COVID-19: The medical case for children

Covid-19: The medical case for children

Edema Tosan

Have you ever wondered why children admitted to hospital get intravenous lines, IV and IV infusions right away and without any delay, especially when those children have been diagnosed with underlying fever, nausea/vomiting and decreased oral intakes?

This is unlike the case with the average adult hospital admission which takes longer and requires multiple assessments and consultations to determine if IV or IV infusion is/are warranted. The simple medical rationale is that the adult’s body mass is 65-70 made of water components at any given time. On the other hand, children’s body mass are 70-75% made up of water components.

And given that water; a universal solvent is vital for almost all bodily functions, it totally makes sense to be proactive to start IV therapy with children because if something is wrong with children at any level; whatever is wrong is assumed to be likely connected to water loss in some way or fashion. Addressing children’s water loss during illness therefore is very prudent and pragmatic

Water plays a major hemodynamic and thermodynamic bodily function; just like a 5-10 pounds car jack, with the aid of oil grease hydraulic components, lifts a 15000 pounds car 1-2 feet off the ground to change a flat tire. Children’s body-mass water components can be easily lost, displaced or depreciated by abnormalities like regular expiration, exercising, sweating, vomiting, dehydration, diarrhea e.t.c. In fact; at the threat of death, water gets pulled away from extremities (hands and legs) to more viable core vital organs like liver and kidney to sustain life like the energized bunny till this organ ceases to function. Hence, some people during extremities get to be pale, mottled and lifeless before and after the grim reaper take the last breath/heart beat. Our core vital organs have the abilities and capabilities to redirect back blood flow and energy away from extremities in last minute ditch survival efforts to keep us alive especially when the core organs haven’t ceased to function yet; and this is with or without brain communication.

By now most of you are wondering what has water components gat to do with Covid-19 effects on children and subsequently young adults? It is very simple, once again, if children’s body mass are made up of almost 80% water components, then anything that affects children has greater than a 50% chance that it has contributory water components elements. Imagine if you own a business and your entire business relies on a source 80% of the time, what would happen if that source’s flow is altered, reduced or deflated? The answer of course is that your business’ production and income projections will be negatively impacted. Imagine again, trying to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene and other hydrocarbon base supplies with no crude oil. Yes, it can be done with other 20th century scientific innovations but probably not as easily fixable like good old reliable black gold. All the above listed products are similarly 70-80% dependent on crude oil or reliable black gold resources.

So now that we have the 800 pound gorilla off our back, we now need to establish some proven basic scientific data to help us further comprehend this subject. Body immunity peaks at puberty and starts slowly (turtle-like) to decline afterwards. This decline can be hastened by recurrently poor diet, inactivity, co-morbidities, obesity, genetic predisposition, etc. Children’s immunity are more resilient than adults as the best years of one’s peak immunity averages between ages 5-10 years old; depending also on other factors of course. For healthy persons, throughout their life span, they don’t show significant body immunity depreciation until 60 years old. 50-100 years ago, that decline was mostly noticeable between 60-65 years old. Our body immunity’s T-cell functionality response depreciates with age – taking longer (delay) to act and to protect our body from foreign invader (bacteria, viruses, parasites, e.t.c). Actual T-cell numbers stay almost the same for either children or older adults. But in older adults, T-cell functionality response depreciates further especially when other poor habits and co-morbidities are involved, like excessive drinking, smoking, poor nutrition and obesity.

Furthermore, our body’s macrophage immunity cells response that are naturally designed to attack, digest, neutralize and excrete lazed antigen/foreign invaders also depreciates with age and as such takes longer to do its job. In layman terms, think about when a child is sick from school and the child is started on antibiotics at the doctor’s office same day and the same child has enough energy and is almost ready to go back to school same day. “Of course this child must really love school.” Most children don’t really skip a bite when sick unless if some structural damage or illness conditions like fractures are involved, and tend to be eager and ready to get back to their normal activities of daily living-like play dates/mates and missing their school pals. Most times when kids get sick their energy loss level is negligible unless in severe circumstances. Unlike adults, that usually require 1-3 days for the antibiotics to start showing positive outcomes, then adults also have low energy compared to children’s and thus requiring another 1-2days of rehabilitation to get back to some level of normal activities.

