I do have concern about bad outcomes both from acute infection and longer chronic effects. But the concern of keeping kids out of school/friends houses/etc for their whole childhood seems worse.
I have relative who has chronic heart failure from cardiac conduction abnormality caused by the common cold pre COVID. So I don’t think I have my head in the sand about risks, but feel like kids gotta live their lives which probably means they bring COVID to us
Thankfully second round infections seemed dramatically more mild, almost didn’t even realize everyone was sick
Yeah your post brings up two points that I want to see studies on.
What are the risks of long common cold, so to speak? They’re not zero as you point out, as far as I know they haven’t really been studied, and comparing that risk to COVID seems important.
Does the risk of long covid stay level with each infection, increase, or decrease? So far I’ve seen a study that it doubles with the second infection. Something like 10% the first time then 20% the second. If it were 10% once then 0% I’d be licking doorknobs and rolling the dice. 10% to 20% to X% scares me.
I do agree with your point about it being a different decision with kids. I wouldn’t hold them out of school forever, I might hold them out a year or two (homeschool or something) if they hadn’t started Kindergarten yet. If they were already older and had friends in their class and all I don’t think I’d want to disrupt that.
Not that I’m aware but I’ll look into it again. What I would really want in this case would be some sort of disability coverage. The problem is that even if there is, the odds they’d cover long COVID have to be close to zero.
Think you would really just need to sit down with an insurance broker. I think it’s pretty common for disability policies to exclude chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia but imagine would cover if COVID caused heart failure/stroke/pulmonary issues/etc.
Yeah would be interesting. In my anecdotal personal experience everyone I know who got it a second time has had a much more mild course. Like so much so people will be like “I got little sick and was worried I had flu/RSV but thankfully was just COVID and felt better next day”. Obviously not scientific at all
I know our big deal is getting own occupation insurance but can’t you get disability insurance that will cover you if you become disabled enough to not work in any occupation? Obviously only would cover the most grave cases of disability but better than nothing
Yeah it’s probably worth doing if/when I ease up on the masking. I mean, I’d need chronic fatigue to be covered since that poses a huge threat to my earning power, but it’s worth looking into how costly such a policy would be.
Yeah that’s what I’ve (mostly) heard too. However everyone I know who had long COVID issues then got COVID again got it worse both acutely and in terms of worsening their long COVID. There’s also the study out now in JAMA that long COVID is more prevalent in mild cases than in severe.
The problems are that defining long covid is tricky, comparing different studies on long covid and outcomes is virtually impossible, and we’re still getting a lot of data from pre-vaccines. Long COVID was almost certainly way more prevalent in people who got it in 2020, but since these studies take like 18-24 months to run in a lot of cases, that’s the data we’re getting.
Whelp. Both my kids just tested positive on rapid tests. They were both fine up until about 4 hours ago and then the oldest started coughing so I tested purely as a precaution. WIfe and I are still negative. This should be fun…
Well. Three years, three campaigns, a husband and roommate who had it twice, and I managed to dodge it.
Until now. Ugh. I didn’t test until this evening because I was still coughing from that cold that went around over the holidays. But I started feeling feverish this afternoon. Running a 99.1 fever, have a headache, and the aforementioned cough.
I’m vaxxed with 2 boosters. Hadn’t gotten the third yet because of time and laziness. Hope I don’t croak.
@CaffeineNeeded So my oldest 7 yo now has stridor (and a bad cough). She gets that a lot when she gets respiratory infections and the pediatrician usually prescribes dexamethasone which has always cleared it up immediately. Do I ask him to do the same with her Covid diagnosis?