Dangerous brain abscesses spiked in US kids as COVID restrictions dropped
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
My GF works in pediatric oncology and an interesting thing she's found is as we get better at stopping kids from not dying quickly from brain cancer they see new progressions of cancer that had previously been exceedingly rare because patients would die before they could happen. Not really related to this article, but I found it interesting.
Last edited:
Upvote
87
(87
/
0)
Now we know the exact place that the magnetic superpowers are gained.
But in all seriousness this is as bad as it gets. Kids get life altering conditions, or die because an antivax community got really vocal. Its not even each childs parents fault. This problem is pointed directly at those who willfully spread misinformation, and demanded their reps be dissonant from the reality of a pandemic.
But in all seriousness this is as bad as it gets. Kids get life altering conditions, or die because an antivax community got really vocal. Its not even each childs parents fault. This problem is pointed directly at those who willfully spread misinformation, and demanded their reps be dissonant from the reality of a pandemic.
Upvote
-19
(34
/
-53)
Where exactly did you make the connection between the antivax advocates and the topic at hand here with a rise in brain abscesses?
Upvote
41
(55
/
-14)
Hardly.
And I say this based on 20 years in the medical field where training in preventing the spread of infectious diseases is CONSTANT.
Robust public health measures would have been effective ONLY if implemented within the first month of the outbreak.
But by the time China admitted they had a new disease, which was two months later, cases were already popping up all over the world among people who had never traveled internationally, meaning it was in the community.
The "stealth" nature of the disease - no symptoms in most - further hampered containment efforts. The fact is NO ONE ON EARTH had plans to combat a disease that killed a relative few, but infected most, with most never having symptoms.
What masking and all that actually did was prevent the OTHER diseases - the ones far more easy to contain - from spreading as usual. We've learned that Immunity isn't a consistent thing in humans, that it ebbs and flows depending on what's attacking the individual.
And that's ESPECIALLY true in children.
What's happening HERE is that kids were kept isolated for years, never were exposed to the normal germs that kids get exposed to at critical times in their immunological lives that help to build up immunity to them, and now are paying the price of having under-developed immune systems in a world where COVID is a new fact of life.
Like the common cold and flu, COVID will be with us forever going forward. You can NOT maintain strict isolation protocols in a functional society for very long or that society collapses. And eventually, you have to accept that a pandemic has become endemic, there's no real point to containment, so focusing on identifying and treating those who need it - just like we do for Measles and other airborne diseases.
It's fine if you want to piss all over politicians, but it was Trump who dropped the ball, not Biden. With a herculean effort, COVID MIGHT have been contained for a while longer in the U.S. had the CDC still had a pandemic response team (cut from the CDC in the 2017 budget) that could have implemented a more focused response instead of going all racist on the Chinese people.
SOMEONE would have had to say, "It's an endemic disease, we're going to have to live with it as is, so may as well go back to something more normal." That happened to be Biden, and he did that because that's what the CDC and the WHO recommend.
The long and short of it is that some kids will get sick when exposed to certain germs. A ton of kids were NOT exposed to certain germs for years. So we see a spike in those cases because they didn't get sick earlier. Under normal circumstances, over a decade or so, this isn't like to impact the ten year average number of cases in total.
If COVID has anything to do with it, then that's how life is now.
Upvote
32
(77
/
-45)
I never really understood why people cared so much about the mortality rate as if dying was the only bad outcome from getting sick.
Upvote
54
(62
/
-8)
Oh, that's easy.
Talking exclusively about mortality makes it easier to downplay the severity of a given condition. Downplaying the severity of a given condition makes it easier to claim that some intervention (vaccination, lockdowns, whatever) is overkill and we should just go back to the way things were. It's all about not wanting to go through the inconvenience, or wanting to make money.
It's motivated reasoning, in other words: there's a particular conclusion that the arguer wants the audience to reach, and focusing on that one specific thing rather than the broader picture helps with that aim.
Upvote
70
(73
/
-3)
Mungus the Unhyphenated
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I know that if properly diagnosed and treated, recovery can be fine. But damn, "brain" and "abscess" are two words I never want to see in direct proximity to each other...
