person School Attendance Inches Up but Roadblocks Remain,” NYTimes.com, 04/12/21
Image by Christina Welsh/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Keeping Sanity Alive

Pat Hartman April 15, 2021 No Comments

There are coping strategies that can save relationships and lives. The trouble is, nothing works for everybody. A family is a living organism, and like any other human conglomerate, it can be stubborn and set in its ways. On the other hand, sometimes the family can adjust in surprising ways. Parenting expert Ariadne Brill wrote “12 Alternatives to Spanking and Timeout.” A person could think of these ideas as that, or just think of them as nice things to do occasionally.

The ideas inspire a lot of thought. One is, when the child does something wrong, take a break together. This isn’t where the child gets grabbed by the arm and dragged off to a closet. If it can be managed, find a quiet place to just sit together for a few minutes. When a parent has the strength to sincerely underreact, and leave a space for something new, surprising things can happen.

One advantage of this move is, it’s classier than having a scene in public. No matter what kind of faux pas was committed, a socially competent grownup probably would not publicly scold or shout at another adult. Yet some parents seem hooked on the drama of the yelling-in-public brand of performance art.

Try a new paradigm

Another suggestion involves giving a second chance. Say, the kid gets careless when taking a carton of milk out of the refrigerator, and drops it on the floor. Again, what if this happened to an adult friend? You or I would probably be gracious and unruffled, and help with the cleanup. Why not extend the same courtesy to a child, just out of curiosity to see what happens?

Something you can do with a child (but not an adult) is set things up for a do-over. After the order is restored, replace the carton in the fridge, turn back the clock, and extend to the child a chance to give it another go — maintaining good humor throughout.

Cries can be heard of “We don’t have time for this!” Normally, that might be so. But a lot of people, staying in to avoid the virus, have nothing but time. Why not use some of it to try out atypical responses to boring old annoyances? Needless to say, none of this stuff works if the parent is coming from a place of anger and vindictiveness. It takes a mellow attitude and a sincere desire to raise the level of discourse.

The kid does something pretty messed up

This advice could extend to a lot of possible transgressions:

Ask what they are up to, with the intent to listen and understand first, then correct them by providing the appropriate outlet or information that is missing.

In a scene from an old movie, a little boy picked a green flower bud, not even close to opening yet, and took it to his mother who was sitting nearby. She reacted with impatient censure, demanding, “Why would you do a thing like that?” He said, “I wanted it for you,” and broke into tears of confused rejection. He had seen her be happy when someone gave her flowers. He knew this was a flower, of sorts. But he hadn’t put it together yet, that a sealed bud is not quite the same as a blossom.

That little scene could have gone a whole different way. What a missed opportunity to say, “Thank you, I love you too,” and to explain in a neutrally informational way the growth cycle of flowers; and why, sadly, this one would probably never open to show its beautiful color; and the advantage of letting them bloom before picking. A really sympathetic mom would have suggested, “But you know what? Let’s try something. Let’s just get a little glass and put this in water and see what happens.” And they would have bonded over having a project together, and their shared hopes for the outcome.

Why bother?

Because minimizing the friction creates a better atmosphere for handling disagreements around food and mealtime arrangements. And because, in a larger sense, any effort to prevent kids from developing emotional problems is also likely to protect them from developing obesity.

We want our kids to change, and it is only fair that we do some changing too. To invent and adopt a whole new parenting style is not easy, but if we can accept the challenge and summon up the boldness and creativity to try something different, it could open up a whole new world.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “12 alternatives to spanking and timeout,” AttachmentParenting.org, 10/02/14
Image by Gail Frederick/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Scheduled Meals and Other Ideals

Pat Hartman April 14, 2021 No Comments

We looked at some of the problems with scheduled meals, especially during the pandemic when life can tend to vacillate between tedious boredom and unbridled chaos. Yes, consistent meal times are quite important for a number of reasons. On a very foundational level, a meal schedule implies the absence of snacking, whose banishment is always desirable. Many families benefit from having at least one meal together, because, with luck, it can facilitate emotional bonding.

