Coronavirus Chronicles — No Exemption for Minors

Obesity and the disease that took over the world are both bad for kids, and Childhood Obesity News has explored many of the ways in which COVID-19 and obesity work together to achieve a synergistic result that promotes success for both of them.

One of the most fantastic aspects of the current moment is the lingering belief that children and young people can neither contract nor spread COVID-19. Based on emotions and preconceptions, families make decisions, governments make policies, and kids sicken and even die because the grownups didn’t do their homework.

If you are a grownup, the sad fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is that you just might catch the disease from the children and/or adolescents of your own household. As journalist Zachary Mack phrased it,

[R]ecent studies indicate that not only are children and young adults loaded with the virus while often asymptomatic, they are also responsible for passing the disease along to more at-risk segments of the population, including older relatives.

Here from the CDC itself is a report, a collaboration of at least 20 credentialed authors, on an appalling instance of contagion during July and August. Relatives from five different households gathered for a three-week reunion. The 13-year-old “index patient” picked up the virus in June. She did not feel sick or have any symptoms but was nevertheless tested four days after the exposure, presumably to be “cleared” for the upcoming family get-together.

Having received a negative test result, she traveled to the destination and stayed with more than a dozen other relatives in one large house. In residence for varying lengths of time, they acted “old normal” — in other words, no masks or distancing. Eleven people ended up with COVID-19. Six other relatives slept elsewhere and visited the main house a couple of times, remaining outside to socialize at the recommended distance. Even though they were not masked either, they escaped unscathed.

Just to reinforce an already uncomfortable concept, Mary Van Beusekom wrote in early December about a study published by the journal Pediatrics. Researchers looked at children in two states, finding that they were “just as likely as adults to become infected with COVID-19 within their households.”

In one-fifth of the subjects’ homes, the virus was spread by kids. People are easily taken off guard because the young often have no detectable symptoms. This is not to say they have no symptoms, but children seem to be always catching something, and coughing or wiping their noses. We are used to it.

There is a troubling passage, concerning the number of child cases that show up in the official national statistics. It seems that the ratio of cases between children and adults has been vastly misunderstood. The authors say,

In contrast to the 8.3% of cases reported among children in the United States, 35% of household cases in our study population were in children, most of whom were identified because we tested all household contacts regardless of symptoms.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “This Is Who’s Most Likely to Give You Coronavirus, CDC Says,” BestLifeOnline.com, 10/07/20
Source: “Adolescent with COVID-19 as the Source of an Outbreak at a 3-Week Family Gathering,” CDC.gov, 10/09/20
Source: “Study: Kids, adults equally susceptible to in-home COVID-19 spread,” UMN.edu, 12/03/20
Image by Dennis Jarvis/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — How SARS-CoV-2 Lives Long and Prospers

There is a lot going on. People want instructions. “Do this, this, and this.” Often, they will. But science changes. Every now and then, researchers have to say, “Our best knowledge used to be Theory A, and we acted upon it. We made policy, and people cooperated, and conditions improved. Now, more work has been done, and it looks like Theory B is even better. So our advice has changed.”

For some reason, people seem unable to tolerate making such a change. They feel betrayed and hurt, and want to pout, “No fair! You told us Theory A, and we did what you said, and now you want us to do something else! You are a bunch of hypocrites!” — and so on. At any point in history, human nature contains a certain irreducible amount of stubborn ignorance, and the present time and place are no exceptions. So now, it looks like the task is to change human nature — which brings up a whole new set of challenges.

Avoidance

Many people are very interested in knowing how to avoid contracting COVID-19. For instance, if a live virus lands on a surface, how long does it live? Lately, some sources have led the public to believe that we don’t need to worry too much about what is called fomite transmission. In other words, picking it up from countertops, doorknobs, trashcan lids, etc. But those reassurances might be overly optimistic.

A certain contingent of researchers put a lot of work into answering a whole set of meaningful questions, and they reported back in quite a lot of detail. One example of their results:

With initial viral loads broadly equivalent to the highest titres excreted by infectious patients, viable virus was isolated for up to 28 days at 20°C from common surfaces such as glass, stainless steel and both paper and polymer banknotes.

Conclusion: These findings demonstrate SARS-CoV-2 can remain infectious for significantly longer time periods than generally considered possible.

