Thread by @DrEricDing

What’s worse than losing school days during pandemic? Losing a parent.

Nearly ~40,000 children have lost a parent to #COVID19, black children even more.
"The number of children experiencing a parent dying of Covid-19 is staggering.”

cnn.com/2021/04/05/hea…

2) "Black children are disproportionately affected, comprising only 14% of children in the US but 20% of those losing a parent to Covid-19."

3) “The model suggests that each Covid-19 death leaves 0.078 children aged between 0 and 17 parentally bereaved, representing a 17.5% to 20.2% increase in parental bereavement absent of Covid-19”

4) “"As of February 2021, 37,300 children aged 0 to 17 years had lost at least 1 parent due to Covid-19, three-quarters of whom were adolescents," says the research letter.

5) “When the authors factored in excess deaths, they estimated that 43,000 children have lost a parent and looking at a natural herd immunity strategy which resulted in 1.5 million deaths "demonstrates the potential effect of inaction: 116,900 parentally bereaved children."

6) US isn’t alone. In one school in France, 1 in 100 student lost a mother or father to COVID19.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1375784731875418116

7) Here is what exactly the new US study says—“As of February 2021, 37 300 children aged 0 to 17 years had lost at least 1 parent due to COVID-19, three-quarters of whom were adolescents (Table).

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…

8) “Of these, 20 600 were non-Hispanic White children and 7600 were non-Hispanic Black children. When we rely on excess deaths, we estimate that 43 000 children have lost a parent.

9) “A natural herd immunity strategy that results in 1.5 mil deaths demonstrates the potential effect of inaction: 116 900 parentally bereaved children.”

➡️Translation: Trump advisor Scott Atlas would have caused not only pandemicide but also ~117k children to lose a parent. ⚠️

10) Thus I wholeheartedly agree that “Parentally bereaved children will also need targeted support to help with grief, particularly during this period of heightened social isolation”

11) “The establishment of a national child bereavement cohort could identify children who have lost parents, monitor them for early identification of challenges, link them to local care, and form a longitudinal study of the long-term effects of mass parental bereavement”

12) NOTA BENE—

📍Children bring viruses home and infect adults. How do we know? 3 million person dataset tells us so.

Pass it on (this thread 🧵 and this data below ⬇️)

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1367588701358845955

13) Kid are more likely to bring a #COVID19 infection home to adults than any age group. We have to wake up to this.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1345858404263321600