In 2007 a five-year study published by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association earned some attention. The stated objective was:

To describe meal patterns of young adults and determine if family meal frequency during adolescence is associated with diet quality, meal frequency, social eating, and meal structure during young adulthood.

The report concluded that teenagers who participated in family-style meals tended to take in more fruits and vegetables, and drink less soda than age-mates who ate on a different schedule. Also,

Surveys and food frequency questionnaires were completed by 946 female students and 764 male students in high school classrooms at Time 1 (1998-1999; mean age 15.9 years) and by mail at Time 2 (2003-2004; mean age 20.4 years).

Self-reporting is always dicey. The question itself might not be clear. Young people have been known to enjoy giving unfactual answers, to put one over on the System. Also, this study wasn’t done during a pandemic situation.

Also relevant to the pandemic, we touched on the question of parental attitudes and demeanor toward their children. Even the most well-intentioned parents sometimes fail.

Plain water, or cucumber water?

One elegant non-violent management tool, popularized by Dr. Thomas Gordon’s Parent Effectiveness Training, is to offer limited alternatives. Don’t ask, “what veggie do you want?” An open-ended question leads to a lot of wasted breath on both sides, and there is dinner to make. Instead, “You can have carrots. Or you can have spinach.”

A child with spirit will try the old “What if I want both?” gag. Look thoughtful, as if you are giving it full consideration. Pretend to be impressed and taken aback by the cleverness of it all. Reply, “Both? Well… I guess so…”

This friendliness cannot flourish if the parent has a sarcastic streak. Nobody needs a grownup to say disparaging stuff like “Today, you want plain water. But yesterday, you wanted cucumber water. What’s the matter, is it too strong for you?” By and large, smart-aleck responses when used on children are counterproductive.

Many parents feel the sudden impulse to discard any attempt at nuance, and just let their authoritarian streak take over. There is another way to look at it. If your friend had a bad habit you hoped to help them outgrow, wouldn’t you try to think of some halfway classy, dignified way? Why treat a child more rudely than you would treat a friend?

That basic impulse to treat a child like a fellow human being seems to underlie a large part of Dr. Gordon’s work. His ideas are endorsed by many other authorities, such as parenting educator Adriadne Brill:

Let’s say your child is doing something completely unacceptable. Provide her with two alternatives that are safe, respectful and acceptable, and let her choose what she will do from there. By receiving two choices, the child can keep some control over her decisions while still learning about boundaries.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Family Meals during Adolescence Are Associated with Higher Diet Quality and Healthful Meal Patterns during Young Adulthood,” ScienceDirect.com, September 2007
Source: “Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.),” GordonTraining.com, undated
Source: “12 alternatives to spanking and timeout,” AttachmentParenting.org, 10/02/14
Image by Robin Norwood/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Two Plagues for the Price of One

Pat Hartman April 13, 2021 No Comments

There has been some discussion here of the whole family eating together, and custom dictates that if it can’t be arranged for all meals, it should at least be for dinner. What does this have to do with childhood obesity? The possible benefits are specific to each case but undeniable — if, that is, the experience is pleasant for the child. Anything that increases a child’s feeling of security and of being loved and valued will hold at bay some of the emotional states that can lead to eating disorders and obesity.

If, on the other hand, the justification for compelling shared dinnertime is to keep an eye on what the kids are eating, a lot of that will already be accomplished by the difficulties of supply and affordability in this messed-up era.

If the mandatory shared dinner is a purgatory of criticism and hostility from parents and/or siblings, being required to participate in the meaningless ritual can do a lot of damage. To force unwilling participants to share mealtimes could lead to more negativity.

More adversity

Of course, this problem is exacerbated by the conditions of the pandemic. People are asked to stay home as much as possible, for the good of society. But it might not be for the good of the household members. For someone who just needs to get out of there for a while, there are fewer excuses and fewer refuges. Also, for many adults, work is nonexistent or unsteady, and can involve erratic schedules.

