Trump was correct, children are basically immune

Even if he misspoke and meant immune from death he'd still be ignoring the suspected long term effects of the disease on people, even those who were symptom free, children included. With that being the case and Republicans are refusing to insure those with pre-conditions kids getting sick today can look at a lifetime of high insurance rates, if they can get it at all, limited employment and the possibility of chronic illness their entire lives.[/QUOTE]
This is entirely correct. The sheer possibility of silent chronic illness that will show its ugly head years later and will curtail productivity, well-being, and life expectancy, should make anybody very prudent until we get a vaccine.

Take for example the case of the Epstein-Barr virus. It is the agent of the rather benign disease mononucleosis, which doesn't kill anybody during the acute phase unless the person is unwise enough to engage in heavy exercise during the phase when the spleen is enlarged, managing to rupture it and to die of internal hemorrhage (it has happened). But as long as the person rests during the acute phase, nobody dies of mononucleosis. The person appears to recover fully after a few days, going 100% back to baseline. Well, why did I say "appears" to recover fully? Because it turns out that having had the acute phase of an infection by the Epstein-Barr virus predisposes the person to note one, not two, but freaking eight very serious illnesses later in life, up to and including lethal cancers like Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

Covid-19 being a novel illness, it's little by little that we are acquiring a deeper knowledge of its mid-term consequences, let alone long-term consequences because we haven't had anybody yet being removed by a few years from the initial infection, given that this disease has existed for only about 10 months.

So, it does seem like a percentage of adults, typically about 20%, get serious illness from catching the SARS-CoV-2. Apparently about 40% are asymptomatic (so they get the infection but not the illness) and 40% are in-between, in various degrees of mild to moderate illness that doesn't require hospitalization.

OK, we don't know yet what happens to the asymptomatic ones (remember, even very mild cases of mononucleosis can result in fatal Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma later in life; who knows what the SARS-CoV-2 can do?).

But we do have a hint of what may happen to the mild, moderate, and severe ones. There was a study in Germany that randomly selected 100 patients who tested positive for Covid-19 in a testing center. They followed what happened to them, and then ran cardiac MRI and troponin blood tests (troponin is a marker of heart muscle damage) to see if they had developed any heart toxicity.

Well, guess what? Freaking 78% of them showed up with significant heart damage, and get this, independently of underlying medical conditions, and independently of the severity of COVID-19 itself. As a matter of fact 67% of them had only mild to moderate illness that didn't require hospitalization, and many patients were youngish, with a median age of 49, with a standard deviation of 14, so just one standard deviation down you had people who are 35 years old, getting heart damage from mild cases of Covid-19.

Whoa. Most of these people were asymptomatic for the heart, but had inflammatory markers similar to other kinds of inflammatory myocarditis that typically evolve to fatal heart failure withing a few years.

This paper was published in an issue of the scientific journal that contained another paper regarding autopsies of people who died from Covid-19, showing striking destruction of the heart muscle.

It was followed by another, unrelated study in another country, showing such an impressive decimation of heart fibers, with the electronic microscopy showing them all diced up, that the author of the study in an interview said he couldn't sleep after he saw that, so scared he got.

OK, so that's 3 studies showing significant heart damage in people who died of Covid-19 AND in people who survived Covid-19 INCLUDING young people with no underlying medical condition who had mild cases.

If that's not scary I don't know what is. It freaked out dozens of cardiologists; I posted statements by some 8 of them in another post of mine. One of these cardiologists, if I'm not mistaken the head of the American College of Cardiology, saying that maybe we'll get rid of the acute phase of Covid-19 by defeating the virus with a vaccine... but will see, in a few years, a pandemic of millions of people with heart failure.

Now, this hasn't been confirmed by larger studies yet. But two of the three above are peer-reviewed studies (the third one is pending review) and they are pretty darn scary.

