Understanding Risk
The Urgency of Normal
An advocacy toolkit and companion webinar for parents, students, mentors, teachers, administrators, and everyone invested in taking the best possible care of our children
January 26, 2022
A group of medical professionals have created an advocacy toolkit intended to help everyone who is in a position to affect policy decisions for schools and/or extracurricular activities for children. As scientists and physicians, our role is to inform people with accurate data, to help frame risk by putting data into context, and to provide nuanced guidance about complex issues.
We continue to update the toolkit in response to peer feedback and to incorporate the most current research. Our toolkit reflects our most accurate and complete understanding of children, COVID and the urgency of normal.
Covid vs Flu
A Comparison in Four Charts
Data on Risk to Kids
Immunocompromised children and young people are at no increased risk of severe COVID-19
Pediatric hospitalizations are on the rise, but not from COVID
State of Affairs: Pediatrics and Omicron
Kids Shouldn’t Have to Be ‘Resilient’
January 13, 2022
In this post, I frame the data a little differently to address “numerator thinking” vs. “denominator thinking.” I think explains why there is substantial disagreement throughout the pandemic on almost everything. This is particularly the case in regards to the perception of the threat SARS-CoV-2 has on children.
Protecting the Vulnerable
Long COVID in Kids
Long COVID symptoms and duration in SARS-CoV-2 positive children — a nationwide cohort study
January 9, 2022
Long COVID in children is rare and mainly of short duration. 0.8% of SARS-CoV-2 positive children reported symptoms lasting >4 weeks (‘long COVID’), when compared to a control group.
Long Covid in children 'nowhere near scale feared'
September 1, 2021
The risk of "long Covid" in children is much lower than many had feared, leading child health experts have said.
Daily MIS-C Cases and COVID-19 Cases Reported to CDC (7-Day Moving Average)
January 31, 2022
Incidences of MIS-C continue to decline with each new variant.
Controlled studies ease worries of widespread long Covid in kids
February 14, 2022
Uncertainty about the effect of Covid-19 on children is gradually being replaced by reassuring news.
First, severe complications from Covid-19 are extremely rare in those under age 18. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the states where we practice medicine, far fewer than 1% of those under age 18 diagnosed Covid have needed to be hospitalized, and that number is declining.