If you define "risk" as "hospitalization," that's largely true. If you define "risk" as months or years of bizarre symptoms, reduced lung capacity, brain fog, etc., then children are at risk too.
But perhaps you don't care about that sort of thing.
Most studies I've seen show "long covid" to be pretty rare in children. Perhaps something like 5% of children who test positive have mild symptoms a month later. [1] This is somewhat consistent with other respiratory virus infections we've known about. [2] It's possible our risk tolerance is way different but this is personally an acceptable number for me not to worry about my own child.
I don't think this represents most studies, but the far lower end. If we're going to cherry-pick, here's one which shows more than half of kids show at least one symptom 120 days out:
My best guess is that it's around 10%-20% -- that's sort of in the middle where studies land.
I suspect a big part of the problem is which child and which COVID. I would speculate alpha, delta, mu, etc. all have different rates.
I think the second question is the distribution of symptoms. None of the studies are sensitive enough to pick up a 5% loss in IQ, lung capacity, or similar. Do some kids get it and others don't? Or is there a bell curve of symptoms, and we're picking up kids with the more extreme versions?
If it's a bell curve, it's pretty scary. All kids could be harmed to the level of e.g. lead exposure, and we wouldn't notice.
stolenmerch|4 years ago
[1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/long-cov...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31718695/
murgindrag|4 years ago
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.23.21250375v...
My best guess is that it's around 10%-20% -- that's sort of in the middle where studies land.
I suspect a big part of the problem is which child and which COVID. I would speculate alpha, delta, mu, etc. all have different rates.
I think the second question is the distribution of symptoms. None of the studies are sensitive enough to pick up a 5% loss in IQ, lung capacity, or similar. Do some kids get it and others don't? Or is there a bell curve of symptoms, and we're picking up kids with the more extreme versions?
If it's a bell curve, it's pretty scary. All kids could be harmed to the level of e.g. lead exposure, and we wouldn't notice.