Wondering if the virus has mutated??
Coronavirus sickening young adults, children: We are learning 'that everyone is at risk'
When the coronavirus first started to spread from its origins in China earlier this year, the widely preached consensus was that it did not infect – or at least did not gravely harm – children and young adults. However, public health professionals are now raising the alarm that such information provided a dangerously false sense of security and invincibility.
"It is a misconception that children can't get critically ill. Children are getting sick, but they're not getting as severe cases," Dr. John Whyte, Chief Medical Officer at WebMD, told Fox News. "The highest rate of severe cases and deaths remains the elderly. But what we are learning is that everyone is at risk."
A study released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded that of the 4,226 coronavirus – officially termed COVID-19 – cases reported in the United States as of March 16, 29 percent were of those in the 20 to 44 age range. And in New York City, now the international epicenter of the pathogen, around half the confirmed infections were of individuals aged between 18 and 44...................
https://www.foxnews.com/health/why-young-adults-children-falling-ill-coronavirus
I think what has mutated is the perception of the virus.
No one said that people under fifty were immune. It just doesn't work that way.
Major risk factors were superficially assigned to an age group, likely because that age group will, statistically, have more people with the identified underlying conditions which contribute to mortality: heart disease, diabetes, pulmonary problems like COPD, and hypertension. So, in a broad way, people over 50 are more likely to suffer mortality as a result of the virus because statistically they are more likely to present with one or more of the complicating underlying medical conditions which contribute to mortality.
The disservice that sort of classification does is that those underlying medical conditions are in no wise confined to older people, and that younger people who have those conditions (and others which may place them at risk) are at risk of mortality as well.
In all the apocalyptic hoo-haw bantered about, the idea of milder cases got shunted off to the side, and the superficial treatment of age left the impression that young people would be somehow immune to the disease.
It simply isn't so.
Thirty of the current 65 confirmed cases in ND are under 50 years of age, the other 35 older. That's a pretty even split for catching the disease. Of those 65, 13 are hospitalized as of this writing, and I have no age breakdown on them. Additionally, 15 are noted to have recovered from the virus, and there is no age breakdown on them, either.
So far, none have died, and I hope it stays that way.