Well, 20° Centigrade equals 68° Fahrenheit, about a normal home temperature in the USA. And these scientists found that a virus capable of invading a human body and endlessly reproducing itself can live for almost a month on stainless steel, like your kitchen sink, or banknotes, like the money in your wallet. And then, there is the sobering news that the virus can survive on human skin for an average of 11 hours. In public places, it’s crazy. Beware of “touchscreens on mobile phones, bank ATMs, airport check-in kiosks and supermarket self-serve kiosks.”

Also in October, the Centers for Disease Control issued new guidance, spelled out by journalist Zachary Mack:

The previous definition of “close contact” meant spending 15 “consecutive minutes” within six feet of someone who’s infected with the coronavirus. Now, it has been changed to include anyone who has spent a total of 15 minutes over a 24-hour period with an infected person, according to the CDC’s statement.

Just in case that didn’t register, Mack rephrases slightly, to emphasize that “spending 15 minutes with someone infected with the virus over the course of a day is considered a ‘close contact’ and can be long enough for you to catch COVID from them.”

Here is another chilling fact: Although the body of a vaccinated person may well resist COVID-19, nobody knows yet whether that person can still transmit the virus to others. Common sense would dictate that if they just picked it up from an ATM touchscreen, and the two of you shake hands, those tiny invisible organisms could quite probably be passed along.

Currently, America is going through the excruciating process of wondering where the vaccine is, and how to decide who gets it. When airing our opinions about that, we might want to remember this: Apparently, for “herd immunity” to be achieved, the entire herd must be included. As writer Tara Haelle points out,

An estimated 10.5 million-12 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., and we can’t stop the pandemic without vaccinating them as well. Requiring identification or placing vaccination clinics close to government buildings may create barriers to this population…

… Which of course gives the virus yet more encouragement to live long and prosper.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The effect of temperature on persistence of SARS-CoV-2 on common surfaces,” BiomedCentral.com, 10/07/20
Source: “The CDC Now Says You Can Catch COVID From Someone in Exactly This Long,” BestLifeOnline.com, 10/21/20
Source: “Can Someone Who Gets Vaccinated Against Covid-19 Still Transmit the Disease?,” Medium.com, 12/16/20
Source: “Every Covid-19 Vaccine Question You’ll Ever Have, Answered,” Medium.com, 12/10/20
Image by Baker County Tourism/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — The Light of Distant Stars

Obviously, one of the big problems with SARS-CoV-2 is, so many aspects of the organism and its behavior remain shrouded in mystery. In The Atlantic, writer Ed Yong quotes Beth Redbird, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, whose many interests include group interactions and survey methodology. Redbird specifies a very important fact that people don’t seem to grasp:

[T]hings look fine until right before they’re very not-fine.

This two-minute animated video illustrates the principle. There is a moment when the observer realizes that indeed, the trajectory has suddenly headed in the direction of not-fine. (The hosting platform will likely suggest several similar short works framing the concept in slightly different ways, perhaps more comprehensible to other viewers.)

The bottom line is, the orgy of multiplication pictured by all the filmmakers is very similar to how a virus acts. It has one job: to reproduce, and it does so with unparalleled ferocity and determination. This should not be so difficult to understand, but as Yong notes, “Exponential growth is counterintuitive.” He adds,

It’s also because the coronavirus spreads quickly but is slow to reveal itself: It can take a month for infections to lead to symptoms, for symptoms to warrant tests and hospitalizations, and for enough sick people to produce a noticeable spike. Pandemic data are like the light of distant stars, recording past events instead of present ones.

In this era of instantaneous global communication, it is grotesque that so many people have not yet gotten the word: Yes, children can both catch and transmit COVID-19.

Megan E. Doherty wrote,

[E]xperts say, there is evidence that children aged 10 and older are able to transmit SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, at rates similar to adults, and a recent study found that children can carry high levels of the virus in their noses and throats.

From Maryland, medical anthropologist and epidemiologist Janelle Menard says,

For pediatric Covid-19, we don’t even know yet what we don’t know.

Menard works with the Covkid Project, which tracks infection rates among American children. As we have discussed, there is a tendency to divide COVID-19 patients of all ages into two bundles: sick enough to need hospitalization, or home and well. In reality, there is a vast middle ground of people who are still miserable and unable to resume normal life activities, and nobody is quite sure why, although there are two main theories.

They might still have the virus, or the immune system might be throwing up a delayed over-response. Doherty explains what medical science is currently trying to figure out:

[…] whether the virus lingers in people’s bodies, or whether lasting symptoms could be a result of an overactive immune response, organ damage, problems with gut bacteria, or even previously latent viruses reactivating.

