WASHINGTON (TND) — Some lawmakers are concerned about a massive rise in respiratory illnesses in children sweeping across China as we start to see clusters pop up around Europe and even in the U.S.
Infectious disease physician Dr. Monica Gandhi joined The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat to break it down.
“So what is most likely causing this is that children, especially in China, are having a host of respiratory pathogens because they had three years of lockdown. Three full years. What that did is, children weren't exposed to any pathogens to RSV, to mycoplasma pneumonia, to influenza, and they didn't have any immunity to those pathogens,” she said. “Now they're very susceptible because they're back open and the wintertime is causing all these respiratory pathogens to occur all at once too, in a very susceptible population.”
The illness is called White Lung Pneumonia because an x-ray or CT scan of the lungs typically shows up white when there is an infection, when traditionally those scans are black to indicate there's air in the lungs.
The respiratory illness brings back fresh memories of COVID-19 when it all began, including the misinformation. Many now question China’s transparency.
“I completely understand the concern because it's true that COVID-19, when it was described on December 31st, 2019, it was from a whistleblower event. It wasn’t actually China being as forthcoming as they should have been to show what. Was happening,” Gandhi said. “The reason that we think this is definitely a mix of pathogens including mycoplasma, is that this is exactly what's to be expected biologically, that if you locked down an entire population for that long, all these pathogens are going to come in,” Gandhi said. “This happened last year. In the United States. We had much more severe RSV and a much bigger wave of RSV than we thought we would after two years of lockdown. So it just seems very expected that this is happening. Hopefully there's transparency now with the country.”
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December 05, 2023 at 10:07PM
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Mysterious respiratory illness in China raises concerns as cases reported worldwide - KOMO News
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