[usa today]Q. What else don’t we know?
[Fauci]A. Another thing that we don’t know is why, with a respiratory-borne illness, are there virtually no children getting infected. I mean, there are no cases of kids less than 15 years old. Does that mean for some strange reason they’re not getting infected, or the illness is so mild in children that we’re not noticing it? It’s very clear the median age is 56 or 59.
Q. Who is at greatest risk?
A. It’s almost identical to what we’re seeing with influenza. If you’re elderly, have chronic lung disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, obesity — all of that makes you much more likely to have complications, if not death.
Q. So why do some relatively young and healthy people like Li Wenliang, the 34-year-old Chinese doctor who tried to sound the alarm, die from COVID-19?
A. Every once in a while, you’re going to get an outlier, someone who otherwise looks perfectly healthy. Most likely, their genetic makeup doesn’t allow them to respond adequately to flu.
I recall one family in China where everyone was sick except a 13(?) year old. The mom insisted that he get tested too. He did have the virus, but didn’t exhibit any symptoms. Of course he could still infect people.
In fact, iirc, the child may have been the one that brought it into the family, and I think there were other kids elsewhere where the same thing happened.
I guess we didn’t really all see a video of three children sharing a body bag.
I don’t think cases under 15 is true. There are babies that have been diagnosed after delivery (30hrs old). a 3yo and 10yo in Kalua Lampur, a 3-5yo child of San Diego evacuees, and others. And I’m not posting the video, ever, but there are bodies of children amongst the dead, in one case, 3 toddlers to a body bag.