— Source: CDC
In the United States, Kawasaki disease affects 4,000 children each year.
The cause of Kawasaki disease is unknown. It doesn’t appear to be hereditary or contagious.
Because the illness frequently occurs in outbreaks within a population, an infectious agent (such as a virus) is the likely cause. KD occurs worldwide, with the highest incidence in Japan, and it most often affects boys and younger children. KD may have a winter-spring seasonality, and community-wide outbreaks have been reported occasionally. In the continental United States, population-based and hospitalization studies estimate an incidence of KD ranging from 9 to 19 per 100,000 children under 5 years of age. As far back as In the year 2000, approximately 4248 hospitalizations with KD were reported among children under 18 in the US, of which 3277 (77%) were for children under 5 years of age. In 2009, the estimated number of hospitalizations with KD was 5447 (standard error [SE]=297), 4040 (SE=227) for children under 5 years of age.
More kids hospitalized with possible COVID-19 complication Officials said Last Wednesday that the number of children who have been hospitalized in New York City with symptoms consistent with a rare disease possibly linked to the coronavirus has nearly quadrupled to 64. Health officials said the illness has features of Kawasaki disease, a serious illness previously noted in children with COVID-19 in the United Kingdom.
“A pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, recently reported by authorities in the United Kingdom, is also being observed among children and young adults in New York City and elsewhere in the United States,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner of the New York City Health Department’s Division of Disease Control, in a public letter to colleagues this week.
According to Daskalakis, symptoms vary among the children depending on which organ system is affected, but “include features of Kawasaki disease or features of shock.” All of the children experienced a persistent fever, more than half reported rash, abdominal pain, vomiting or diarrhea, and less than half experienced respiratory symptoms. He added, however, that “the full spectrum of disease is not yet known.” Kawasaki disease is associated with fever, skin rashes, and swelling of glands, and in severe cases, it can inflame blood vessels within the heart. Dr. Dyan Hes, a pediatrician in New York City, told CBS News last week that she was “not surprised” by the U.K. report showing a possible link between COVID-19 and Kawasaki. According to Hes, children can sometimes develop the disease after a bout with the common cold, which is caused by a different variety of bug in the coronavirus family.
Coronavirus “can become very severe” in kids, despite most showing milder symptoms.
She added that Kawasaki could pop up “weeks to months later” after experiencing some kind of viral infection or “multiple viral infections.” The cases reported in New York involved children who were hospitalized between April 17 and May 1 with “illnesses compatible with” a form of Kawasaki or shock, according to the New York City Health Department. More than half of the children required blood pressure support, and five required mechanical ventilation. Those who were admitted to pediatric intensive care units required cardiac and/or respiratory support, according to the health department. On Tuesday, it was reported that four of the 15 children tested positive for the coronavirus. Ten tested negative, and one was initially indeterminate and then negative. Serology testing showed that six patients with negative results had coronavirus antibodies in their blood, suggesting they had been previously infected. Regardless of a coronavirus test result, the health department has urged doctors with patients under 21 years old who have symptoms consistent with Kawasaki to immediately report those suspected cases to the health department. Doctors are also instructed to immediately refer such patients to a “specialist in pediatric infectious disease, rheumatology, and/or critical care.” Only severe cases may have been recognized so far, according to the health department. Daskalakis wrote that “early diagnosis and treatment of patients meeting full or partial criteria for Kawasaki disease is critical to preventing end-organ damage and other long-term complications.” “We are learning that even though children are by and large mildly affected when it comes to COVID-19 that there can be situations that they are more severely affected,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot said Tuesday. “And thank God in this situation we haven’t had any children who have died with this Kawasaki or kawasaki-like illness.”
Its true the Great Depression began around 1929 and lasted almost a decade, was a massive economic downturn, worldwide. The implications of the largest economic depression in the 20th century, included unemployment on an unprecedented scale. Similar to the 30 million we have unemployed at the present time and the present unemployment having running parallels of 15%.
Which was caused by the New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country. Research showed that by March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections.
The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast. The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models of the outbreak by infectious disease experts. “We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. The central role of New York’s outbreak shows that decisions made by state and federal officials — including waiting to impose distancing measures and to limit international flights — helped shape the trajectory of the outbreak and allowed it to grow in the rest of the country.
The city joins other densely populated urban hot spots around the world that rely on public transportation to get around. Starting with Wuhan, China, and then Milan, that have become vectors for the virus’s spread. Travel from other American cities also sparked infections across the country, including from an early outbreak centered in the Seattle area that seeded infections in more than a dozen states, researchers say. Even if New York had managed to slow the virus, it probably would have continued to spread from elsewhere, they say. But the Seattle outbreak proved to be a squall before the larger storm gathering in New York, where, at the end of February, thousands of infected people packed trains and restaurants, thronged tourist attractions and passed through its three major airports. During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, the data suggest, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country. Acting earlier would most likely have blunted the virus’s march across the country, researchers say. “It means that we missed the boat early on, and the vast majority in this country is coming from domestic spread,” said Kristian Andersen, a professor in the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research.
