This is untrue
It's not just #Omicron
We knew already in the early pandemic that CoV-2 could affect children. There are scientific publications on the topic, plus MIS-C, plus the relentless advocacy for #LongCovidKids
Quite a few in public health | medicine failed badly

🧵
It's possible, of course, that #Omicron is leading to a never-seen increase in severe pediatric patients. This could be for different reasons: from omicron fast spread to any intrinsic property of the variant
It could also be that multiple exposures to CoV 2 are hitting hard now
Yet, it's gravely incorrect to say that SARS-CoV-2 infection was "relatively reassuring to be safe for children". Early pandemic data appeared to indicate less severe *symptomatic* pathology and lower death risk in children on average than in adults
But never no risk or pathology
There were children with abnormal clinical signs, including covid pneumonia visible on CT lung scan, in the early papers on China. Hard hit Bergamo started to see a covid related Kawasaki like disease in late Winter 2020 and published in @TheLancet in May

asst-pg23.it/2020/05/malatt…
The Kawasaki-like disease reported in Bergamo in early 2020 soon became a well-known, critical, sometimes fatal, complication in kids infected with CoV-2: MIS-C or PIMS-TS

Already in September 2020, @TheLancet was publishing a review on the condition

thelancet.com/journals/eclin…
On 3 March 2021 @TheLancet reported the case study of a 🔺️ 24-day-old neonate 🔺️ presenting with severe MIS-C

Disease presentation included myocarditis, raised ddmer and multiple markers of inflammation. It required ICU treatment

#LongCovidKids

thelancet.com/journals/lanch…
Already in early 2020, parents of children with #LongCovid started to raise the alarm about prolonged symptoms

These efforts coalesced around the #LongCovidKids campaign, with a leading role by @LongcovidS and other patient-led groups

@TigressEllie

blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/10/16…
We already know from scientific publications and the lived experience of people with other viral onset | post infection diseases like #MEcfs that infections are *not* harmless in children.
It is very irresponsible, thus, to let a SARS virus like SARS-CoV-2 rip through children
My co authors and I also drew attention to #LongCovid in children and the young in this @bmj_latest opinion published on 1 October 2020

The risks of pediatric covid were, thus, very well known in mid 2020, with patients leading the way

#LongCovidKids

blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/10/01…
In our 2020 @bmj_latest
piece on why we need to keep using #LongCovid

we also note Long Covid refuses common pandemic assumptions about the "unequal value" attached to people with or without pre-existing conditions, incl. kids

We must protect all from unleashed CoV-2 spread
And this is one reason why we wrote about the need of dropping eugenics logics from any pandemic discussion on "commorbities" and disability

As @jneill notes 🔽 many are still trying to justify children's death from covid with "pre-existing conditions"

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More from @elisaperego78

31 Dec 21
SARS-CoV-2 infection can lead to prolonged, multidimensional, potentially irreversible | degenerative brain 🧠 damage in both hospitalized and non-hospitalized covid patients 🔺️

[pre-print | extensive brain imaging from the UK biobank]

🧵

#LongCovid

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
A significant strenght of the study is availability of brain 🧠 scans from the *same people* before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection
This allows to compare any changes to their brain across time, with pathological changes most likely caused by covid itself

#LongCovid #covidbrain
The study used multimodal MRI 🧠 scan of over 700 people who were assessed before and after the covid emergency.
Of these scans, analysis of the 401 people who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 revealed multidimensional effects on the brain | different brain areas

#LongCovid
Read 4 tweets
31 Dec 21
Absolutely this about #LongCovid Covid is long
The issue for many is not the acute, early viral infection. This is often mild, or barely symptomatic. The hardest part is the prolonged disease process
This is why covid is such a treat to personal wellbeing, society and healthcare
We know from both the lived experience of patients and now the scientific literature that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers prolonged disease processes in basically all body systems and organs. Strong is impact on coagulation, immunological, and endothelial function
#LongCovid
Persistence of at least viral parts such as for example the spike protein, is also demonstrated by an increasing number of publications.
These triggers for prolonged pathology are not *rare*. SARS-CoV-2 is an extremely dangerous pathogen for many people.
#LongCovid
Read 4 tweets
30 Dec 21
The Veneto region in Italy is witnessing an exponential growth of covid cases in children in the last 2 months. It's coming close to 300 hospitalized children, of which 13 in PICU (pediatric ICU)

A 3-year-old recently died

#LongCovid #LongCovidKids

ilgiornaledivicenza.it/oltre-vicenza/…
@TigressEllie @Elodie_A_N @LongCovidKids @jneill

Thanks @pietrafocaia @FranceskoNew for drawing attention to this article
There is no total clarity from the Italian sources, but it could be 300 since the beginning of the pandemic or more recently | now

I will follow the debate and report @FranceskoNew
Read 6 tweets
30 Dec 21
The tweets by medical professional and covid expert @maureviv from early to mid 2020 are amazing. There is so much existing knowledge and new knowledge in the making about clotting, endothelial injury, immune dysfunction from SARS-CoV-2, and post viral illness

#LongCovid
🧵 by @maureviv also lead to many by healthcare professionals and patients trying to make sense of covid, as it spread almost unleashed, and alien, across Europe and the world

History in the making

I think this collective knowledge building will change medicine

#LongCovid
Thanks @OdyO11 too for so much wisdom on chronic illnesses and disability rights ❤
Read 4 tweets
28 Dec 21
The US CDC says people with "resolving covid symptoms" can go back to work
Bad
Let's remember: early covid is often a biphasic disease, with a mild prodromal phase
Many people seem to recover around day 5, only to develop more serious issues, including silent hypoxia, in week 2
This key covid feature of symptoms going worse from around day 6, after apparent or partial resolution around day 5, was already well known in 2020!

Forcing people back to work when they might be still really sick as well as infectious is bad

#LongCovid

nytimes.com/2020/04/30/wel…
Many people especially in the youngish category but with severe | moderate disease tend to have a peak in covid severity around days 10 to 12. This has been called the "second week crash"

Some with covid pneumonia can be in life threatening conditions

businessinsider.com/what-its-like-…
Read 7 tweets
28 Dec 21
Prof. in Medicine (❗) Paul Hunter of East Anglia University (UK) is reported in the press to say that people with covid shouldn't be isolating anymore

"Expert says people with COVID should be allowed to 'go about their normal lives' at some point"
news.sky.com/story/covid-ne…
He adds that at some point people should behave with covid as they do with any other "cold"
There are thousands dying from covid every day in the world Hundreds of thousands have been hospitalized in the last few weeks and | or have developed debilitating symptoms
We don't even know how many are developing prolonged disease #LongCovid, especially in areas of the world were surveillance and access to care are poor SARS-CoV-2 is a SARS virus which is capable of partial immune escape as we have seen with #Omicron
People are dying of omicron
Read 4 tweets

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