I've seen two lines of thought (a) I'm not returning fully to regular life until there is a vaccine (b) I'm concerned about mortality rates, so I'm willing to go out if the death rate is in line with other well-known infections. Once more effective treatments are developed, I will feel comfortable. Which camp are you in?
I’ve been in the camp that the death rate is <1% and concentrated among the obese, infirm, and elderly, and I am none of these so I will live my life as normal as possible today.
I'm absolutely in your camp. And especially when it comes to my kids, the flu seems far more scary than Covid.
OMG - the flu is scarier than Covid? You can’t be serious. Have you heard that you can easily prevent or mitigate the flu with a safe and effective vaccine? It has been around for decades. If you’re so worried, try it.
^ also there is tamiflu for treatment of the flu!
I don't personally feel the way OR feels, but I do personally know more children who have died from the flu than have died from COVID. So in terms of death rate, it is higher for flu for kids.
Exactly. Even with a vaccine and tamiflu, mortality rate among kids is far higher for flu than Covid. I'm only talking about my kids - for myself (late 40's), Covid is more deadly. But I'm way more scared of a cancer diagnosis than Covid.
Covid rates may be low for kids because parents have been quarantining and keeping kids safe. High numbers of cases in kids are being reported from daycare centers and camps which have opened. Kids have kawasaki like disease. Long term effects are possible on cognitive and cardiac function.
In Europe people are no longer quarantining children. EU countries never closed schools or only closed them for a short time, there are day camps, parties... of the kids were at risk of dying en masse, they would be by now. Also only one or two obese kids who got Kawasaki like disease died from it, all others recovered. Kids. Are. Fine.
Kids can get COVID, but the fatality rate for kids is much lower than from flu. And according to a European epidemiologist, there are no reported cases of teachers getting COVID from students.
Daycares that stayed open through the surge and now camps that follow guidance (masks, hand sanitizers, distancing) have reported no cases. The daycares in Texas and California with reported cases have not followed guidance. Parents are going in and out of the facilities with no masks on.
Maybe, but the covid rates were never high for kids even at the height of the NYC epidemic - and the disease was clearly spreading like wildfire well before kids were quarantined.
Also, I know this is anecdata, but I know a bunch of families where both the parents had fairly serious cases of Covid, and the kids either didn't get sick at all or barely got sick. Some live in really tiny apartments with a single bath - the kids had to have been exposed.
Again, I find Covid scary (due to potential unknown effects), but not terrifying.
This happened to my friend. Her whole family had Covid. Her 6 year old dd had a mild case and her 4 year old didn’t have any symptoms.
I personally knew a case where single mom living with her daughter in a one bedroom apt. Mom got it and was sick for two weeks while living with her daughter. Mom tested antibody and got positive result. The daughter was never sick and not positive on antibody test result.
I guess I am one of the few here who is still terrified by Covid (50 and in good health). There is so little that we know about this virus... even 6 months into it. I wish they could find a cure or a feasible vaccine. I was more hopeful a few months ago. Now that a lot of states seem to be going backwards, I am really worried. Not sure what to do. I go out for grocery or essential errands, very much scared to go to restaurants (even outdoor spaces) and meet w acquaintances, even w a mask on. I may sound crazy to a lot of people, but I just wish we could go to sleep and wake up with this virus finally gone - at least not a threat anymore.
If you are in good health and not obese, you are not in high risk. At least 8 coworkers in my company got infected and they have all recovered from it. A few of them are over 50s, some had health conditions and some were obese. All recovered.
People who have not recovered suffered horrible deaths. Some of your coworkers may have serious long-term effects from Covid.
Think of it this way - doctors don't think of covid19 as a respiratory illness anymore. It affects many different organ systems, and we don't yet know what the long term effects are. We thought it infected just the cells that line the respiratory tract, but it turns out that it also attacks the cells that line other organs. Kidney failure, stroke, platelet problems, and clotting disorders are all well known complications of covid19. Even mild cases of covid19 are followed by weeks to months of shortness of breath and fatigue for many patients. In the first study of kids affected by MIS-C out of NY, more than half the kids came in with impaired cardiac function, and of the ones who left the hospital, 30-40% still had impaired cardiac function at discharge. Stop thinking about the coworkers at your office that you know or what you hear anecdotally and look at real studies that look at large numbers of people. And stop comparing this to flu. We have a partial vaccination for flu and we understand the pathogenesis of flu.
ICU doctors and ER doctors love acuity. They love taking care of very sick patients and taking care of critically ill patients. They would die of boredom in my field (internal medicine). The fact that they are in despair about what they are seeing is meaningful.
May I asked the source of the study about kids? How many kids were in that study?
This is a cohort of 43 patients from the Northwell Hospital system - I heard the data presented on a CDC call from May 19 - skip to about minute 50 or so to hear the pediatrician present. https://emergency.cdc.gov/coca/calls/2020/callinfo_051920.asp
58% kids had depressed cardiac function when they showed up at the hospital, which means their hearts were not pumping strongly, ie heart failure. 27% still had mildly depressed cardiac function when they left the hospital. Since then, there has been a bigger study in the New England Journal of Medicine https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021756
Of 95 patients, 80% ended up in the ICU.
Thank you for the source and information. I scanned through some statics. My conclusion for parents who are watching for their kids is that it is concerning at most, but no mean is alarming.
80% of patients ended up in the ICU...this is a study of all Covid patients? Confused.
This was a study of MIS-C patients admitted to the hospital.
Huh. It seemed like we heard about 100 or so kids getting MIS-C months ago, and nothing since then.
Doctors seem to be all over the place. You're clearly a fan of "lock yourself inside until there's a vaccine" but our pediatrician was in favor of sending our 9 year old to day camp. No idea what to think.
Yes, it’s confusing. And no, I’m not a ”lock yourself inside” type - my two kids are at day camp this week, but it’s all outdoors, distanced, and masked when not distanced. My point is that this we still don’t know much about this virus and other countries have shown us where the threshold should be for reopening indoor school - look at Israel and South Africa for examples.
I think given how much we don't know about the virus then any sane person should be basing their activity levels on the rate of transmission in their community, their own age and health and the prophylactics and treatments at their disposal. Comparing covid to the flu is not a useful exercise - when covid turns deadly, regardless of age, there are few approved treatments to help you and until it turns deadly in your particular case, you wont know how the disease will progress in you personally. Thus, rationally, it makes sense to be as cautious as possible for your own personal circs until science catches up - which is not so far away! In 30 years time you wont remember not going to restaurants between now and october when the phase 3 trial of blood plasma is finished but you will remember getting covid and being on a ventilator and them not being able to give you blood plasma bc they haven't finished trialling and manufacturing it at scale.