Upvote
65
(65
/
0)
Similarly, some of the pediatric genetic diseases which killed very quickly have medications which can stave off the initial hit, but then you find what is the second system to fail from the same genetic defect. And it may not be ameliorated by the same intervention.
Upvote
29
(29
/
0)
Did they have COVID? Most likely, as approximately 75% of children are estimated to have contracted it.
Were they vaccinated? Not likely, as most authorizations didn't occur until after the uptick in abscesses.
Upvote
41
(44
/
-3)
For most of the period of high abscesses, including the peak, kids could be vaccinated and had likely had COVID months to a year earlier. It doesn’t seem to be a direct effect of COVID that’s doing this.
Upvote
-5
(7
/
-12)
The first RSV vaccine was only approved less than a month ago, and then only for the elderly. It’s not just antivaxxers who aren’t giving their kids the RSV vaccine, it’s everyone.
Upvote
20
(20
/
0)
It's a quick and relatively unambiguous metric, that's hard to dismiss -- 'dead' vs 'alive' is a pretty binary classification. "Bad outcome" is a lot fuzzier, a lot more subjective, and often harder to pin down.
Upvote
36
(36
/
0)
True for mass shootings too.
I think a lot of it is around ease of statistics and the fact that long term bad outcomes aren't always obvious the day the news story is written around the deaths.
Upvote
28
(28
/
0)
Removing Masks Becomes the First Bipartisan Activity of Biden’s Washington (Published 2021)
After the C.D.C. updated its mask guidance for vaccinated people, President Biden urged Americans to get along as things maybe, possibly start to return to normal.
Truly bipartisan leadership.
I'm also totally vibing with the CDC waiting until the PHE ended to offer proper ventilation guidance--guidance that's going to be treated as a nice to have whereas it would've had more teeth months ago.
And do we forget the atrocious pediatric vaccination rates that have resulted in millions of missed school days and thousands of hospitalizations over the past year? Which administration was responsible for children's booster messaging, again?
This is absolute BS. There are extraordinarily few children in this country who were kept "isolated for years." Those who do fit that description likely have chronic conditions that forced their parents to do so. Those same children now cannot get medical care safely, as, whoops, no more masking in most healthcare facilities.
Good thing we've dismantled our testing and reporting infrastructure.
Last edited:
Upvote
-3
(22
/
-25)
Possible consequence of a sinus or ear infection? Yikes!
Something which I didn't notice in the article, and which I'm really curious about now that I know brain abscesses exist: How do you treat one once you find it?
According to the text, the material of an abscess is "bacteria, viruses, or fungi" -- those are three different things each requiring a different type of medication to address. How would you even determine from imagery which type of organism the abscess contains, thereby to select an appropriate medication? Or is the treatment a surgical one instead? (I'm assuming radiotherapy wouldn't be used for this condition... )
Something which I didn't notice in the article, and which I'm really curious about now that I know brain abscesses exist: How do you treat one once you find it?
According to the text, the material of an abscess is "bacteria, viruses, or fungi" -- those are three different things each requiring a different type of medication to address. How would you even determine from imagery which type of organism the abscess contains, thereby to select an appropriate medication? Or is the treatment a surgical one instead? (I'm assuming radiotherapy wouldn't be used for this condition... )
Upvote
21
(21
/
0)
I would assume same way other abscesses are treated: lots of antibiotics, and if that doesn’t work, surgery to drain it plus even more antibiotics.
Upvote
8
(8
/
0)
WigglesVonSpiggles
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Could this be related to something like an increase of parents flushing their kids’ sinuses with neti pots? That seems to have become a minor trend thanks to the pandemic, but perhaps I was just unaware of it before. Especially given streptococcus is implicated.
I believe hospitals would ask such investigative questions of patients though in the event of rare conditions.
Edit: I suppose maybe the timing would have been different.
I believe hospitals would ask such investigative questions of patients though in the event of rare conditions.
Edit: I suppose maybe the timing would have been different.
Last edited:
Upvote
4
(7
/
-3)
"it seems linked to surges in respiratory infections that followed eased pandemic restrictions."
Gee, I wonder what virus might have been responsible for that uptick? Was there one in particular that might have had particular prominence?
