U.S. scientists scramble to study life-threatening syndrome in kids linked to coronavirus

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: Reuters

CHICAGO, May 7 (Reuters) - U.S. scientists are working to understand a rare, life-threatening inflammatory syndrome in children associated with exposure to the new coronavirus by quickly assembling clinical trials and patient registries.

Cases were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain, but now doctors in the United States are seeing clusters of kids with the disorder, which can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries.

This emerging syndrome, which may occur days to weeks after a COVID-19 illness, reflects the surprising ways that this entirely new coronavirus infects and sickens its human hosts.

At least one child in Britain has died. No children are believed to have died so far in the United States, "but that could change," said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Children's Hospital Colorado who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious disease.



Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/us-scientists-scramble-to-study-life-threatening-syndrome-in-kids-linked-to-coronavirus/ar-BB13JC1j?li=BBnbfcL

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Important stuff, but article is WRONG: Apr6: "3 deaths were reported among the pediatric cases"

At least 3 children have died. Who knows how much organ damage the survivors ware living with.

I do wish that US media would not be so sloppy and get basic facts right. As of April 6, at least three children had died of Covid-19. In the month since, how many?

Three deaths were reported among the pediatric cases included in this analysis.

I found it as top hit of the most basic search: "child covid deaths US"

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914e4.htm

So, why does MSN quote a doctor who contradicts the CDC without clarifying first?

Further on, the MSN article contradicts itself:

"It's a very scary illness," said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

Topol pointed to eight cases described in The Lancet on Wednesday in which one child developed an aneurysm and another died from stroke.

[Phoenix61]

2. The article is discussing a specific syndrome

caused by the virus not the initial infection.

[BusyBeingBest]

3. I think maybe they're talking about deaths from the specific syndrome

they're referencing, not coronavirus in general.

[Igel]

4. I interpret the article a bit differently.

Although I'll say right up front I find the media to be annoying, foolish, and manipulative and sometimes find myself writing long rants trashing an article only to delete it because not just a bit over the top but sort of a pole vault over a sidewalk crack.

I take the article to be saying that no kids are known to have died from this syndrome in the US.

The CDC certainly has reported pediatric deaths, but the CDC hasn't disaggregated the data to let us say that any peds deaths were due to this syndrome. Which is all that the OP says--"no children are believed to have died so far".

It's a little hair-splitting, but the context is this particular syndrome. Kicking it up a level to just be COVID-19 makes it false. And kicking it even higher, to "from all cases" becomes obviously wrong.

I find that assuming people mean something and they assume what they say is true is a good heuristic. If it sounds like gibberish, there's still some sort of proposition in there that the speaker assumed was recoverable from the words, intonation, context, from something. (In other words, speech is an intentional act.) Sometimes it's false and manipulative. Sometimes it leads me to figure out what I know that they don't (or what they know that I don't). Sometimes I learn something, sometimes they're just wrong and in a few enlightening cases I've found that they interpreted something differently but the source is unexpectedly ambiguous.

In this case, I shift the meaning to the local context and it makes sense.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Thanks. It may be as you say, but certainly it could be more clearly and definitively written. . .nt