Nobody seems sure how to declare for certain that any given person is not contagious. There are even speculations that the virus can “hide out” in various organs, undetectably, and then later make a dramatic comeback. We won’t go deeply into this but here is one reference for anybody who is interested.

Doherty also quotes confused Johns Hopkins researcher, Amesh Akalja, who says:

I don’t think this is the result of the persistence of the pathogen, because you clearly see the viral load go down, and that their body’s immune system is not behaving as though there’s a pathogen present.

Then, she quotes Columbia’s Daniel Griffin, also an infectious disease specialist:

The notion that people aren’t infectious after a certain time period is grounded in very small sample sizes. Now we’re taking an observation of a few dozen individuals and applying it to billions of people. If we’re wrong, it’s a huge problem.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral,” TheAtlantic.com, 09/09/20
Source: “The Legend of the Chessboard,” YouTube.com, 01/11/11
Source: “When Children’s Covid-19 Symptoms Won’t Go Away,” Undark.org, 09/02/20
Image by NASA/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — No Youth Pass, Continued

As the pandemic drags on and worsens, it becomes increasingly apparent that all our original beliefs about children and young people were dangerously inaccurate. The virus makes no exceptions for minors. They can catch it, they can spread it, and they can die from it. When people act as if that were not so, disaster happens.

Scientific studies take time to prepare, and it is not surprising that the freshest information is to be found in social media posts, which serve not only as informal news sources but as group therapy. A nurse writes about how her team spent an hour trying unsuccessfully to revive a five-year-old who caught COVID-19 because the parents could not give up Christmas dinner for one year. (She cusses a lot.)

Someone responds,

My niece works in pediatric critical care and has seen a lot of very ill (and dying) children since Thanksgiving.

Another worker asks not to be called a hero, because many people in her field are emotionally spent and “at the brink.” The catastrophic summer is part of the reason.

Statistics paint a grim picture

In September, journalist Sweta Gupta summarized the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Although proportionately fewer children than adults are hospitalized with COVID-19, when they are, it’s serious. They are admitted to the Intensive Care Unit at about the same rate as adults — one in three. Their median age is eight years, and the boy-girl ratio is almost even. Children under two years old tend to be admitted more than those in the higher age groups.

Megan E. Doherty wrote about kids who have supposedly recovered, but not really. Not unless we consider “exhaustion, sore throat, coughing, enlarged lymph nodes, painful limbs, insomnia, and mysterious splotchy skin” to comprise a perfect state of pediatric health. These symptoms can linger or suddenly show up, in addition to blurry vision, head pain, intermittent fevers, shortness of breath, nausea, fatigue, diarrhea, testicle pain, and bloated stomach.

From June until September, when this piece was published, the website Undark…

[…] has been in touch with 28 families who report that their children, while not seriously ill, are stuck in a kind of limbo state. Those kids range in age from 17 years down to just 9 months old.

These aren’t the children with extremely dangerous MIS-C, who can die even under the best hospital care. These children are back home, supposedly all better.

A study released in September confirmed that the virus threatens the lives of people of every age. An uncredited New York Times piece about COVID-19 patients says,

The study […] looked at young adults discharged from more than 400 hospitals in the United States between April 1 and June 30. Over all, just over one-third were obese, and one quarter extremely so. Roughly one in five had diabetes, and about one in seven had hypertension…

The research letter from Harvard found that among 3,222 young adults hospitalized with Covid-19, 88 died — about 2.7 percent. One in five required intensive care, and one in 10 needed a ventilator to assist with breathing.

Harvard’s Dr. Scott D. Solomon, the study’s senior author, told the press that while, as expected, those with chronic health problems are at greater risk, some young adults also are acutely ill for no apparent reason. In other words, the phrase “pre-existing condition” does not tell the whole story. In the same month, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 12- to 17-year olds are more likely to contract the virus than younger children are.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “COVID-19 Hospitalization Data From 14 States: 1 in 3 Youths Admitted to ICU,” September 8, 2020
Source: “When Children’s Covid-19 Symptoms Won’t Go Away,” Undark.org, 09/02/20
Source: “Covid-19 Live Updates: Virus Can Be Deadly for Young Adults, Too, Study Finds,” NYTimes.com, 09/10/20
Source: “If Your Child Is This Age, They’re More Likely to Get COVID, CDC Says,” BestLifeOnline.com, 09/29/20
Image by Donnie Ray Jones/CC BY 2.0