Not just old people - 16 yr old girl died in France

[Frenchfancy]

I know % wise most deaths are over 70, but by no means all. A 16 year old girl with no previous conditions died yesterday in France. www.leparisien.fr/essonne-91/morsang-sur-orge-91390/julie-16-ans-decedee-du-coronavirus-personne-n-est-invincible-se-desole-sa-soeur-27-03-2020-8288850.php

Take care everyone xx

Young people do occasionally die of viruses or bacterial infections. There's no particular reason to be worried for your non vulnerable children's health so far, from all the stats that have come out of all the countries affected. I was walking in the woods yesterday and saw a group of teens climbing really really high in trees. I'd be more worried about the accidental death rate going up in teens left to go feral all summer. A fall from that height and they'd be dead. Safer in schools.

In many of these younger/unexplained cases there likely was an underlying problem the victim in question hadn't yet identified.

There is absolutely no reason to assume that someone who was declared healthy by her doctors now suddenly must have had some problem. She didn't. That is just you and other people minimising. That minimising is causing people to break the rules because they think that it doesn't apply to them. Please stop spouting this nonsense and try to understand that the healthy and young people are not safe, so the social distancing is important for them too.

Social distancing is not important for them and lying to them is hardly going to work if they have google

Social distancing protects the vulnerable, so perhaps their parents, more likely their grandparents or other people they might know with cancer etc

Lies get you nowhere with teens

People confuse low risk with no risk.

The messaging about shielding the vulnerable seems to have convinced some people that everyone else who catches it will be just fine, that was never the case.

Not every death will get a post mortem, sadly.

Hospital mortuary staff (in the U.K. at least) are suffering the same staffing crisis as other NHS services. It’s skilled and you can’t just get someone to fill in.

There is still contagion risk after death, staff with pre existing conditions or symptoms are at home, the correct PPE has been unavailable (I think our Trust got a delivery yesterday but it’s get to get to departments and staff dealing with living patients are the priority).

Post mortems can only be done with express consent by patient prior to death or next of kin. Some families will refuse for religious or cultural reasons.

Things may be different in France, but I suspect not much.

Thinking of the family. We are all in this together, no matter our location.

There is absolutely no reason to assume that someone who was declared healthy by her doctors now suddenly must have had some problem. She didn't

No one has assumed. It's been questioned. Because it extremely rare for a healthy 16 year old to die, from contracting covid.

You absolutely can not not state she had no health problems. That is assuming. It's entirely possible that she has an undiagnosed health issue.

That's not say she definitely does or must have its saying theres a possibility.

The younger and healthier you are, the lower the risk. But no one, on this thread or elsewhere is claiming that a young person with no health issues can not die from it.

It is however, very unlikely.

As pp said people seem to confuse low risk with no risk

People who use the word 'scaremongering' instantly diminish their own opinions in my eyes. The word has been so poorly used this last week that it has come to stand for "presents facts to others when I prefer ignorance"

If you prefer the bliss of ignorance or even lies, remove yourself from where knowledge and facts are shared.

But don't presume to bully others into silence with shouts of 'scaremongering!' attached to every piece of factual information. We don't all share your preferred ignorance and it isn't bliss.

Extremely rare does not mean impossible.

I think there is a need to break the 'othering' around this pandemic - ie only other people are at risk of death, the old, the infirm

It could be anyone. Yes, some groups are at higher risk, but anyone who catches it could die.

And if people really took that message on board, and kept to both spirit and letter of urgent restrictions, because they themselves might die then perhaps fewer of us will die

I don’t think it’s scaremongering, I know lots of people who still think children don’t get it or only very mildly and aren’t taking enough precautions with them.

My daughter almost died from a far more common virus (EBV) age 6.

18 months post diagnosis we are still waiting for her genome sequencing to complete. It’s likely she has a gene fault somewhere, no one knows where it is though. Having a gene fault doesn’t mean you will automatically develop a disease though, just that you are more likely to than people without it (the BRCA faults are probably the best known examples of this).

In my daughter’s case, EBV set off a Cytokine Storm, she was ventilated for 5 days. The same reaction is what’s happening in COVID19 patients.

So yes, many people who die from this will probably have something underlying in their genetic code, but it might not express in any other way. My daughter took a year to recover, but she was never ill before of since beyond an ear infection or a cold.

Viruses do weird things. 95% of the world have had EBV. Most won’t even notice and will just assume it’s a cold. Young teens may develop long term fatigue through glandular fever. In some people it’s not a problem at the time but leads to EBV related cancers later on. Some, like my daughter, will have a reaction that is 100% fatal without treatment.