The rate of body metabolism is almost identical to the above. Metabolism slows down in our late thirties to mid forties. Children’s metabolic rates are 2-3 times higher than that of older adults. Hence children can consume 6000 plus daily calories and not gain weight if active. Children also have 1-2 degrees higher Celsius or Fahrenheit core body temperature compared to adults. Children at zero to one year old have a core body temperature that averages 37.5 or 99.5 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit respectively. At 2-5 years old, the same Children’s core body temperature drops to 37.2 or 98.9 degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit respectively. In comparison, adult and older adults average core body temperature drops to 36.1 or 98.0 degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit respectively. This stark difference between adults and children is one of the main reasons why IV hydration is automatic when children get admitted to hospitals or the doctor’s office. Remember from chemistry classes; the by-product of most heat/high temperature experiments is/are steam=water lost which entails ultimately body mass water components lost. A High metabolic rate also equates to water lost as by-products of energy production also compounded by high metabolic activities like running or fighting an infection.

In other words, consider this; an average child has 37.2 or 98.5 degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit respectively and it gets up exponentially when children’s higher metabolic rates, along with peak children’s higher body immunity and children’s highest natural infection resiliency add up during active infection to the overall equation. Maybe 1-2 degrees added to the normal children’s 37.2 and 98.5 degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit respectively negates or mitigates Covid-19 proliferation in children. Keep in mind this only makes sense because high metabolism generates heat, so is actively high immunity during infection and active infections. A combination of some or all of the above correlates to weakening or the elimination of Covid-19 replication/multiplication severity; especially when the children are not sustainably exposed to Covid-19’s virulent confined environments for longer hours like adults working in such confined environments/jobs all day (8-12yrs exposure).

Relevant to all of the above then is the fact that a child that is exposed to Covid-19 (at present, past and future) regardless of outcome is likely a carrier that can transmit Covid-19 to others, and mostly susceptible adults at that. This transmission can still be carried through irrespective of whether the child has fully or partially recovered within a certain time frame. This transmission is initiated from the incubation to convalescent stages of the Covid/Corona family lineage. A pragmatic summative prediction going forward is that this covid bug snuck in between the 2018-2019 flu season undetected and eventually gained traction by January 2020. Covid-19 is behaving like a smart phone or artificial intelligence that continues rewriting its decimating code to create more chaos and wreck maximum havoc in the history books by constantly moving the goal posts. Covid-19 has figured out that humans are indeed a stupid bunch of narrow minded organism – not doing or refusing to do the correct and simple things like social isolation, distancing, correct and effective PPE utilization, contact tracing, hand washing and allowing medical science to guide our countermeasures in the form of a proper Covid policy rather than misguided political misinformation and misdirection.

If we continue at the current pace and don’t adapt to humble Covid presences and its underlying Mother Nature’s probable corrective means to address our man-made overpopulation conundrum; if we don’t evolve to change and progress to better coordinate and anticipate Covid’s next move or other incoming Covid-like viruses, and if we don’t adopt scientifically recommended countermeasures and police driving by science not political gut feeling, then we may not be able to bring this under control as quickly as we desire.

By the way I weigh in the 300s; do the math, I have a big gut but that doesn’t make me an expert in Covid, it only makes me an expert in food consumption; I am not even close to being an expert in food preparation. Covid’s path is almost bound to eventually overwhelm and figure out how to successfully increase children’s infection rate and definitely children’s death/mortality rates if we continue on with this current Stone Age approach. For your information; the dinosaurs didn’t or couldn’t adapt and no longer exist. One more other proven point; Ebola is more virulent and deadlier than Covid and yet we contained Ebola because we had a government that allowed the same medical science lead the way.

In summation; uncommon infecting cold/viruses like flu or Covid are more recurrent in cold weather than warm climates; and this is probably related to heat or higher temperatures effects that are categorically non-conducive to virus/viral replication/multiplication. So children’s 1-2 degrees higher core body temperature than adults in addition to children’s higher metabolic rate plus children’s higher body immunity peak along with children’s higher natural infection resiliency adds up to the only logical and rationale reason why children’s Covid infection rate is way lower than adults or 1.5-2 (children’s) to 8-8.5 (adults) infection ratio. Children’s higher core body temperature is probably why one of my favorite Count Dracula’s famous movie quotes (my paraphrase) goes like this; “vampires prefer young children’s blood  because children’s blood are pure and sweet, not as tainted, whammy and yummier “.