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Italian Study Links Mysterious Children’s Illness to COVID-19

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  • A study in Italy has provided the first cases of clear evidence linking a mysterious inflammatory illness impacting children to the coronavirus.
  • Cases have popped up throughout the United States and Europe, where doctors believed the disease was potentially related to COVID-19.
  • The disease is similar to Kawasaki disease, and the study noted a significant increase in patients with Kawasaki-like symptoms since the COVID-19 outbreak started. Most patients with this illness tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. 
  • The study stated that “SARS-CoV-2 might cause a severe form of Kawasaki-like disease.”

What is the Illness?

Doctors have been puzzled by a mysterious inflammatory illness amongst children that could potentially be related to COVID-19, and now, a study in Italy has provided the first pieces of strong evidence linking the two.

The findings were published in a medical journal called The Lancet. There have been cases of this illness in Europe and several states in America. New York alone has seen over 100 cases, as well as three deaths. 

“This is a truly disturbing situation,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said during a briefing on Tuesday.

“And I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned about this, and they should be.”

Symptoms include a persistent fever, abdominal pain, organ failure, bloodshot eyes, and more. In the United States, officials are referring to the disease as pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention intends to issue an alert telling doctors to report how many children they see experiencing it.

Ties to COVID-19

The Lancet’s study compared this new illness to prior cases of Kawasaki disease at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Italy. Kawasaki is a rare disease that impacts children and has symptoms consistent with the new inflammatory disease. 

“Our study provides the first clear evidence of a link between SARS-CoV-2 infection and this inflammatory condition,” Dr. Lorenzo D’Antigo, an author of the study said in a statement, “and we hope it will help doctors around the world as we try to get to grips with this unknown virus.” 

The study followed two groups of patients, the first of which was comprised of 19 children who were diagnosed with Kawasaki over the course of five years, between January 2015 and February 17, 2020. The second group consisted of 10 patients with Kawasaki-like symptoms admitted over the course of two months, between February 18, 2020 and April 20, 2020. 

Eight of the 10 patients in group two tested positive for COVID antibodies. Doctors believe it is possible that the others could be positive as well and that the negative results may have been a result of medical treatments muddling results or faulty tests. The patients in the second group also experienced more severe symptoms and required more types of treatment to recover.

Another factor of note to doctors was the increased rate of infection among group two. Group one saw a Kawasaki patient on average once every three months. Group two saw 10 patients with Kawasaki-like symptoms in just two months. 

What Does This Mean?

As the study notes, the timing of these increased rates of illness coincides with when the virus began to spread in Italy. Since it hit the region that  Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital is located in, the hospital “found a 30-fold increased incidence of Kawasaki disease.”

“Children diagnosed after the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic began showed evidence of immune response to the virus, were older, had a higher rate of cardiac involvement, and features of MAS,” the study stated. “We therefore showed that SARS-CoV-2 might cause a severe form of Kawasaki-like disease.”

The ages of those affected with the new disease in this study line up with the ages of children with reported cases in New York, where most patients are between 5 and 14-years-old. While the Kawasaki disease patients in group one averaged at three-years-old, the patients with the new illness in group two averaged at 7 and a half. 

Doctors all over have been looking into this infection and trying to analyze its potential ties to the coronavirus. 

“If you look at the curves, COVID-19 has plateaued, but there’s an exponential rise in this secondary type of shock syndrome,” Jane Newburger, a cardiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital said in a statement. “It is even possible that the antibodies that children are making to SARS-CoV2 are creating an immune reaction in the body. Nobody knows.”

Boston Children’s Hospital is calling for more research to be done on the subject and is urging clinicians to enroll children in research protocols. It is also calling government agencies to invest in trials and data integration so medical leaders can learn more.

See what others are saying: (New York Times) (Axios) (The Guardian)

International

Dutch Man Who Fathered Over 500 Kids Is Being Sued to Stop Donating Sperm Over Incest Concerns

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Meijer is accused of having children in 13 different countries. 


550 Children 

Johnathon Jacob Meijer, a 41-year-old Dutch man, is currently facing a lawsuit that aims to forbid him from donating sperm after he allegedly fathered at least 550 children.

The lawsuit claims that Meijer’s prolific and obsessive donation habit heightens the risk of accidental incest for his children. 

Meijer has donated to at least 13 clinics, mostly located in the Netherlands. He also used websites and social media to reach out to women looking for donors. In 2017, after the Dutch Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology learned that Meijer had already fathered more than 100 children, he was blacklisted from all clinics in the Netherlands. However, he has reportedly continued his donations in Ukraine, Denmark, and other countries. 

One professional tracking Meijer’s movements told The New York Times in 2021 that she had found mothers of his children in Australia, Italy, Serbia, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Romania, Sweden, Mexico, and the United States.

