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Comment by ya_throw | Hacker News Reader

Are you saying that until young kids can get vaccinated, it is not safe enough to remove shutdown protocols for preschools?

Parent of 2 very young kids here btw - it's been brutal, I feel your pain. Frankly, our kids get enough other diseases from nursery that a months-long scratchy cough doesn't sound too terrifying.

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The challenge is the lack of data on long-term effects of COVID. Preliminary studies have linked it to cognitive declines [1], diabetes [2], and chronic fatigue [3]. And while death from COVID in a preschooler is about a 1-in-100,000 occurrence, long COVID and other chronic outcomes seem to be much more common. I've heard figures of about 5% or 1 in 20.

Few parents would willingly sign their preschooler (or themselves) up for intellectual disabilities, type-1 diabetes, or chronic fatigue syndrome.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm

[3] https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/2022/01/08/lo...

Where have you heard those figures from? (I assume you are telling me that 5% of pre-schoolers, in your experience, have had chronic outcomes from Covid).

Yes, I have seen many preliminary studies linking Covid to many different long-term health problems [1]. Personally, and especially as Covid has been around for over 2 years at this point, I strongly prefer to avoid the obvious long-term damage caused to my kids by the disruption of their academic and social development.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/10/01/restless-an...

I listed sources in my original comment. From the first link, they observed 4.8% of lab-confirmed cases exhibited continuing symptoms, and the average effect on cognitive performance was 0.47 standard deviations (equivalent to about 8 IQ points, or roughly the effect of a stroke). The CDC study has some methodological problems (detailed in nradov & DannyCasolaro's sibling posts), but previous meta-analyses have documented similar effects; they covered only severely-ill patients, but came up with a pooled proportion of 14%. Chronic fatigue is reported as a symptom 6 months following in 46% of cases [2], but again, that study is for adults.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/18/1055071...

[2] https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/11/6/760

>that study is for adults

Given the incredible age-based disparity in severity of Covid, I wonder if any of those results (such as they are) are even applicable to our discussion.

Like much of what the CDC puts out these days (e.g. "natural immunity is less effective than vaccine-induced"), their diabetes study is junk science: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/does-covid19-cause-d...

The diabetes study you cited appears to be junk science. I'm not claiming that COVID-19 absolutely doesn't cause diabetes, just that we won't know one way or another until larger studies are performed with proper methods.

https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/does-covid19-cause-d...

Also, color me incredulous that we're getting reliable long term data... 2 years after a disease appeared in humans.

We'll get long term data, after a long term has passed.

And yes, there are always going to be >0 people with permanent organ damage. Because disease progression in a human host is a complex system. But what actually matters is the incidence rate at scale.

Or, to put it another way, everyone has a >0 chance of winning the lottery, but does that mean they should invest in lottery tickets?

The CDC study does have methodological problems, but there's also been prior research that suggests similar effects (in more severely ill patients), as well as observing destruction of insulin-creating pancreas cells by COVID19. Here's a meta-analysis of 8 studies on the topic, with similar conclusions, done across China, Italy, and the U.S.:

https://dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dom.142...

Ok, but what are the long term effects of every other virus preschoolers could get? I doubt that covid is unique in that respect

Those are not insubstantial:

Diabetes has been documented as a symptom of cytomegalovirus (mono), mumps, rubella, rotavirus, and enteroviruses (polio and hand-foot-mouth). Fatigue is a symptom of lyme disease and mono.

I don't want my kids to get any of those either, and they were vaccinated for mumps, rubella, rotavirus, and polio by age 1. If I have the choice of being cautious for 3 months until a vaccine is available for COVID, I'll take it.

Mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, not by CMV.

Worst illness I’ve ever had. Probably. Knocked me out cold for six weeks, lingering symptoms for months and months. All to play a stupid spin the bottle kissing game.

Apparently it's both:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytomegalovirus

Most cases of mono are caused by EBV, but CMV primarily presents as mono, and sometimes pneumonia.

EBV/mono is another common childhood illness with lots of nasty potential chronic complications, including lymphoma, other cancers, CFS, and autoimmune diseases like lupus, MS, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Just curious, have you seen any studies or evidence on whether omicron has caused the micro-clotting that seems to be the cause of some of these long-term effects? Everyone seems to be saying the effects of omicron are not as bad, but that talk seems to be limited to short-term effects, not the longer-term ones you brought up.