“I keep hearing that it’s somebody else’s fault. That’s not true.
It’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our own fault.”
A lack of testing obscured the true extent of the outbreak for months, and officials acted on incomplete and sometimes conflicting information. The enormous growth of New York’s outbreak partly reflects its volume of international visitors, especially from Europe, where most of its infections came from. Dani Lever, communications director for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized federal authorities, describing an “enormous failure by the federal government to leave New York and the East Coast exposed to flights from Europe, while at the same time instilling a false sense of security by telling the State of New York that we had no Covid-19 cases throughout the entire month of February.” A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said that Mr. Trump had acted quickly. The president blocked most visitors from Europe starting on March 13, more than a month after he restricted travel from China. “Just as he acted early on to cut off travel from the source of the virus, President Trump was advised by his health and infectious disease experts that he should cut off travel from Europe — an action he took decisively without delay to save lives while Democrats and the media criticized him and the global health community still did not fully comprehend the level of transmission or spread,” Mr. Deere said. Now that infections are dispersed around the country, travel from New York
is no longer a main factor shaping the progression of the epidemic, researchers said. As states around the nation begin to relax their restrictions, the findings demonstrate that it is difficult,
if not impossible, to prevent those actions from affecting the rest of the nation.
Geneticists have analyzed and shared more than 2,000 samples of the virus from infected people. As the virus infects new people and replicates, it picks up mutations along the way. These mutations typically do not change the behavior of the virus, but they can provide a signature of a virus’s origin. Most samples taken in Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, Idaho, Wisconsin and many other states carry distinct mutations that can be traced back to viruses introduced into New York. Over all, Dr. Grubaugh estimated, viruses spreading from New York account for 60 to 65 percent of the infections identified across the country. Other scientists said that they would like to see more samples before calculating precise figures. But they agreed that New York’s prominence in seeding the national spread appears to have begun in early March, two weeks before stay-at-home orders were put in place. “New York acted as the Grand Central Station for this virus, with the opportunity to move from there in so many directions, to so many places,” said David Engelthaler, head of the infectious disease branch of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona.
The most commonly detected viruses tied to New York have a distinct genetic signature linking them to outbreaks in Europe. Those spreading from Washington State have a signature linking them directly to China. At this stage, scientists say, genetic fingerprints alone are not sufficient for pinpointing the source of the viruses. But travel patterns and case histories of early known cases support the idea, they said. “It is a combination, still, of what genomic epidemiology and shoe-leather epidemiology is going to tell us,”
Dr. Engelthaler said. Scientists modeling the progression of the disease nationally said the prominence of
New York as a national hub was broadly consistent with their findings, although the picture was still emerging. “I would say this is not surprising in a sense,” said Dr. Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston.
“The picture emerging is consistent with numerical models.”
Doctors keep discovering new ways the coronavirus attacks the body,
Earlier research by Dr. Vespignani showed just how rapidly, and invisibly, the outbreak exploded in New York. By March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections, his research group showed. New York and Washington State are not the only sources of the outbreak. Other large domestic hubs contributed to the spread, scientists believe, and a more diverse genetic mix is still seen in some places around the country, particularly in the Midwest and parts of the South. Even as domestic travel began to drive the outbreak, some infections were still seeded around the country by international travelers, geneticists said. It is possible, experts said, that some of the virus samples attributed to New York may have instead been seeded in other cities by direct flights from Europe, or from travelers laying over in New York before traveling elsewhere. For that reason, some scientists said they would like to see more samples before linking the majority of infections in the United States to New York. “I think that’s probably the story line that’s going to emerge, but I’d like to see more data,” said Harm van Bakel,
a geneticist at Mount Sinai in New York.
A New York Times analysis of travel data supports the idea that the chains of infection originated in New York, experts said. The number of cases across the country was closely related to how many travelers each place received from New York in early March, based on anonymized cellphone tracking data from Cuebiq, a data intelligence company. “It looks like most of the domestic spread is basically people traveling out from New York,” said Dr. Kari Stefansson, founder and chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a leading genome analysis firm based in Reykjavik, Iceland. Last week, Dr. Andersen of Scripps Research and other scientists analyzing the outbreak in New Orleans reported that all of the samples taken from New Orleans were from the line linked back to New York. The virus swept through the area in March and has killed more than 1,000 people.
“You can figure out, with travel patterns, that the most likely thing to have happened is those came into New Orleans directly from New York,” Dr. Grubaugh said. Josh Holder,
Michael Crowley and Derek Watkins contributed reporting.
