WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 21: (L-R) White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and COVID-19 Response … [+]
Since the first case was documented three years ago, scientists and physicians made huge strides in understanding Covid-19, from the structure of the virus to how it spreads to how to treat it.
Scientists and researchers were able to map out the presence of spike proteins responsible for causing infections. Furthermore, the global community of scientists and pharma were able to use this information to successfully create a vaccine to combat Covid-19, which has been nothing short of life saving. According to CBS news, the vaccine has been responsible for saving nearly 20 million lives worldwide in its first year of adoption. Despite all the advances in science and technology, there remain important issues and questions that have no answers with respect to this deadly virus.
Long-term Medical Sequala Of Covid Infection
Many individuals experience medical symptoms long after their initial bout of Covid-19 infection. According to the World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins Medicine, post-Covid-19 condition, or long Covid, occurs when symptoms persist or return after a person initially becomes infected with the virus. Symptoms of long Covid can include fatigue, chest pain, cough, palpitations, difficulty concentrating, muscle pain, and changes in menstruation for females; to name a few.
Despite continuing research that seeks to clarify the progression and course of long Covid, many questions remain unanswered. For example, how many people who are initially infected will eventually experience long Covid? According to CDC data, more than 30% of patients hospitalized for Covid-19 will show symptoms of long Covid at 6 months after initial infection. However, there is little if any long term data on individuals not hospitalized and their rates of long Covid.
The many individuals who do not get tested for Covid-19 and fail to report sickness and disease are certainly not accounted for in any of these statistics. Furthermore, why is it that certain patients that are nearly asymptomatic when initially testing positive to Covid-19 can go on to develop long Covid, but some patients who are critically ill in the ICU with Covid-19 do not? Finally, researchers and scientists still do not have a firm grasp of how the different Covid-19 variants such as Omicron and Delta effect long Covid rates in the general population.
Mental Health Effects Of The Pandemic On Children
The pandemic forced social distancing measures back in 2020 in an attempt to curb the deadly transmission of the virus to the general public. Part of this translated to school closures for nearly 50 million public schools in the U.S for about a year and a half. Many studies have documented the detrimental mental and psychological toll the pandemic has played in the lives of countless children.
Social isolation coupled with decreased peer to peer interactions have led to increasing rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and violence in our children; according to an article in JAMA Pediatrics. According to reports from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide attempts by adolescents increased by 31% in 2020 when compared to 2019. In addition, emergency room visits for suicide attempts for girls aged 12-17 were 51% higher during a period in 2021 when compared to the same period in 2019.
Despite these troubling numbers for our children, we still do not know and understand the long-term ramifications of this data. How long will children experience depression and anxiety going forward after the pandemic? What will the rates of violence, bullying, and aggression be in school aged children 5 to 10 years from now? Will this impact children’s college matriculation rates? Every attempt should be made by physicians, teachers, counselors, and policy makers to support our children and provide them with resources necessary to address these issues proactively before mental health in youth deteriorates even further.
Academic Performance In Children
Given grade school children learned from the comfort of their homes for nearly 18 months, it is no surprise that academic grades and scores declined significantly. According to reports from PBS, math and reading scores declined in all 50 states amongst hundreds of thousands of fourth and eighth graders tested via the National Assessment of Education Progress. What’s worse, racial disparities and inequities were amplified in the test results. Black and Hispanic fourth graders performed at a lower level in math and reading when compared to White students in the same grade.
These results should raise all of our eyebrows and should force us to ask many more questions. Will these students that are lagging behind ever recover to a level that was present before the pandemic? Should remote learning be removed from educational pedagogy in grade schools? How do educators and policy makers decrease racial disparities in learning moving forward? All these questions are relevant and must be addressed in order for our children, the future leaders in society, to succeed at a high level.
Moving Forward
The common denominator for all of these issues is time. Only time and further scientific research will answer all of the questions above. Physicians, scientists, educators, and the general public must proactively address these issues and work to provide real answers to the questions surrounding Covid-19. This means practicing safe health measures such as hand washing and vaccination, offering widespread counseling to all children experiencing depression and anxiety, and providing educational resources to all children regardless of background to bolster academic performance.
