And Now For Some Good News
Yes, there are reasons to be hopeful in the midst of all the stress and fear.
This is the free edition of Is My Kid the Asshole?, a newsletter from science journalist, professional speaker and author Melinda Wenner Moyer, which you can read more about here. If you like it, please subscribe and/or share this post with someone else who would too.
First things first: Through January, I’m running a 30% off sale for one year on new paid subscriptions! In the spirit of the New Year, and everyone’s lives being totally upended, I thought a sale would be welcome. With a paid subscription, you’ll receive special posts that are reserved for paying subscribers, you’ll get to join my weekly discussion threads (which have been a godsend to me during this wave!), and you’ll be able to search the newsletter archives. Last, but certainly not least, you’ll be supporting my independent reporting, which is greatly, greatly appreciated.
All week, I’ve been hearing from you that last week’s newsletter really resonated — that I put into words what many of you were feeling, but couldn’t elucidate. A magazine editor reached out to me yesterday and described it as a mix of “primal scream and practical wisdom,” and my husband said that maybe I should change the newsletter’s tagline to “evidence-based ranting.”
Essentially, what I was trying to communicate to you last week was: If you’re struggling, you’re not alone, and you’re definitely not crazy. It’s an empirically difficult time.
But today I want to take a different, rosier tack. I want to share some of the reasons we should feel hopeful, and some of the evidence that we’ve actually come a long way since March 2020. (I know, I know; my newsletter a few weeks ago was titled “It Feels Like March 2020 Again,” but thankfully, in reality, it’s not March 2020 again.)
Vaccines really are working.
Given our collective experience with other childhood vaccines, which have made huge dents in the prevalence of many terrible diseases, it’s understandable that you might feel underwhelmed by the performance of Covid-19 vaccines right now. Yes, vaccinated people are catching Omicron. But Covid-19 vaccines were designed to prevent severe disease and death, and you know what? They’re truly doing a bang-up job of that. Here’s a graph showing hospitalizations of vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals in New York City through December 19 (thanks to Katelyn Jetelina for sharing this in her newsletter last week):
Boosters likely help even more. In a study published in the journal Cell last week, researchers found that antibodies in the blood of people who’d received Moderna or Pfizer boosters were very effective at killing coronavirus cells, much more so than the antibodies of people who’d simply received the two-dose vaccine series. Now, this doesn’t mean that people who’ve only gotten two doses are screwed, by any means (among other things, see above!). This study only looked at antibody responses, and there are other very important immune cells that become activated after vaccination (even just two doses), such as T cells, that, according to preliminary data, can effectively fight Omicron.
I think it’s important to point out, too, that there is a big difference between having an uncomfortable flu-like illness — and maybe feeling miserable and bed-ridden for a few days — and being admitted to the hospital or dying. When Omicron first began circulating in the U.S., the rumor was that if you were vaccinated, Omicron was “like having a bad cold.” So when people started reporting more unpleasant flu-like symptoms, some people understandably panicked — it’s not as mild as people said! It’s true: if you catch Omicron, you might feel quite sick (or, you might not). But the data suggest that, in the vast vast majority of cases, if you’re vaccinated, you will get better, you won’t need to be admitted to the hospital, and you’re not going to die. And that’s something to celebrate, because we certainly couldn’t say this in March 2020.
One important caveat: There are many, many people around the world who can’t get vaccinated, and there are also vaccinated individuals who are not protected as well as others due to underlying conditions. So this good news about the vaccine doesn’t apply to everyone. It is not a panacea. But it is something.
Most kids — even unvaccinated kids — with Omicron do OK.
I have lots of friends with kids under the age of 5 right now, and they’re understandably terrified. I was afraid before my kids got vaccinated, too. But I want to share some reassuring info.
Scary numbers are circulating regarding kids and Omicron right now. For instance, pediatric hospitalizations are at their highest rate right now compared to any prior point in the pandemic. But before you panic, consider how these hospitalizations are being tallied and what they mean.
First, many of the kids being counted in this tally are not kids who are so sick with Covid-19 that they need to be hospitalized. Many of these children are hospitalized for other reasons, are tested for Covid-19, and are found to be positive (perhaps with very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all). The CDC includes in this count children who have been hospitalized for any reason and who also tested positive for Covid-19 within 14 days of their hospital stay. Given how contagious Omicron is, and how quickly it’s spreading, it isn’t all that surprising that tons of kids who have been in the hospital for other health issues have also, coincidentally, tested positive for Omicron.