No one knows much about the different ways SARS-CoV-2 will express long term. Children don’t seem to be getting particularly sick (not even immunocompromised ones). One theory is that human growth hormone is acting in a protective way, which is why teenagers are slightly more susceptible than younger kids. Once you’ve had your final pubertal growth spurt the hormone tails off. It’s just theory until a study proves it though.

It’s all so early, we just don’t know much about this virus yet.

My daughter has been in remission for a year but has been put on the extremely vulnerable list, being a kid makes her theoretically safer, but having already had a cytokine storm means this virus could theoretically cause another.

The immune system is one of the least understood parts of the human body. Clinicians and researchers are developing enormous banks of knowledge, but there is still so much more to learn.

Along with a 21 year old woman who passed away from coronavirus in England who was otherwise healthy with no underlying health conditions.

Thanks for sharing that DuLang, hope you both keep very safe.

I've come across more than one very recent paper (written in the last month) analysing the virus which are suggesting that this virus isn't actually causing death through cytokine storm as previously thought, but instead the virus itself is directly damaging the body through lymphocytes. The studies are finding that lymphocytes are much lower in those with serious or fatal COVID-19.

I happened across this finding because I had a routine blood test a couple of weeks ago which showed I had lymphocytes below range, so I started googling the impact and discovered these reports from the Chinese scientists studying the action of the disease on the body.

There will always be outliers. Doesn't change the fact its still a low risk of complications for most younger people.

@Mlou32 you mean apart from the severe asthma her family forgot to mention to the press?

It’s very unlikely that she was in perfect health is she died from this.

@Tootletum I certainly haven't seen that anywhere; is that confirmed fact or is it a rumour?

Of course this is tragic but it does not alter the fact that the older you are the greater the risk (caeteris paribus)

But none of us know for sure if we or our children may have undiagnosed health conditions that make us more susceptible to this virus becoming serious for us. The risk may be low but it isn’t zero.

All of us are at far higher risk of dying from other causes - accident/injury/other illness - if we don’t lock down enough to suppress the spread so that hospitals don’t become overwhelmed.

Children right now are certainly not ‘safer in school’ because schools cannot be safely staffed right now due to the number of vulnerable staff who have to self isolate or shield over the next few weeks/months. Children need to be properly supervised at home and not allowed out to climb trees or put themselves in whatever danger they might get into if they aren’t being parented.

My daughter had EBV-sHLH (secondary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis). It’s one of the cytokine storm syndromes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemophagocytic_lymphohistiocytosis

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30628-0/fulltext

U.K. clinicians are now testing ferritin levels on admission to ICU (it’s not a diagnostic, but it is a cheap and easy to read screen for HLH).

HLH has previously been observed in SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV.

Actually the French doctor has stated she seems to have had a severe form which is extremely rare in young people. Not because she had underlying conditions.

«Selon le directeur général de la Santé, Jérôme Salomon, qui a annoncé son décès, Julie a été victime d'une forme sévère du virus, "extrêmement rare" chez les jeunes.»

www.lci.fr/population/coronavirus-pandemie-sante-france-c-est-invivable-raconte-la-mere-de-julie-16-ans-premiere-adolescente-a-succomber-du-covid-19-2149256.html

Please stop saying she must have had problems, she did not. That is being widely confirmed in France, even by the hospital which treated her. It’s still extremely rare for young people to be that ill, but it is possible and people should be aware. The article says her mother didn’t worry because she just had a cough and thought young, healthy people don’t get that ill.

It’s important parents know it’s possible so that they don’t wait too long to get help for their children. This family saw a doctor on Monday and their daughter died just before 1am Wednesday, less than 48 hrs later.

You absolutely can not not state she had no health problems.

Yes I can. Her doctors have stated this. You just want to deny it because you find the truth difficult. The truth is that young and healthy people without any underlying problems have died from Covid19. Denying this truth gives people a false sense of security and actually will costs some people their lives. Please stop stating things that are not true and take this disease seriously.

Yes I can. Her doctors have stated this.

All they can say is she had no prior diagnosis of underlying conditions. Like I said above, my daughter’s genome sequencing tests have been in the lab for ages (most recent immunology bloods were taking in August). This isn’t an NHS delay, it’s because it takes ages to look at every gene expression. It’s like looking for a spelling mistake in the yellow pages.

Any of us could have an underlying condition or gene fault and not know it. Everyone needs to stay in and wash their hands. Everyone.