<
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-covid-is-harming-too-many-kids/>
"Since the COVID pandemic began, claims that the disease poses only minimal
risk to children have spread widely, on the presumption that the lower rate of
severe acute illness in kids tells the whole story. Notions that children are
nearly immune to COVID and don’t need to be vaccinated have pervaded.
These ideas are wrong. People making such claims ignore the accumulating risk
of long COVID, the constellation of long-term health effects caused by
infection, in children who may get infected once or twice a year. The condition
may already have affected nearly six million kids in the U.S. Children need us
to wake up to this serious threat. If we do, we can help our kids with a few
straightforward and effective measures.
The spread of the mistaken idea that children have nothing to worry about has
had some help from scientists. In 2023 the American Medical Association’s
pediatrics journal published a study–which has since been retracted—reporting
the rate of long COVID symptoms in kids was “strikingly low” at only 0.4
percent. The results were widely publicized as feel-good news, and helped
rationalize the status quo, where kids are repeatedly exposed to SARS-COV-2 in
underventilated schools and parents believe they will suffer no serious harm.
In January 2024, however, two scientists published a letter with me explaining
why that study was invalid. Some of the errors made it hard to understand how
the study survived peer review. For example, the authors claimed to report on
long COVID using the 2021 World Health Organization definition, but didn’t
properly account for the possibility of new onset and fluctuating or relapsing
symptoms, even though that definition and the subsequently released 2023
pediatric one emphasize those attributes. Any child with four symptom-free
weeks—even nonconsecutive ones—following confirmed infection was categorized by
the study authors as not having long COVID.
In August, the authors of the study retracted it. They did not admit to the
errors we raised. But they did admit to new errors, and said these mistakes
meant they understated the rate of affected children.
And that rate, according to other research, is quite high. The American Medical
Association’s top journal,
JAMA, in August published a key new study and
editorial about pediatric long COVID. The editorial cites several robust
analyses and concludes that, while uncertainty remains, long COVID symptoms
appear to occur after about 10 percent to 20 percent of pediatric infections.
If you’re keeping score, that’s as many as 5.8 million affected children in the
U.S.—so far. And we know studies and surveys of adults have found that repeat
infections heighten the risk of long-term consequences."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: October 24, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-114604843
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
