[akiddoc]

Thankfully it does not seem to impact babies much.

I hope you are an prescient oracle.  I would have said "yet seem".

Sorry, I know it borders on illegal on this board to suggest anything remotely optimistic. Not one baby in CA has died from the virus.  And while I may have missed it, I haven’t seen stories indicating hospitalization or any other serious consequence from the virus.  I believe I’m safe in saying that the overwhelming weight of evidence today is the virus does not impact very young kids.

Edit - in fact no one under 17 has died in Ca from the virus.

I don't think you understand my concern.  It is not that tomorrow's new infections will need hospitalization for the initial course of the disease.  It is that yesterday's infections, like rheumatic fever, will impact those infected throughout their lives.   We still can't know.

Yes, I understand your concern.  And you’re right as I’ve said repeatedly there are a lot of unknown unknowns. I choose to take an optimistic approach in moving forward. The fact that kids don’t seem to be impacted from a commonsense standpoint at least suggests that perhaps they won’t have long-term impact as well. Which I know we all hope to be the case. Obviously I’m not suggesting that we don’t take precautions for anyone – including babies.

There is no particular reason to think that babies will have any more long term effects from this Coronavirus than from the other common Coronaviruses. And it is true that young children are not getting very sick for the most part when they catch this virus. There are deaths - but the stats I have seen show that 80% of Pediatric deaths have come in children with pre-existing severe medical issues. Most children do not have those issues. 

Rheumatic fever is a very rare disease that occurs after a bacterial infection - with Group A Streptococcus - and I have seen it exactly once in my entire career. 

I mentioned above that baseline inflammation may have a lot to do with how one fares with this infection. Here is a paper speculating about that issue:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6501/256

[akiddoc]

Thankfully it does not seem to impact babies much.

I hope you are an prescient oracle.  I would have said "yet seem".

Sorry, I know it borders on illegal on this board to suggest anything remotely optimistic. Not one baby in CA has died from the virus.  And while I may have missed it, I haven’t seen stories indicating hospitalization or any other serious consequence from the virus.  I believe I’m safe in saying that the overwhelming weight of evidence today is the virus does not impact very young kids.

Edit - in fact no one under 17 has died in Ca from the virus.

I don't think you understand my concern.  It is not that tomorrow's new infections will need hospitalization for the initial course of the disease.  It is that yesterday's infections, like rheumatic fever, will impact those infected throughout their lives.   We still can't know.

Yes, I understand your concern.  And you’re right as I’ve said repeatedly there are a lot of unknown unknowns. I choose to take an optimistic approach in moving forward. The fact that kids don’t seem to be impacted from a commonsense standpoint at least suggests that perhaps they won’t have long-term impact as well. Which I know we all hope to be the case. Obviously I’m not suggesting that we don’t take precautions for anyone – including babies.

There is no particular reason to think that babies will have any more long term effects from this Coronavirus than from the other common Coronaviruses. And it is true that young children are not getting very sick for the most part when they catch this virus. There are deaths - but the stats I have seen show that 80% of Pediatric deaths have come in children with pre-existing severe medical issues. Most children do not have those issues. 

Rheumatic fever is a very rare disease that occurs after a bacterial infection - with Group A Streptococcus - and I have seen it exactly once in my entire career. 

I mentioned above that baseline inflammation may have a lot to do with how one fares with this infection. Here is a paper speculating about that issue:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6501/256