Doctor Is In by Dr. Adil Manzoor OP/ED
COVID-19 is the gift that just keeps on giving. For real, every day, a new study comes out, somehow worse than the previous one, showing just how much damage the virus has wreaked. It’s getting tiring now, I know, but we’re not about to stop talking about it.
On today’s episode of COVID-19 bad news, there’s an emerging study about the effect of COVID on birthdays. I don’t want to bore you with the full details, but apparently, households with a birthday had 8.6 more diagnoses per 10,000 individuals than households without a birthday. The diagnoses increase to 15.8 with children. There’s more. Households in areas of high community transmission had a 31% increase in COVID-19 diagnoses compared to areas with low community transmission.
The summary of all of that is – more birthdays equal more COVID cases, especially in children. Of course, there are many more factors that come into play here, but one thing we are certain of is that COVID rears its ugly heads more during birthdays.
It’s actually not hard to imagine why. I mean, birthday gatherings aren’t exactly the most COVID-friendly occasions with all of the shouting and hugging. In fact, all gatherings generally are this way. But the fact that parents are becoming warier and warier of all celebrations for their kids is indicative of the obvious fact that COVID has instilled a level of fear in us that we really shouldn’t be dealing with.
Now, children can’t have the birthdays they deserve. Take me back to the days when kids went sleepless for days looking forward to their birthdays with their friends and family members. When all parents had to worry about is cleaning after the party and not whether their kids may have contracted one of the worst viruses to ever surface on the planet.
This fear is even more heightened among parents living in regions with low vaccinations. It was only some weeks back that kids got approval from the CDC to take the vaccine, and even now not all kids can take the vaccine. But there’s also the fact that many parents are reluctant to let their kids take the vaccine, considering the relatively high rate of survival among the kids that get the virus. The implication of all of these is that there will always be this lingering fear, at least for the foreseeable future, among parents in these regions about letting their kids participate in birthdays and similar events.
I don’t want to run in circles here. The problem is clear. The solution? I’m clueless at this point. Until a few weeks back, I was quite confident in the ability of our vaccines to marshal the virus and put an end to it for good. Then, the Delta variant came, and things got even more complicated. Now, there are discussions about a third dose when only 51% of the population has been fully vaccinated. There is a whole world of things that could go wrong before we get the required mark for herd immunity, and if recent trends are anything to go by, luck is firmly on the virus’ side.
Notwithstanding, we can still play our parts in ensuring we limit the havoc this virus will cause.
Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Let’s save our birthdays!
This article was written by Dr. Adil Manzoor DO, a Board Certified Internist & Board Eligible Pediatrician, who works as a Hospitalist, and Emergency Room Physician. He is also the current President of Garden State Street Medicine, a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to provide free preventive and acute urgent care services for the homeless. He is also the co-founder of his own unique medical practice Mobile Medicine NJ.
References
· https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-19-the-worst-birthday-gift
