He wants to cry but all of his energy is focused on drawing in air desperately. Unfortunately I can’t share video footage here, or you would see an exhausted baby in severe respiratory distress. Noone in his community of displaced landless fishermen, who live on small boats or in shacks made of junk on the water’s edge, has money or the capacity to access food anymore. A wild storm recently sank over 60 of their fishing boats, rendering their situations even more desperate. His mother was always malnourished, but today, trying to breastfeed this four month old with zero health literacy or support, she is skin and bone. She once might have known how to find the pennies required to travel to hospital with him but today there is no way. Our NGO will try to support it assuming he remains alive this morning.
It seems guaranteed he will have a cotton swab stuck in his nose and tested for one single disease. Other diagnostics are unlikely to be offered. The capacity for such luxuries was extremely limited pre-Covid and laboratories are now resourced for and focused on one thing. Oxygen, antibiotics and supplemental feeding require payment for which the family have zero capacity. If he produces a false positive Covid result, very possible given what is known of these tests, combined with the knowledge that children have multiple protections against significant COVID-19 illness, then he will become a “Covid Case”. And if he dies, a “Covid Death”. Regardless of whether it’s true or even possible, and regardless of his actual diagnosis. This serves to reinforce the fear his mother and her community have been told to feel, promoting lockdown, promoting the mass experimental vaccination of children for a disease they are not at risk from, and drawing the shadow of famine ever closer. A vicious cycle of senseless suffering.
The hole in his chest is air being sucked in to his tiny, distressed lungs.
Centre for Evidence Based Medicine PCR Positives: What do they mean?
alicespringstomind 