Special Note: Medic Lauren Leander stood in front of protesters in a face mask and scrubs, with her arms crossed as a man waved a flag in front of her face. Leander is an ICU nurse at Banner-University Medical Center-Phoenix, where she — volunteered to work in the hospital’s coronavirus overflow unit. Leander and a few other nurses attended the rally and soon were targeted by protesters despite their silence. On her day off from caring for patients in the Banner Health COVID-19 unit, intensive care unit nurse Lauren Leander went to the Arizona State Capitol to meet those protesting the state’s stay-at-home order.
Newt Gingrich: Coronavirus modeling – how our hysterical culture led to
this reaction to pandemic.
US News & World Report: Health — A Day in the Life of an ICU Nurse
During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
If People Are Staying Home, Why Is Coronavirus Still Spreading?
Deadliest infectious diseases in the world, ranked.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) – Should you take Vitamin D and Vitamin C?
#coronavirus #covid19 #covid_19 Link to Get Vitamin D:
Coronavirus | COVID-19 YouTube Video Playlist:
Does colder temperature make you more prone to getting a cold Or COVID-19?
Most health experts agree that when it’s cold, people spend more time indoors and in close contact with other people, and this likely increases the spread of germs. Also, experts believe that our immune system may be more active when our body is warmer, as in during the summer months.
Back in 2007, there was this study…
In this one particular study looking at the spread of the influenza virus, they put guinea pigs together in a chamber and carried out different environmental experiments on them.
They found that low relative humidities of 20%–35% were most favorable for infection, while the transmission was completely blocked at high humidity of 80%. They also found that when guinea pigs were kept at 5 °C, transmission occurred with greater frequency than at 20 °C, while at 30 °C, no transmission was detected.
The authors concluded that low relative humidities produced by indoor heating and cold temperatures favored the spread of the influenza virus. I also want to add, that cold weather, by itself, can cause a runny nose without necessarily having a cold, and this allows for the virus so be carried in those secretions, which probably facilitates transmission. 40% of common colds are caused by rhinoviruses. The second most common cause of cold is the coronavirus, the normal one, not this novel coronavirus, aka SARS-CoV-2. Its been shown that the rhinovirus reproduces more quickly at cooler temperatures means you might catch a cold more quickly if you’re chilly.
And this probably applies to the coronavirus as well.
It’s likely that with the combination of all of these 5 factors, meaning, cooler temp, lower humidity, people staying indoors more often in winter months, cold weather causing runny noses and our immune system is more active when it’s warmer, these combinations of factors likely explain why colds, flu,, and COVID-19 are more likely to cause infections in the winter months. But there is likely a 6th factor as well. And that is vitamin D. Our bodies don’t normally make vitamin D unless we get sunlight. In the winter months, for most of us in this world, we don’t get enough sunlight to make enough vitamin D. Unless you live in a warm climate, then maybe you are the exception. So if you aren’t getting enough sunlight in the winter months, that means you have to get enough vitamin D in your diet. And if you don’t do that, you will have low vitamin D levels.
Vitamin D helps regulate or Calcium levels and is important for bone and muscle health. It also plays a role in regulating our immune system, but its exact role is not known. Why is this important when it comes to the common cold, flu, and perhaps with this novel the coronavirus that’s causing COVID-19? Well, vitamin D doesn’t affect these viruses themselves. Instead, it affects our immune systems. So what is my recommendation for taking Vitamin D? The best thing to do is check with your doctor to see if you might have low vitamin D, and if it is low, you’ll def need to get more vitamin D, especially during the winter months.
Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin that is vital to the function of white blood cells that help to fight infections, and overall immune system health. Vitamin C is also important for iron absorption, and being deficient in iron can make you more vulnerable to infections in general. The normal, recommended daily intake of vitamin C for adults from the diet and/or supplements is 75 to 120 mg. You can get about 80 to 90 mg from a cup of orange juice or sliced orange, or even more from kiwi fruit, or a cup of sweet peppers.
Zinc has become one of the most popular suggestions for reducing symptoms of coronavirus. Some studies showed that zinc reduces the duration of a cold by half, while others showed no effect. Another study found that the type of zinc taken determined the result—zinc gluconate lozenges that provided 13.3 milligrams (mg) of zinc lessened the duration of colds, but zinc acetate lozenges that provided 5 mg or 11.5 mg of zinc did not. Note: Please watch the whole video to get the proper details, for the character limitation of the youtube description, I couldn’t provide the whole details,
so I suggest you watch the whole video. Dr. Mike Hansen, M.D. Internal Medicine |
Pulmonary Disease | Critical Care Medicine
Website: https://doctormikehansen.com/
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