Thread by @elisaperego78

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

🧵

https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1475972135520817154

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"

https://twitter.com/jneill/status/1476496305178484738?t=FcmO0iCWik4AhlSrLGAr3g&s=19