(Yes, I know there was a RSV bounce too, as the article mentions. But the correlation with Covid is so obvious that surely someone is investigating a possible link. Why this isn't explicitly acknowledged is a mystery.)
Gee, I wonder what virus might have been responsible for that uptick? Was there one in particular that might have had particular prominence?
(Yes, I know there was a RSV bounce too, as the article mentions. But the correlation with Covid is so obvious that surely someone is investigating a possible link. Why this isn't explicitly acknowledged is a mystery.)
Upvote
-13
(6
/
-19)
You seem to have missed the obvious takeaway there where plenty of illnesses (e.g. the common flu) were laying low during strict lockdowns but they reemerged once people started living life again. COVID-19 didn't cause the common flu to come back but normal life did that.
Upvote
8
(17
/
-9)
Where is the discussion of wether this is statistically significant or not? It feels like table stakes in any sort of public health discussion but I don’t see it here… feels like a red flag
Upvote
-11
(2
/
-13)
You must have read a different article, because this one didn't implicate COVID in anything:
"We're not sure, but it looks like stuff that isn't COVID..."
Do check out for another 6 months. Heck, I'm feeling generous... Take 12 months off.
Upvote
17
(22
/
-5)
You have to do a spinal tap, which should give you some clues and which you can send for cultures.
You treat for likely bacteria and add the only antiviral we have (depending on the clinical story) at the same time while waiting for the results
You might need CT guided drainage as well
Fortunately fungal is less rare, there are other clues to make you suspicious (infection elsewhere, immunocompromised host, bad diabetes), and it tends to not be as aggressive as bacterial
Upvote
8
(8
/
0)
It dipped then increased so was the total just flat over that period? A new terrifying possibility from a common cold. Anyway glad it is rare.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
So the assumption is that an increase in transmission of respiratory illnesses is the primary cause of a spike in pediatric brain abscesses? Then I think the big question is whether this data is capturing a “spike after the trough” that over time will average out the same (in other words, kids who would have gotten abscesses just delayed when they got the abscess) or if more kids on average are now getting brain abscesses (in other words, getting exposed to certain childhood infections is less likely to have serious consequences if exposure happens at younger ages, for example like poliovirus).
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
For any abscess you attempt to drain it. Even in the brain. Antibiotics tend not to work well for collections of pus because there is little blood flow (the transport mechanism for antibiotics) and many of the bugs set up little biofilm walls that prevent antibodies, antibiotics and pretty much anything else from getting to the happy little buggers.
You would certainly do a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) if a CNS infection was suspected. That will give you a clue as to whether or not the infecting organism is free in the CSF. You would do blood cultures for the same reason. But imaging (typically CT) is the key here - along with opening it up and doing gram stains and cultures.
Upvote
12
(12
/
0)
Right? If anything, based on the quote "concurrent, heightened pediatric respiratory pathogen transmission", sounded like they wanted to implicate RSV.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
To ColdWetDog's comment, not only is medicine flow to the infection an issue but so is the actual antibiotic choice, which seems only determinable from sampling the infection.
I say that from personal experience where the wrong (ineffective) antibiotic turned a simple tooth abscess into a life-threatening crisis (about to cut off my breathing) a couple of years ago. After an emergency room doc cut me open (lidocaine was no help at all) and sampled the infection (and then squeezed as much out as he could, so much fun!) I got four days of IV antibiotics lying in a hospital bed, followed by proper surgery and some face-drains for a while (looked like I had exhaust ports on my neck). Still have some cool neck scars that look like I tried to murder myself.
I say that from personal experience where the wrong (ineffective) antibiotic turned a simple tooth abscess into a life-threatening crisis (about to cut off my breathing) a couple of years ago. After an emergency room doc cut me open (lidocaine was no help at all) and sampled the infection (and then squeezed as much out as he could, so much fun!) I got four days of IV antibiotics lying in a hospital bed, followed by proper surgery and some face-drains for a while (looked like I had exhaust ports on my neck). Still have some cool neck scars that look like I tried to murder myself.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
Semi related thing I read a few days ago, another common respiratory virus and acronym to learn about: human metapneumovirus, or HMPV.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Please elaborate on the mechanism that has masks be the cause of illness when masks stop being worn.
Upvote
15
(17
/
-2)