Thread by @drdagly

She was a vibrant whirlwind in class, wise beyond her 8 years with a penchant for puns. She knew all of the countries & their capitals, & took special pride in knowing the ones that had changed after her parents had put away their atlases years ago. At least that’s how she was.

Her dad couldn’t put her finger on it. So many tribulations over the last year had left their family shaken, and the death of his mother had been so prolonged and draining that the entire family had aged along with her. His wife had kept them all going when he was laid off.

Little Sophie remained “resilient”. That was the word so easily bandied about by the doctors. The pandemic had be defeated by vaccines and the schools reopened. He felt relief to see how excited she had been to go back and see her friends again. She brightened again.

Late September was especially rainy that year, almost retaliatory after the summer drought. When he asked her why she returned her carefully packed lunches barely touched she replied that everything tasted “blah”. “Must be the weather.” He thought.

Sophie’s luminance waned, and with her first grade 3 report card it was clear that something was happening. He scrolled to the top of the report to make sure this was his child.
“Issues with task completion”
“Vocabulary not at level of peers”
“Outbursts in class.”

Her teacher’s were so overworked, but they had noticed it immediately.
“I think you should get her tested.”
He shivered.
He had just been accepted by a new family practice, and the referral to a developmental specialist took agonizingly long. The waiting lists had ballooned.

The clinic was wonderful, even if the diagnosis was vague. Some sort of auditory processing problem. They worked together to find learning strategies that Sophie could employ with her teachers at school. She struggled every day now at school. She forgot the capital of Peru.

/End fictional story.

And now my take on the facts.
COVID-19 causes encephalitis. There is concrete evidence that it causes neuronal loss. It leads to loss of smell, short term memory loss, and long term cognitive issues (brain fog)
Though less common and less severe it happens in children.

Children have developing brains. Global injury like encephalitis are best avoided during this phase of neurodevelopment. These injuries, are trauma & can have life long consequences. I would accept our current back to school policies if we had no preventive measures for COVID-19.

There are vaccine trials underway for this age group as we speak, with results coming out late fall. Fully vaccinated children like fully vaccinated adults have the best protection from these complications.

I fully acknowledge that we have very little data on long COVID in children, but when the room is poorly lit, I do not charge into it. Our current plan is to lift all precautions and place unvaccinated children in poorly ventilated areas with increased student density.

This, while reducing our capacity to test and isolate. With a potential solution on the horizon this is unacceptable health policy. It also harms our most vulnerable families and their children.

And don’t even get me started on how under resourced our educators, primary health care providers and mental health professionals are. If things go badly, we will have little purchase against this tsunami.

So.
Continue to lobby your educational and health care representatives.
Practice and advocate for #TestTraceIsolateAB
Encourage N95 mask usage in schools if possible.
Buy your teachers room a HEPA filtration unit (instead of booze)
Be nice to each other.