I'm an epidemiologist and a father. I'm not overly concerned about COVID-19 and my daughter's health now in 2025.
Here's why:
https://gidmk.substack.com/p/children-and-covid-19-in-2025
Here's why:
https://gidmk.substack.com/p/children-and-covid-19-in-2025
Comments
If someone was never infected at all, how do they have long-term COVID?
Logically you meant something by this.
I disagree with your conclusions. Risk is avoidable, and the fact that everyone has had it doesn't mean it is safe.
How long it took AIDS to emerge from HIV infections ought to be a caution.
Just as the incurable nature of the disease is.
Making excuses for your inability to protect the kids is natural. It is to be expected from an MD facing off against a government intent on maintaining BAU
We do *not* know the long-term risks of this disease, so we should ALL still be masking in public spaces.
And filtering the air in our schools.
We do know that the immune system is affected for years for some people.
We do know that brain damage can occur, for some people.
We don't know which people.
The risk rises exponentially with age.
And I'm old.
We can't cure COVID, long or otherwise.
We don't know why viral remnants are found in the bone marrow or in parts of the gut, two years post infection.
It remains a disease that kills people, and I am not interested in minimizing its severity.
We should be masking and filtering.
I can think of at least 3 different interpretations; with that, I follow my usual practice of having no opinion about what it means.😎
Personally, I prefer not to risk the brain damage possible with LC, something I regard as a fate worse than death.
Also, people report all kinds of symptoms as long COVID which aren’t necessarily related. There’s a whole lot of confirmation bias going on.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-vaccines-reduce-long-covid-risk-new-study-shows
I disagree, and the masking means I haven't even had a case of sniffles in 5 years.
https://gidmk.medium.com/personal-responsibility-is-not-a-useful-fix-9d749940017b
or am I wrong?
Are you asking a rhetorical question because that's different.
It's a little odd how you combine questions with assumptions though.
What a heartless response.
Why you think the opposite or how that is heartless is beyond me.
It sounds like you didn’t read the article or you apparently disagree with it?
🤷🏾
I'm not an epidemiologist (and I don't play one on the internet) but perhaps think about the actual cost and means of "mitigating spread" as a starting point.
ZeroCovid isn't sensible or real.
And yet, here we are.
Decreasing disease burden != Zero Covid. We can still consider improving air filtration in schools as well as other measures to mitigate illness spread.
“Decreasing disease burden” is a very broad statement which no one could possibly disagree with except with specific proposals. 🤷🏾
Like your article says, there's really no need to worry more about covid than other daycare bugs - even those these other bugs can be quite serious..
The US CDC is a bit of an outlier in their recommendations.
https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/covid-19-vaccines/getting-your-vaccination
Obviously smoking is 100% about long-term risk.
May I ask what you think about COVID-19 vaccinations for children?
My daughter had started being vaccinated against the flu before COVID-19, and since COVID-19 have become available she has been regularly vaccinated against both.
Note that per that reply thread, ATAGI in Australia (our CDC equivalent for vaccine recommendations) say that healthy kids are no longer eligible for covid vaccination.
https://bsky.app/profile/gidmk.bsky.social/post/3lf55pjmxvs2k
As a clinical virologist, who treated the first catalogued cases of long covid and recurrent covid, as well as knowing what the virus does to cells…my kids still mask at school.
Just because some kids get mild cases, there are no longitudinal studies to show impact of both length of life and quality of life of children who get multiple cases of COVID, especially heart inflammation.