Even when kids have enough sleep and a regular schedule, some of them just don’t eat first thing in the morning. Maybe they have a quirky metabolism that doesn’t want to start the day with the requirement to digest a bunch of stuff. If they are otherwise healthy, late breakfast is not the biggest problem a parent could face, and probably not worthy of being a “hill to die on” as the saying goes. To make anyone follow a strict three-times-a-day eating schedule is something of an incursion on personal liberty.

Homes become communes

Especially in hard times, nuclear families tend to become extended. A household might be a motley collection of adults and children; blood relatives, in-laws, friends, and even the occasional desperate stranger who has nowhere else to live. If all these folks want to share the preparation and consumption of dinner, have at it. But would anyone expect, or try to compel, the others to participate?

People have allergies, and preferences, and days when they just don’t feel like eating. They have doubts about their housemates’ kitchen hygiene habits. There is the whole question of who pays for what supplies, and when, and how.

Of course, in the case of kids, all that philosophizing must be balanced against the needs of parents who can’t be jumping up every hour to feed somebody on demand. A compromise can be attained by preparing large batches of something that can be warmed up by each participant at will. It is nice to keep sandwich fixings available. That privilege should be accompanied by an understanding that each person who opens the lunch meat package is responsible for closing it up again in clean, airtight condition.

On any day, all we can do is the best we can, and we should try not to do less than our best. Some words from parenting expert Ariadne Brill are appropriate here:

Every child and every situation is unique, so these tools are not one-size-fits-all but rather a list of ideas to lean on to expand your parenting toolbox. I find that striving to use proactive tools like these to respond to and to guide children towards better choices works far more positively than having to react when things have gotten out of hand.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “12 alternatives to spanking and timeout,” AttachmentParenting.org, 10/02/14
Image by Joost Markerink/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — More Possible Life Hacks

Pat Hartman April 12, 2021 No Comments

A new expression has entered the language, as people are urged to “drop the Covid 19.” This is of course a play on the venerable adage that every new college student engages in comfort eating, and consequently gains a certain number of pounds, the “freshman 15.” In combination with COVID-19, named for the year when the virus showed up, the expression encourages people to lose the extra weight they have gained during the pandemic. Sometimes, all we have left is our sense of humor.

We are looking at some basic, timeless ideas about the prevention of childhood obesity, how they might be implemented, and how the all-pervading influence of the coronavirus can intensify or change already-existing problems in this area.

The family that eats together…

One of the most cherished tenets of healthy living, recommended by many experts, is that a family should eat together, and on a fixed schedule. There might not be an obvious, direct route to weight loss or obesity prevention in this habit, but the theory is that shared family time ought to strengthen bonds and reduce the number of reasons that children might have for feeling the negative emotions that could lead to comfort eating and other counterproductive responses.

Corollary to this is the advice to reduce distractions, such as TV watching, during meals. But it might be a matter of individual circumstances. Some parents might prefer that kids are absorbed in a show during dinner, rather than kicking each other under the table or whatever. Phones and other devices can be a problem, but it begins to seem as if we will have to make peace with them, because they are not going anywhere soon.

As we have seen, however, togetherness does not work miracles. In normal times, everyone was always dashing off in different directions to pursue their own goals, and the eating-together concept was more valuable. But sadly, it might not be very beneficial during a pandemic, especially in households that are very strict about COVID-19 avoidance. In many homes, family members have been seeing far too much of each other, for months. Letting people eat according to preference rather than the schedule is a small price to pay for some peace.

Ordering out and staying in

When a family has groceries delivered, there is an upside for parents, if they choose to avail themselves of it. They are spared the ordeal of traversing aisle after aisle of the grocery store, to the tune of constant nagging from kids to buy this or that. Now, all they need to do is remain strong and resolute during the ordering process.

And remember, using food as a reward is a dicey proposition at best, but if it is done at all, sweets and fried stuff are not good choices. It is also a good idea to keep tempting treats stashed away, but that is hard to do when kids are around all the time, and some kids tend to catch a real attitude in reaction to such (what they perceive as) dictatorial practices.