This doesn’t mean that kids who were hospitalized with Covid-19, but not for Covid-19, don’t matter. We need more data to understand how the virus is affecting children, including, if not especially, those who have had to be hospitalized recently for other reasons. A Covid infection on top of the stress and trauma of a recent hospital stay could be devastating, so if kids are already sick or injured, we should be more concerned about the fact that they’re catching Covid, not less. I’ll highlight the incredibly tone-deaf comments of CDC director Rochelle Walensky, who said on Good Morning America earlier this week that it was “encouraging” that most deaths from Omicron were occurring in “people who were unwell to begin with.” As if being unwell somehow makes someone’s life less valuable.
A few more tidbits that are reassuring: Hospitalizations among kids and teens are still lower than that of any other age group, and they account for less than five percent of new daily hospital admissions, on average. Here’s an excerpt from a recent New York Times story (that I didn’t write!) that’s worth a read:
Dr. Rubin said the real-time data he had been analyzing, as a lead investigator with the PolicyLab Covid-19 forecasting model, indicated that in southwest Pennsylvania, where Omicron dominates, the proportion of pediatric admissions requiring intensive care services had dropped by half since early fall, and has continued to fall in the last month.
And the rate of pediatric Covid admissions in much of the country was still below the peak of what is typically seen with the seasonal flu, he added.
Some of the recent increase, he said, was most likely tied to delays in seeking medical care for children as infections soared again, combined with the spread of wintertime viruses that can complicate the health of medically fragile children and lead to hospitalization.
“While we are definitely seeing more transmission among children, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, I think we have to be very careful to avoid sending the message that Omicron poses an unusual risk to kids,” Dr. Rubin said.
I want to be clear that I’m not saying that unvaccinated kids aren’t at any risk during this wave. Some kids are getting quite sick (although it’s a small percentage — states are reporting that between 0.1% and 1.6% of childhood Covid cases end in hospitalization). And some kids are at a much higher risk than others. What I am saying is that when you’re hearing scary numbers being thrown around, it’s important to understand what they mean — and perhaps more importantly, what they don’t mean.
We don’t yet know the risks for Long Covid with Omicron, but overall, rates appear lower than we once thought, vaccination reduces the risk, and data suggest kids are likely low risk, too.
Long Covid is awful. I have interviewed dozens of people suffering with it, and it truly upends their lives. We need to be taking long Covid very, very seriously — and we need a hell of a lot more studies on how and why it develops and how best to treat it. But as scientists continue to study and understand it, some are finding that rates of long Covid are far lower than they were first estimated to be, which is another small thing to celebrate.
What about Omicron and long Covid, though? Omicron might, overall, be milder than Delta and earlier variants, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less likely than other variants to cause persistent symptoms. Many cases of long Covid developed after mild infections. Still, recent published research suggests that being fully vaccinated reduces an adult’s risk for developing lingering symptoms after Covid by about half — from 11 percent to 5 percent. Boosting might reduce this risk even further. This is good news, too.
As for kids, we need more data. One UK study found that 7.4 percent of 2-to-11-year-olds experienced lingering symptoms 12 weeks after having Covid (although of course, as any parent knows, it’s hard to interpret the self-reports of young kids). A more recent study is more reassuring, finding that only 1.8 percent of school-aged children with Covid had symptoms lasting at least 56 days. Importantly, too, 0.9 percent of kids who’d never had Covid also reported persistent symptoms after 56 days — so some (maybe even half?) of that 1.8 percent of kids who reported post-Covid symptoms probably did not have Covid-19 to blame. Again: We don’t have enough research on kids and long-term outcomes, but the preliminary data we do have are somewhat reassuring, in that long Covid in kids seems rare. (This said, we also need more info on the potential link between Covid-19 and diabetes.)
There’s now less shame associated with catching Covid-19.
It’s always been a tricky line to walk. We know there are steps we can take to reduce our risk for catching (and spreading) Covid-19, and some of us are more inclined to take these steps than others. So it’s not surprising that these choices have become moralized. Many people feel that taking precautions is a moral imperative — and that eschewing them is a moral failure. Yet at the same time, it’s unfair to blame people for catching an extremely contagious disease.
Finally, it seems that this message is sinking in. I’ve been hearing from friends with Omicron who say they feel they can share the news of their infections, without fear of being judged. We should absolutely be supporting our friends and community members when they are sick. Not tut-tutting them.
Of course, we still have a long way to go. Virginia Sole-Smith wrote an excellent newsletter today about how dangerous it is to blame others for their health. She shares examples of how this is still happening with Covid-19 and talks about what we need to do to make a productive shift. So this problem isn’t, by any means, solved. But it does, slowly, seem to be moving in the right direction. And that feels like yet another win.
TONIGHT! At 7pm ET, I’m doing a free virtual event with the Parents League of New York, talking about my book. Register here!
I’m also a guest this week on the What Fresh Hell podcast, which was so fun to record. Listen here, or on Spotify or Apple podcasts.