The Lawsuit 

One mother from the Netherlands has partnered with Donorkind — a Dutch organization for children conceived via a sperm donor — to bring this lawsuit against Meijer. 

The mother claims that Meijer told her that he didn’t have more than 25 donor children.

 “When I think about the consequences this could have for my child, I get a bad gut feeling and I become uncertain about his future: how many more children will be added?” she said to Donorkind. 

Donorkind and the mother are looking for the court to order Meijer to stop donating and for any clinic that has his sperm to destroy it. 

See what others are saying: (The New York Times) (The Telegraph) (Insider)

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U.S. Intel Suggests Pro-Ukraine Group Sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline

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There is no evidence that the culprits behind the attack were acting under the direction of the Ukrainian government.


Europe Braces for Shocking Revelations

A pro-Ukraine group blew up the Nord Stream pipelines last September, intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests.

The New York Times reported the news Tuesday, citing officials who said there was no evidence of involvement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, any of his top lieutenants, or any government officials.

The strength of the evidence, however, is not clear, and U.S. officials declined to inform The Times on the nature of the intelligence or how it was obtained. They reportedly added that the intelligence indicates neither who the group’s members are nor who funded and directed the operation.

The Times’ sources said they believe the saboteurs were most likely Russian or Ukrainian nationals and that they possibly received specialized government training in the past.

It’s also possible that the group behind the attack was a proxy with covert ties to Kyiv, the report added.

When three of four Nord Stream pipelines were found to be severely damaged last year, the revelation shook markets and sent European gas prices soaring. Nord Stream 1, which was completed in 2011, and Nord Stream 2, which had been laid down but wasn’t yet operational, supplied Germany and by extension the rest of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas.

Following the explosions, Poland and Ukraine blamed Russia, and Russia blamed Britain. Other observers speculated that Ukraine might be behind it too.

More Ongoing Investigations

Last month, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in a Substack article that the United States military carried out the attack and that President Biden authorized it himself. However, Hersh’s report cited only one anonymous source in support of its central claim, so it was largely dismissed as not credible.

Western governments expressed caution on Wednesday in response to The Times report.

“There are ongoing national investigations and I think it’s right to wait until those are finalized before we say anything more about who was behind it,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.

Russia, by contrast, pounced on the opportunity to renew its demand for inclusion in a proposed international probe into the pipeline explosion.

The Ukrainian government denied any involvement in the Nord Stream explosions.

On Wednesday, multiple German media outlets reported that investigators have largely reconstructed how the attack happened, pinning the blame on six people who allegedly used a yacht hired by a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland.

German officials reportedly searched a vessel suspected of carrying the explosives in January, but the investigation is ongoing.

The country’s defense minister suggested the explosions may have been a “false flag” attack to smear Ukraine.

See what others are saying: (The New York Times) (Associated Press) (Reuters)

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Turkey, Syria Earthquake Death Toll Rises to 41,000 as Survivors Pulled from Rubble

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A pair of brothers spent around 200 hours trapped under debris, living off of protein powder and their own urine.


A Humanitarian Crisis Explodes

The number of confirmed dead from the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria last week has surpassed 41,000.

Millions more people have been left stranded without adequate shelter, food, clean water, or medical supplies.

At night, the region has dropped to below-freezing temperatures.

Now health authorities are worried that the lack of sanitation infrastructure, which was damaged by the quakes, will lead to a disease outbreak.

“We haven’t been able to rinse off since the earthquake,” 21-year-old Mohammad Emin, whose home was destroyed, told Reuters.

He was helping out at a clinic serving displaced people in an open-air stadium, but with no showers and only six toilets, the resource shortage was poignant.

“They are offering tetanus shots to residents who request them, and distributing hygiene kits with shampoo, deodorant, pads and wipes,” added Akin Hacioglu, a doctor at the clinic.

The World Health Organization monitors the population for waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid, as well as seasonal influenza and COVID-19.

Rescuers Race Against the Clock

After more than a week of searching, hopes that more living victims will be found amid the collapsed buildings are fading, but rescuers continue to pull out the final few survivors.

Abdulbaki Yeninar, 21, and his brother Muhammed Enes Yeninar, 17, spent about 200 hours under rubble in the city of Kahramanmaras before they were extracted Tuesday. They told reporters they held on by eating protein powder, drinking their own urine, and swallowing gulps of air.

In the same city, teams dug a 16-foot tunnel through debris to rescue a woman, and to the south, a volunteer mining crew joined the efforts to save another.

With no homes to go back to, some survivors have joined the ranks of volunteers themselves.

In the past week, more than 35,000 Turkish search-and-rescue teams worked alongside thousands of international workers in the effort, according to Turkey’s emergency management agency.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called the earthquakes the “disaster of the century” and said in a statement that at least 13,000 people were being treated in hospitals.

The death toll is expected to rise even further in the coming weeks.

See what others are saying: (The New York Times) (Reuters) (Al Jazeera)

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