It still targets the ACE2 receptors found throughout different human tissue, and reportedly can bind even more effectively to it. The difference in severity is reportedly because it replicates 70x faster in the bronchus but 10x slower in the lung tissue, leading to more bronchitis and upper respiratory involvement and less pneumonia.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's lower incidence of chronic complications than Delta and earlier variants, though. Long COVID seems to be associated with (but not unique to) more severe cases. If there's pneumonia or ARDS, there's a much easier pathway into the bloodstream than if it infects mucus membrane tissue in the upper airways. It likely can still cause long COVID, but at a lower rate corresponding to its generally lower severity.

Obviously, full studies of long-term effects are lacking, since Omicron has only been out for a month and a half.

It looks to me like most people here are making the same argument, just applying it to different sides of the debate.

There is a lack of data on the long term effects of the disease, as well as the recommended treatment.

what are the long term effects of all the other BS young kids are subjected to as a result of all of this?

> Are you saying that until young kids can get vaccinated, it is not safe enough to remove shutdown protocols for preschools?

I have no idea. I'm not an expert. And no experts seem to be talking. Our preschool recently switched from a 14 day shutdown to 7 day plus negative PCR test to re-enter. At least there's that?

> Frankly, our kids get enough other diseases from nursery that a months-long scratchy cough doesn't sound too terrifying.

We'll have to agree to disagree there. My kids have never had anything that's lasted for months, the kid I know with the cough was waking up in the middle of the night coughing most nights. No thank you.

We had RSV do the rounds (twice) where I live, and all of us in our house were quite ill, fatigued, and snotty/coughy for about a month. Our friend's 6 month-old caught it and ended up in hospital.

Our youngest also had Croup last year, which is pretty scary if you don't know it. It shows up as a horrible, barking cough, and can make it look like your baby is suddenly struggling to breathe. We panicked and called an ambulance. The little one was just fine, but had the horrible cough (which is much worse at night) for a while.

Once our pre-school care re-opened (it was shut for many months after March 2020) and the regular diseases started circulation again, it felt like we were ill for several months, albeit with different diseases. We'd send our kids in on Monday, and wait to see what we'd have for the weekend...

I'm not saying this to complain - as I see it, this is the reality of life with the little snot-nosed monsters.

I am in the same boat as you. It is crazy to me that we accepted the risks of every other RSV, influenza, corona, rhino, rota, noro, and whatever other bug going around daycare every week prior to Mar 2020, and still do, but if a COVID 19 is detected, then the whole thing shuts down.

Every single one of those kids at drop-off and pickup has a runny nose. I am pretty sure we have an informal agreement amongst all the parents that no one gets their kid tested for COVID. It is one thing to do all this song and dance without an available vaccine, but it has been widely available for over a year.

Yep. Sometimes when I air opinions like these, I get the response "but attitudes like that will keep the pandemic and shutdowns going for longer!". It's surprisingly hard to explain that I also don't want my nursery to shutdown if someone merely tests positive for Covid. Personally, I've decided to re-brand "asymptomatic" as "not ill".

This sounds like a bad policy on the nursery's part. We have a soft lockdown when somebody has a case: basically, the group who had a positive test is secluded from the other groups and get daily tests.

We know about "soft lockdowns" too (in fact, it's now just standard practice around here). It's why our kids get less age-appropriate care - for example, they can't mix with the groups who share the same sleeping pattern as they do, and are forced to stick to whatever their "bubble" is doing. To me, this is incredibly developmentally inappropriate.

Well, pandemics suck, what's new? It's also bad if the kita has to shut down because all the staff are sick. It seems like a good balance to me.

What's new is deliberately destroying a generation's future potential, for a disease that barely affects them. What's also new is that the repercussions of our collective response to this disease will be felt long after Covid fades to another endemic sniffle.

100% of people can get these vaccines, and 100% of people will still get and spread Coronaviruses. Full stop. It's getting really old hearing that vaccines will stop anything when the majority of people spreading this shit RIGHT NOW, are vaccinated people. The people I've been seeing the sickest for a year now when they do get sick, are vaccinated. The 3-4 people I know recently who were very sick with COVID for 10 or more days with breathing troubles, were VACCINATED. The shit is nonsense anymore.

> sickest for a year now when they do get sick, are vaccinated

The vast majority of those in ICUs and morgues are unvaccinated.

And?

Where I live (Wales), total ICU usage right now is 77%. The absolute numbers are very small. If you want to make an argument that people should not add an un-necessary burden on the health services, then why restrict the discussion to Covid?

I was responding to the claim that vaccinated people are the ones with the worst illness. That claim is dangerous bullshit.

I never claimed that vaccinated people are getting sicker than a comparison to non-vaccinated people. I plainly said that the "sickest people I know lately" are all vaccinated. You took it and spun it into apparently what you wanted to take from it. You have taken what I said and what I meant out of context.

Your words speak for themselves. It's dangerous bullshit.

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