Is the 78% something that will be confirmed everywhere? I don't know. Probably not. Clinicians around the world have been reporting about 20% of heart damage if they look for it (like I said, initially, it is a silent thing). Maybe there was some intervening factor in the 100 cases in Germany that pushed up the stats. But it may very well be that 1 in 5 survivors of Covid-19 comes out of it with permanent (still silent) heart damage that may have dire consequences later in life.

What about asymptomatic, undiagnosed cases? We don't know. The fact that healthy youngish people got the heart damage after mild cases anyway, doesn't bode well, but maybe the asymptomatic people have some sort of specific immunity that prevents the symptoms and also prevents the heart damage. To date that I know, nobody has tried to look at the hearts of asymptomatic people who were found to have had the virus in serology surveys. This is a very necessary thing to do, and I hope someone does it.

What does it mean for children? I don't know either. The CDC says that about 45% of children who catch Covid-19 are asymptomatic, a rate 5% higher than the estimated rate for adults. Does the heart damage occur for the 55% who have symptoms of Covid-19? I don't know either; it hasn't been looked at. The German study had no children in it.

But is it possible? Well, yeah... You know, children have heart muscle fibers too... and the virus seems to have a striking predilection for attacking heart muscle fibers. The sheer possibility might make any parent be very concerned...

And let's stop and think about it for a minute: the heart is ONE organ. What about the other organs? Three major ones, the lungs, the brain, and the kidneys have been shown to get mid-term damage in survivors of Covid-19; likely there will be confirmed long-term damage too, in a few years when people do get to be removed from it several years. So, we've had people surviving Covid-19 but acquiring permanent lung fibrosis with permanent shortness of breath, permanent renal insufficiency, and possibly permanent brain damage with cognitive impairment and/or strokes. The latter, strokes, HAVE been found in children who survived Covid-19.

Children also have had MIS-C (Multiple Inflammatory Syndrome in Children) associated with Covid-19. That's a serious illness that requires ICU care in 80% of children who get it. In a Boston hospital, 6 children have died from it. Most survive it, but again, what will be the long term consequences of having had a severe multi-organ inflammatory illness as a child, later in life? Unknown.

Are you all willing to play Russian Roulette with the long-term health, productivity, quality of life, and life expectancy of your children?

I say, while we don't know these things, and while it is in the realm of possibilities (scary ones), I'd rather see children being protected from this virus until we get a safe and effective vaccine.

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This is a full shift in my position. For the longest time I've defended the reopening of schools, for the simple fact that not having schools to attend in person ALSO harms children, and in very significant ways. Many disadvantaged children in the United States rely on schools for healthy meals and preventative care delivered by the school nurse. Children need the socialization that schools provide, and their psycho-social and cognitive development can get stunted if they don't attend school. Many children in the United States are unable to engage in online learning, either because of specific disability, or because of lack of financial means to have laptops and whatnot. Also, working parents need the support of schools for daytime childcare while they work.

So, looking at death rates for children, I found that they are smaller for Covid-19 than those associated with school-acquired meningitis or tuberculosis. So, I thought, the benefits of reopening schools outweigh the risk, and I got to be for it. The American Academy of Pediatrics was initially of the same opinion and issued position statements in favor of reopening schools.

But... I changed my mind after the more recent data about silent heart damage in youngish people with no underlying conditions and mild cases of Covid-19. What if? I don't want to play with the future health of a generation of children.

Because we seem to be so close to a vaccine now (by the way the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial has just been given the green light to restart, my wife just told me), I think that a few more months without school might be, yes, detrimental to children and working parents, but may end up being less detrimental than children catching the virus and suffering consequences later in their lives.

I think that until further research looks into weather or not children are also subject to this heart damage, we should be prudent with our little ones.

Oh, and by the way, the American Academy of Pediatrics changed their minds too, and issued a more nuanced statement, no longer fully supporting reopening schools. Yep, we should be more worried, now.

 

Good point CenterF. We should be prudent until we know more. Given the unknowns it's absolutely a disease to avoid, if humanely possible.