In families that stay in all the time, it is very hard to limit the hours that kids spend staring at screens. It may be that the best a parent can hope for is to somehow gently steer the young’uns away from nonsense that merely fills time, and toward online resources that might help them discover and pursue their life goals. Maybe now is not the ideal time to start a neighborhood lawn-mowing service, but a smart kid will see the advantage of checking out some videos and articles, aiming to get back out into the world prepared.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Nenad Stojkovic/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Possible Life Hacks for Parents

Pat Hartman April 9, 2021 No Comments

A disclaimer has to be right up front in the title because nothing ever works for everybody, one-hundred percent, all the time. Claims of certainty should inspire scrutiny. On the other hand, it is always worth mentioning tips that have worked for somebody, especially if they happen to be backed by studies.

These days, a lot of people feel like they are going crazy. Looking back to when everything was less complicated, there were some basic, timeless ideas about the prevention of childhood obesity. How do they hold up?

Parents are urged to provide a nutritionally balanced diet, and to demonstrate and facilitate non-harmful snackage. In the setting of the pandemic, making choices is a luxury for most people. For many, their ability to access food of any kind has become limited and/or undependable. When families must depend on food bank donations, they wind up with a lot of highly-processed non-perishable items that are greatly appreciated, but not always nutritionally optimal.

The same limitations affect the time-honored advice to actually prepare meals from scratch, hopefully with help from various family members, as a unifying experience in cooperation. But if fresh ingredients are not obtainable, it is hard to make an omelet, or soup, or spaghetti sauce.

Two things

First, there can be obvious psychological advantages to family meal preparation. Second, having everybody all together at once is not always the best idea.

If community cooking is resisted, if it isn’t the envisioned “one big happy family” event, no parent should give in to resentment or discouragement The ideal scenario for passing along food lore might be the one parent, one child scenario. Also, bear in mind that the true “teachable moment” cannot be planned. It happens spontaneously and when least expected. A grownup needs to be open to it, and ready for it.

There is a practical reason not to include another family member in the cooking process, if you want to emulate Dr. Preeya Alexander, who “revealed she grates vegetables to add into certain meals and sauces,” as reported by Carina Stathis. The cook might not want any witnesses to that.

Dr. Alexander has developed other techniques that make nutrients palatable to children. As vegetable snacks, whose success seems to depend on delicious, low-cal condiments, she recommends…

[…] cherry tomatoes, capsicum strips, snow peas, small corn cob or baby corn spears. Carrot, celery and cucumber sticks. Salad vegetables or coleslaw in a sandwich.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Childhood Obesity Prevention: 5 Tips For Parents To Inculcate Healthy Eating Habits In Children,” NDTV.dom, 06/25/20
Source: “5 Healthy Habits That Help Prevent Childhood Obesity,” IowaClinic.com, 06/24/20
Source: “Doctor reveals her go-to trick for making sure her fussy kids eat their vegetables EVERY time,” DailyMail.co.uk, 02/02/21
Image by ironypoisoning/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Let’s Make Sure Kids Don’t Catch This

Pat Hartman April 8, 2021 No Comments

In protecting children from obesity, one of the strongest moves is to protect them from COVID-19, which can put a serious cramp in the lifestyle of a previously active child. The numbers of truly frightening cases might not be that large, but the bad ones are awfully bad.

As long ago as last July, when most Americans thought that kids were immune, a journal called Brain announced that a small number of COVID-19 patients had delirium, brain inflammation, and a real serious condition known as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, and “younger people are experiencing these brain-related issues due to strokes experienced during infection. ”

In the same week, down in Palm Beach County, Florida, health department director Alina Alonso informed the county commissioners that “the long-term consequences of coronavirus in children are unknown.” The word was going around, about children who were asymptomatic or who ostensibly experienced a very mild course of illness, but who turned out to have sustained lung damage.

Similar cases elsewhere

Early last year, 11-year-old Ethan Kaplan showed only mild symptoms until a bout of desperate chest pain sent him to the emergency room. He tested positive for the virus, and his blood pressure was low, but he was not hospitalized. In mid-May, he tested negative. But even in September, when Megan E. Doherty wrote about him, “the former competitive athlete who regularly participated in basketball, baseball, karate, and golf can now barely walk around the neighborhood.”

