With inflammatory syndrome here, Florida must step up pediatric testing for COVID-19 | Opinion
Oh no, not South Florida’s children, too.
In a predictable but no less horrifying development, six Florida children are in Miami-Dade and Broward intensive care units being treated for multi-system inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, a rare illness believed to be triggered by COVID-19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the link between the virus and the syndrome now being diagnosed in American children, but first reported in the United Kingdom in April.
This is the worst news since the novel coronavirus made its appearance among us.
New health crisis amid opening
The life-threatening illness in children presents a new crisis foretold, one that we should have been ready for — and that parents should be warned about before they make decisions about whether to take children out of quarantine, or not.
How much risk is acceptable to a parent? They should get enough detailed information about cases to make informed decisions.
In New York City alone close to 150 children are suffering from the potentially deadly syndrome, which has now been reported in almost half of the states, according to NBC News. At least three children have died in New York.
All we know about the two Miami children at Jackson Health System’s Holtz Children’s Hospital is that they’re “showing signs of improvement.” Two others are receiving treatment at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital near South Miami and two more at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, part of Memorial Healthcare System.
Officials at the three hospitals refused to answer routine questions such as when they were hospitalized or give details about the cases.
Keeping the public in the dark about facts that point to a more dire situation than the government is admitting has been a state strategy in the handling of the pandemic in Florida since Day 1.
The secrecy is even more outrageous in light of revelations made by the ousted creator and operator of the Florida COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard, which allows everyone to get a picture of the coronavirus outlook in the state, counties, cities, and ZIP codes.
Parents beware.
You can’t trust a government that hides relevant data and fires the data expert working toward more state transparency and accountability, Rebekah Jones, who refuses to manipulate data to support the reopening of the state’s economy.
In the case of children, many districts are already discussing plans to return to school in August. The opening of daycare centers is also on the table as more people return to their jobs.
Once the political decision was made to push the narrative of reopening, the somber reality playing out in the Northeast of children becoming ill with COVID-related organ failure was swept under the rug.
You didn’t hear Governor Ron DeSantis in his frequent press conferences to talk up opening Florida discuss the health advisory the CDC sent to doctors across the country last week alerting them to the syndrome and asking them to report suspected cases to the Department of Health.
Sending families to shopping malls, restaurants, and soon to come, theme parks, doesn’t exactly go together well with children who contract COVID-19 getting as deathly sick as the elderly.
“This newly recognized condition in the pediatric population,” the CDC calls it.
But shush!
It could hurt people’s ebullience, shatter the illusion that they’re getting a safe “new normal.”
MIS-C symptoms
MIS-C is very scary.
In the New York cases, health officials expanded the list of inflammatory syndrome symptoms to include persistent fever, irritability or sluggishness, abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, rash, conjunctivitis, enlarged lymph node on one side of the neck, red cracked lips or red tongue and swollen hands and feet.
“It is currently unknown if multisystem inflammatory syndrome is specific to children or if it also occurs in adults,” the CDC says. “There is limited information currently available about risk factors, pathogenesis [how a disease develops], clinical course, and treatment for MIS-C.”
People learned last month about the 100 children in New York suffering from this condition, and soon after the confirmation, they learned of children dying from organ failure, but they looked away.
They returned their eyes to the page in the Republicans’ coronavirus book that values above safety a return to a recovering economy in time for the November election.
Pediatric testing
No one even talked about ramping up pediatric testing for COVID-19.
It’s better for the economy if people think only the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions like heart issues, diabetes and high blood pressure are more likely to develop serious illness from being infected by the coronavirus.
Wake up and demand more from your government, Florida.
With MIS-C here, the state must step up pediatric testing for the coronavirus.
And parents should be made aware of this horrible, new development in the disease’s trajectory. They shouldn’t be kept away from bad news because it’s inconvenient for the economy.
Without knowing the rate of infection in this population, there’s no safe opening of schools or daycare centers, no safe return to campus in the fall.
One of the failures of Florida’s slow response to the coronavirus pandemic was the lack of serious consideration to what happened elsewhere first.
By looking ahead and abroad, we can act in a timely fashion to prevent an imaginable scenario like New York’s gravely ill and dead children.
Acting to prevent tragedy is a strength, not a weakness.
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
