One of many arguments in favor of vaccinating children: A study using a large medical-claims database suggests that children ages 0 to 17 with confirmed covid develop several conditions more often than do uninfected control subjects. Those conditions include acute pulmonary embolism, myocarditis and cardiomyopathy, venous thromboembolic events, acute and unspecified renal failure, and Type I diabetes. None of those sound particularly good to me and demonstrate the wide range of organs being affected by the virus. Children with covid had low rates of several other conditions compared to controls. These conditions include respiratory, mental health, neurological, muscle, and sleeping disorders. The standard used for the various conditions was "new, recurring, or ongoing health problems that occurred 4 or more weeks after infection with SARS-CoV-2." The statistical models used controlled for possible co-variants such as age, race, gender, and so on.
On the adult side, it appears that persistent loss of smell after covid may predict cognitive impairment in older adults. In fact, loss of smell seems to be more strongly associated with cognitive impairment than the severity of the initial infection. Says a spokesperson for the Alzheimer's Association, "We're learning more every day about the link between COVID-19 and the brain. Loss of smell is often a signal of an inflammatory response in the brain. We know inflammation is part of the neurodegenerative process in diseases such as Alzheimer's." In other words, we still don't really know the big picture of covid's effect on the body and the brain. Also on the adult side, a yet-to-be reviewed study suggests that at least 43 percent of long covid sufferers may have chronic fatigue syndrome.
I wonder sometimes if it's keeping this blog that makes me so obsessive about not putting myself in situations in which I could possibly get infected. Looking at more information each day than I write about here has shown me much more than I otherwise would know about the different ways the coronavirus can hurt me. It's certainly shown me the range of things we do not yet know about the long-term effects of the coronavirus, and that's frightening. Someone in a quilt group told me last week that they had had covid and it really was not a big deal. I just noted that each case was different and I did not want to find out how mild my own case of covid might or might not be.
More evidence of polio is appearing in wastewater testing in New York. The State Health Commissioner said they were "... treating the single case of polio as just the tip of the iceberg of much greater potential spread. As we learn more, what we do know is clear; the danger of polio is present in New York today." If it's not covid, it's polio or monkeypox; Mother Nature must be really pissed at us over climate change.
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