Doherty wrote about a seven-year-old boy who had been sick for more than four months with “exhaustion, intermittent low-grade fevers, sore throat, coughing, enlarged lymph nodes, painful limbs, insomnia, and mysterious splotchy skin that comes and goes.” Her publisher communicated with 28 different families whose children were in some kind of “limbo” — not sick enough to be in imminent danger, but far from well.

The youngest child, nine months old, was Brooke, the daughter of registered nurse Alicia Gaffney. Mother and baby had both been sick for months, with not only coughing and wheezing but bloody nasal mucous and diarrhea. The journalist wrote,

Her daughter also has dark veins, something she had noticed on herself. “I’ve posted on the support group that I’m on. I asked the other moms if that’s happening to their kids, and they’re posting photos of their little two-year-olds and three-year-olds getting these dark veins on their bodies.”

Ashley Zlatopolsky wrote about 12-year-old Samantha, who had been acutely sick with COVID-19 in February for a week. In November, she reported that the child…

[…] continues to have gastrointestinal relapses to this day. Her stomach pain, which includes severe reflux and nausea, hasn’t gone away…

Zlatopolsky also contacted Nick Hysmith, M.D., of Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital who explained that…

[…] for kids like Samantha whose symptoms persist 10 months after first contracting the virus, many questions remain unanswered, including whether the cause is in fact MIS-C or if they’re in the same mysterious boat as adult Covid “long-haulers.”

The point here is, whatever words become attached to the problem, a certain number of kids stay sick for a long time, and can easily slide into inactivity and obesity.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How the Coronavirus May Attack the Brain,” Medium.com, 07/08/20
Source: “Almost one-third of Florida children tested are positive for the coronavirus,” TheHill.com, 07/15/20
Source: “When Children’s Covid-19 Symptoms Won’t Go Away,” Undark.org, 09/20/20 Source: “Children Are Covid-19 Long-Haulers, Too,” Medium.com, 11/11/20
Image by Phil Roeder/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Changing Landscape

Pat Hartman April 7, 2021 No Comments

Over the past year, according to a study published by Pediatrics, it appears that childhood obesity increased by 2%. That may not sound very impressive, but it is alarming. To put it another way: Last time a count was made, 13.7% of kids were obese, and the most recent count is 15.4%. To spin the thought in yet another direction, the title of a piece by Anuradha Varanasi says it all — “Obesity Epidemic Accounts For More Than $170 Billion In Surplus Medical Costs Per Year In The United States: Study.”

In this context, the surplus has nothing to do with old Army canteens. The annual cost of medical care is $170 billion more than it would have been if no one were obese. And yet…

[P]eople with severe obesity are the most impacted as their excess health care costs go over $3000 a year. Seven out of ten adults and three out of ten children in the United States currently have overweight or obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It is no coincidence that obesity and COVID-19 have once again created a cozy partnership for the furtherance of both their interests.

The truth hurts

In the current childhood obesity landscape, COVID-19 is by far the biggest player. It makes kids miserable, which makes them fat. Or, if they are already fat, it makes them more miserable. Among the young, in the area of long-range effects, two different things appear to be going on — PASC and MIS-C. But with the state of COVID-19 science in its infancy, who knows? It could be possible that they are both actually the same condition. Stranger things have happened.

Few psychological experiences are more painful than when a fortress of certainty crumbles into dust. Large parts of the world have finally acknowledged that children can both suffer from and transmit the virus. After a certain point, more and more authorities began to say things like this:

For many patients, including young ones who never required hospitalization, Covid-19 has a devastating second act. Many are dealing with symptoms weeks or months after they were expected to recover, often with puzzling new complications that can affect the entire body — severe fatigue, cognitive issues and memory lapses, digestive problems, erratic heart rates, headaches, dizziness, fluctuating blood pressure, even hair loss.

