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According to the article, this is what we know:
Children: Teenagers should not be lumped together with children under 5. Teenagers seem to shed the virus at a similar rate to adults. It is not clear that younger children do this.
However, “A recently published report from a Georgia sleep-away camp shows how quickly the virus can spread among kids. The camp had to be closed within 10 days of starting its orientation for camp staffers, because within days of children arriving, kids and staff started getting sick. (The campers ranged in age from 6 to 19.) The camp did not require campers to wear face masks.”
“…a small proportion of children infected with Covid-19 go on to develop a condition where multiple organs come under attack from their own immune system. Called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or MIS-C, this condition seems to occur about two to four weeks after Covid-19 infection. Most children who develop this syndrome recover.”
Some settings are safer than others: There is a threshold level of virus that you need to be exposed to in order to become infected.
“Essentially, the closer you are to someone infectious and the longer you’re in contact with them, the more likely you are to contract the virus, which helps explain why so much transmission occurs within households. Being indoors is worse, particularly in rooms without sufficient ventilation; the more air flow, the faster the virus gets diluted. Everyday face coverings reduce the amount of virus projected, but aren’t total blockades.”
People can be contagious before they become sick and some people remain asymptomatic but still shed the virus. People who continue to test positive for the virus after they have been ill, may not be contagious at that point.
Lingering effects of the virus in some people: ‘Long-haulers’ don’t feel like they’ve recovered:
“Unusually sticky blood can clog vessels on the way to the heart and inside the brain and lungs of infected people, causing heart attacks, strokes, and deadly pulmonary embolisms. There are growing worries that these and other health effects will be long-lasting...”
Vaccine development: “…an extraordinary amount of progress toward Covid-19 vaccines has been made, in record time. …That means vaccination with fully approved vaccines could begin as soon as about a year after the discovery of the new virus. This constitutes a revolution in vaccine development.”
How many have been infected? “There have been 21 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 around the world, and 5.3 million in the United States. Far more people than that have actually had the virus.
“Problems with testing, and its limited availability, have contributed to that gap, as has the fact that some people have such mild or no symptoms that they don’t know they’re infected. But researchers don’t know just how big of a gulf they’re dealing with — how much spread they’ve missed.”
Mutations occur relatively infrequently compared to other viruses and have been inconsequential so far.
The virus on surfaces (“fomites”) does not seem to play a major role in transmission, but frequent hand washing and cleaning of surfaces is still recommended.
Reinfection with covid-19: It appears that having the virus gives some immunity to it, but it is not known how long that will last. “Some scientists have theorized that on subsequent infections, immune systems might mount quicker responses to Covid-19, leading to milder infections. If that’s true, the SARS-CoV-2 virus might transition into a less daunting threat over time. But it’s still a big unknown…”“
It’s not clear why some people get really sick, and some don’t
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Read the full article to see illustrations and links to more information about Covid-19.
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