Demographics

.... As more families make the jump back to group day care this fall in an attempt to restart lives and careers, many parents, pediatricians and care operators are finding that new, pandemic-driven rules offer a much-needed layer of safety but also seem incompatible with the germy reality of childhood.

They stem largely from coronavirus guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lowering the fever threshold, disqualifying even a single bout of diarrhea or vomiting and making sniffles suspect in group settings.

But the guidelines don’t take into account that young children are prone to catching the common viral infections that help build up their immune systems, or that seasonal allergies, crying, even teething and normal playground exertion can prompt a COVID-19-like symptom.

And the price parents and kids pay for such symptoms — which could easily signal either a happy, healthy toddler, or a lurking case of the disease that has now killed more than 230,000 people in the U.S. — is now a dayslong disruption. ...uilt over neglecting work.

Two new peer-reviewed studies are showing a sharp drop in mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drop is seen in all groups, including older patients and those with underlying conditions, suggesting that physicians are getting better at helping patients survive their illness.

"We find that the death rate has gone down substantially," says Leora Horwitz, a doctor who studies population health at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine and an author on one of the studies, which looked at thousands of patients from March to August.

The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.