Just like adults, children can not only catch the virus, they can experience “long covid.” Journalist Megan E. Doherty quoted Sean O’Leary, of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, who said, “It does seem to be a real phenomenon that it may be happening in kids.” This was just over six months ago, and Doherty went on to say,

[W]hile the CDC recently reported that as many as 20 percent of those aged 18 to 34 who have Covid-19 experience lasting symptoms, there’s no similar data available on children and younger teens.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “‘Striking’ Increase in Childhood Obesity During Pandemic,” WebMD.com, 03/30/21
Source: “The United States: Study,” Forbes.com, 03/31/21
Source: “Doctors Begin to Crack Covid’s Mysterious Long-Term Effects,” MSN.com, 11/1/2020
Source: “When Children’s Covid-19 Symptoms Won’t Go Away,” Undark.org, 09/20/20
Image by Tom Page/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Long-Range Danger

Pat Hartman April 6, 2021 No Comments

The pandemic exerts on children many indirect or second-order effects. Those are bad enough, but of course, the worst-case scenario is for a child to actually come down with the sickness. Which, contrary to earlier beliefs, they certainly can do, and they also play a part in spreading it.

There also used to be an assumption that patients classified as having “mild” covid recover in a couple of weeks, which has been shown to be not totally accurate. Like adults, kids can stay sick for a long time. The subject is confusing because sometimes, in speech or print, people use the same words while mentally defining those words in different ways.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says most people who get COVID-19, recover from it. Does “recovered” mean they are discharged from the hospital? Does it mean they have the same level of health and wellness as before? Does it mean they simply hung onto life?

Does it mean a five-year survival rate? Obviously, nobody knows about the last question, because there are, of necessity, no five-year followup studies. Similarly, WHO says “Catching COVID-19 does not mean you will have it for life.” But technically, literally, millions of people have had it “for life,” because it directly or indirectly caused their deaths.

It is puzzling to see, every now and then, a quotation to the effect that while the active disease usually isn’t very bad, some symptoms, like tachycardia and memory loss, can continue for months. Common sense would seem to suggest that, when such troubling symptoms persist, they are not after-effects but are, in fact, part and parcel of the disease.

What do we really know?

Also according to WHO, most COVID-19 victims suffer symptoms ranging from mild to moderate. A person might ask what kind of time frame is involved. The condition called “long covid” has been recognized as a thing, and nobody knows how long it can potentially stay with a person. Who wants to deal with moderate symptoms, or even mild symptoms, every day for months, or years?

Considering the newness of the disease and the ever-increasing reports of long-term consequences, it does seem a bit audacious for humans to proclaim that they can’t have it for life. Studies imply parameters, and time is a notoriously inflexible one.

We are assured that patients “can recover thanks to supportive care,” which could mean a friend arranging for grocery delivery, or in some cases, several months in the actual hospital, under the strictest and most expensively-maintained conditions. Again, the more it is thought about, the less comforting it sounds.

This long-term menace does not apply only to adults, who may have already messed up their bodies, with some kind of complicated and complicating situation going on. When children appear to get off easy, with barely any symptoms, it may not be that simple. Nobody knows yet the long-range effects on kids, but at least some attention is being paid.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Mythbusters,” WHO.int, 03/26/21
Image by Bill Smith/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Grade School Daze

Just breathe

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Ambiguous State of School

How is Europe doing?

And the U.S.?

Coronavirus Chronicles — Keeping Sanity Alive

Try a new paradigm

The kid does something pretty messed up

Why bother?

Coronavirus Chronicles — Scheduled Meals and Other Ideals

Plain water, or cucumber water?

Coronavirus Chronicles — Two Plagues for the Price of One

More adversity

Homes become communes

Coronavirus Chronicles — More Possible Life Hacks

The family that eats together…

Ordering out and staying in

Coronavirus Chronicles — Possible Life Hacks for Parents

Two things

Coronavirus Chronicles — Let’s Make Sure Kids Don’t Catch This

Similar cases elsewhere

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Changing Landscape

The truth hurts

Coronavirus Chronicles — Long-Range Danger

What do we really know?

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources