Study paints disturbing picture of Long COVID in early childhood

Bill Shaw

[Photo by https://www.vperemen.com / / CC BY 4.0]

A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that a significant percentage of young children with prior COVID-19 could be classified as suffering from Long COVID. The two groups were infants/toddlers, 14 percent of whom had Long COVID, and preschool-aged children, 15 percent of whom suffered from the affliction. 

Much higher percentages of these children, 41 percent and 45 percent respectively, had at least one prolonged symptom. These rates were far higher than infants/toddlers and preschool children without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection at 3 percent and 6 percent, respectively. Notably, the study excluded children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), and thus the actual rates of children with COVID-19 related morbidity are higher.

The study was part of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) $1.15 billion Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery or RECOVER initiative. Launched in August 2022, the initiative is a mixture of observational studies and clinical trials with mixed retrospective and prospective data collection. As of May 16, it has generated 115 journal articles describing Long COVID studies, which does not yet include the present study.

Formally known as the RECOVER–Pediatrics cohort study, it also found that the Long COVID symptoms exhibited differed between the two age groups, which also differed in symptomatology from adolescents and adults. Infants/toddlers had five symptoms that were highly indicative of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection: poor appetite, trouble sleeping, wet cough, dry cough, and stuffy nose. Poor appetite was the strongest indicator in this group. Preschool-aged children had two such symptoms: daytime tiredness and dry cough. Daytime tiredness (or sleepiness or low energy) was the strongest indicator.

The study enrolled a total of 472 infants/toddlers and 539 preschool-aged children at multiple sites across the US, with 278 infants/toddlers and 399 preschool-aged children having evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. The children’s caregivers completed symptom surveys at the time the children were enrolled in the study. Besides symptoms, the surveys also assessed overall health, quality of life, physical health, and developmental milestones. 

The study defined prolonged symptoms as those that were present at the time of the survey and that either lasted longer than 4 weeks or had started or worsened since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This definition was designed to maximize compatibility with definitions from both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). The goal was to enable future comparisons between this study, other past studies, and future studies.

The researchers found that the rates of Long COVID differed for infants/toddlers whose infection occurred prior to the Omicron variant wave of the pandemic versus during or after Omicron. Specifically, in infants/toddlers, the pre-Omicron rate of Long COVID was 20 percent versus a post-Omicron rate of 13 percent. By contrast, for preschool-aged children, the pre- and post-Omicron rates were identical at 15 percent.

The study also created and validated a symptom index to determine probable Long COVID. This index assigns each symptom a score, with symptoms which are more highly correlated with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection receiving higher scores. The index is then calculated as the sum of the scores of the symptoms an infant or child is experiencing. The study derived a threshold score above which children were far more likely to have prolonged symptoms.

The study found a strong correlation between higher symptom index values and lower overall health and quality of life, as well as delayed developmental milestones. Children with probable Long COVID thus were unhealthier, had reduced quality of life, and were late in meeting developmental milestones.

The study is significant in that it is the first large, multiple-site study of Long COVID in early childhood. Prior studies of Long COVID have almost all been performed in older children and adults. 

The study also found that the two groups differed in symptomatology both from one another and from adolescents and adults. Characterizing the morbidity of Long COVID in these two age groups is an invaluable contribution, as are the symptom indexes for the two groups for use as a future research tool.

David Goff, M.D., Ph.D., division director for the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, said: 

Most research characterizing long COVID symptoms is focused on adults, which can lead to the misperception that long COVID in children is rare or that their symptoms are like those of adults. Because the symptoms can vary from child to child or present in different patterns, without a proper characterization of symptoms across the life span, it’s difficult to know how to optimize care for affected children and adolescents.

Besides the symptoms used in calculating the index, young children experienced many other prolonged symptoms. Notably, uninfected children rarely experienced these symptoms. The researchers also found that the prolonged symptoms were associated with SARS-CoV-2 but not other childhood viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

The study does have some limitations. The symptom indexes are not designed for clinical use, but for future research. Thus they cannot be used to measure the overall incidence of Long COVID in these age groups. Nevertheless, the indexes can be used to track progression of Long COVID and thus waxing and waning of symptoms over time.

The indexes rely on the somewhat subjective assessments of the children’s caregivers. This issue is mitigated by the comparisons between infected and uninfected children. Nevertheless, future studies are needed to correlate these results with more objective assessments such as biomarkers.

Also, the study plans to follow children for longer periods of time. It is possible that many children who did not meet the symptom index threshold will progress to probable Long COVID in the future.

Another potential limitation is that the “uninfected” group could in fact include children with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. The reason is that researchers were unable to test all children for prior infection due to their young age and parental reticence for blood draws. The effect of this potential bias, however, would be to lower the differences in rates of Long COVID in infected and uninfected children. Therefore the large observed magnitude of these differences in the study increases confidence in the study results and that the effect of COVID-19 infection is real.

The RECOVER–Pediatrics cohort study confirms once again how the ruling class summarily dispensed with the precautionary principle in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, politicians and pundits repeatedly dismissed the severity of the illness and its long-term consequences in children, in particular so they could force the premature re-opening of schools.

The study arrives in the immediate aftermath of US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest salvo in the Trump administration’s war on science and public health: removing recommendations for COVID-19 vaccinations for children and pregnant women from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine schedule. Although the current study did not address the effect of vaccination, a study published earlier this year in JAMA Network Open showed a 57-73 percent reduction in Long COVID in children who received a vaccine.

In addition, earlier this year the RECOVER initiative funding itself fell victim to the war on science. NIH canceled numerous grants on COVID-19 and Long COVID, including those related to RECOVER. However, due to substantial blowback from Long COVID patients, activists, and researchers, NIH was forced to restore some of this funding.

Far-right Dutch coalition government collapses

Parwini Zora & Daniel Woreck

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, talks to the media after a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after Wilders won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday November 24, 2023. [AP Photo/Peter Dejong]

The collapse of the far-right coalition government in the Netherlands on June 3 marks a new stage in the political crisis of Dutch and European capitalism. After only eleven months in office, Geert Wilders—the neo-fascist leader of the Freedom Party (PVV)—withdrew his party from the ruling coalition, bringing down the four-party government formed eight months after the November 2023 elections, in which the PVV emerged as the strongest force in parliament. This marks the downfall of the most right-wing government in the Netherlands since World War II. Fresh elections have been called for October 2025.

Wilders, the most seasoned and, with 27 years, longest-serving member of parliament, has functioned as the Dutch bourgeoisie’s leading far-right ideologist, playing a pivotal role in driving state policy ever further to the right. For over two decades, he has shaped migration policy and legitimised a steady expansion of repressive state measures, including policing powers, surveillance, and anti-terror laws—setting the tone for every successive government regardless of formal coalition composition. His central role in the present crisis is not an aberration, but the culmination of a prolonged authoritarian drift within the Dutch ruling class heightened by the surge of international class conflict.

The immediate pretext for the government’s collapse, as portrayed by both international and local media, is the supposed “refusal” of Wilders’ coalition partners—the right-wing People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the New Social Contract (NSC), and the Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB)—to support his draconian “10-point asylum plan,” unveiled at a press conference in The Hague on May 26. This is a political lie.

While Wilders’ authoritarian and xenophobic proposals triggered the formal breakdown, the disagreement within the ruling elite, including the nominal left, is not over the repression of migrants—on which all factions broadly agree—but tactical issues on the form and timing of these draconian, anti-democratic measures.

In fact, the coalition’s governing agreement from May 2024 already enshrined the goal of establishing “the strictest admission regime for asylum” in the EU. All three parties were instrumental in passing legislation such as the Asylum Emergency Measures Act, restricting family reunification, instituting a two-tier refugee system, and reintroducing border controls.

The coalition parties are not opposed to Wilders’ plan in principle, but fear that an aggressive rollout could provoke further mass resistance. The collapse of the government and the accompanying rhetoric reflect not a divergence in policy, but in strategy—how best to impose a deeply unpopular agenda of imperialist war, austerity and state repression without igniting a broader political crisis that is already underway as part of an international development.

The NSC’s Nicolien van Vroonhoven admitted that the government’s asylum policies already “walked the edge of the law,” while criticising Wilders not for substance but for “presentation.” GroenLinks–PvdA and the Socialist Party (SP), the nominal left and opposition on the other hand, have supported the governing parties in backing rising military budgets and NATO’s war drive against Russia.

As the government collapses, representatives across the entire political establishment have voiced grievous concerns over any delay in enforcing its right-wing program both at home and abroad. The VVD’s Deputy Leader, Marieke de Jong, warned that “this collapse threatens the stability necessary to maintain our commitments to national security and economic growth,” emphasizing the “urgent need for swift elections to restore order.”

Pieter van Loon, leader of the BBB, expressed disappointment, stating, “Our efforts to support rural communities and maintain balanced policies have been undermined by internal conflicts, and this instability will hurt those who depend on us.” Jimmy Dijk, leader of the SP, responded to Wilders’ plan in an earlier reaction on X (May 26, 2025): “What a cry. You yourself formed this cabinet and you yourself put this failed minister in charge of migration. You have achieved nothing.”

While the ministers of Wilders’ PVV have left the government, unelected Prime Minister Dick Schoof, a former spy, is to remain in office as “caretaker prime minister.” He is attending the NATO summit on June 24 to reaffirm the Netherlands €19 billion defence budget and its pledges of F-16 deliveries to Ukraine as well as the continued political and logistical support to Israel in its genocide in Gaza.

As the Dutch financial and ruling elite contemplates the best course to push ahead its class interests, the Dutch working class, like its counterparts elsewhere, is mired in an intensifying social crisis and sharp rises in the cost of living. Inflation remains high at 3.2 percent, well above the eurozone average. Wages have failed to keep pace, thanks to the trade-union supported “collective labour agreements” yielding tiny increases, insufficient to offset years of real-term wage decline.

Essential services are increasingly out of reach: nearly 45 percent of Dutch residents cite rising costs as their primary concern. Average waiting times for social housing range from 7 to 19 years, due to systematic cuts and soaring rents. The privatised health care system continues to burden workers with a steady rise in mandatory insurance premiums. Nearly 60 percent of older workers struggle to remain employed past age 55, often forced into temporary or part-time contracts and with declining pensions that hardly cover basic expenses.

Amid this unravelling social crisis precipitated and intensified by the international and Dutch ruling elite, the political establishment, working hand-in-glove with its media accomplices, have escalated anti-immigrant rhetoric. Exploiting burning concerns over housing, jobs, adequate pay and access to deteriorating public services, they aim to pit workers against workers—to fracture class unity and obscure the real source of the crisis: the failure of capitalism to meet even the most basic needs of society.

Wilders’ newest asylum plan—which openly violates even bourgeois law such as the Geneva Conventions, Dutch law, and EU regulations—called for the suspension of all asylum and family reunification procedures, mass deportations (particularly of Syrians), the closure of refugee reception centres, and a ban on dual citizenship. It demanded military control over borders and intensified police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests.

Particularly over the past months, a wave of protests and strikes across all sectors have swept the Netherlands. On May 18, in a protest that was hardly under the grip of official political parties and affiliated trade unions, over 100,000 people demonstrated in The Hague against the Israeli assault on Gaza—the largest anti-war protest in two decades. Tens of thousands marched in Amsterdam a week later on May 24 against xenophobia and racism, after Wilders had announced his 10-point plan.

Starting June 6, railway workers have entered strikes nationally demanding wage increases and improved working conditions. University staff and students are expected to strike in Amsterdam on June 10 against a planned €1.1 billion in education cuts to compensate for the hikes in military budgets. Another mass anti-genocide protest is planned to take place in The Hague on June 15, followed by a major demonstration against the NATO war summit on June 22.

Wilders’ calculated exit has also been shaped by drastically falling poll numbers for all coalition parties. As of the most recent polls, PVV is projected to drop from 37 to 29 seats, the BBB to 3, and the NSC to 1—losing 19 of its 20 seats. These figures reflect growing hostility to the entire political establishment and its policies, not just to Wilders and his party. Wilders hopes to make a comeback with a stronger PVV based on a vicious xenophobic and anti-Islamic campaign, to sweep to power in October.

It is politically fatal to place hopes in pseudo-left satellites and parties such as GroenLinks–PvdA or in the trade union bureaucracy. Dick Koerselman, interim chairman of FNV (Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging), one of the two largest trade union confederations in the Netherlands with an infamous record in suppressing strikes and upholding “social partnership” with the state apparatus, called the fall of the cabinet “good news for the Netherlands.”

Eighty-five years ago, Leon Trotsky wrote: “The bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.” That prison remains intact, presided over by an oligarchy that enriches itself through war, austerity, and genocide.

The Dutch bourgeoisie finds itself in a political impasse. Following decades of austerity, the working class faces soaring levels of social inequality, deteriorating public services, broader militarisation, and the persecution of immigrants and refugees in a country, where millionaires outnumber the number of refugees. The fall of the Wilders-led cabinet is not the end of far-right politics in the Netherlands but a signal that the bourgeoisie is recalibrating its methods for enforcing authoritarian forms of rule.

Framework deal to maintain US-China trade truce

Nick Beams

Top-level trade talks between the US and China being held in London ended late yesterday with the announcement that a “framework” deal had been reached to restore a truce in the trade war.

The agreement was reached after two days of intensive talks. No details were given.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent [AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File]

The US team, which was led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, is returning to Washington to present the deal to US president Trump.

China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Li Chenggang described the talks as “rational, in-depth and candid” and that the two sides had agreed to implement the consensus reached in Geneva last month.

But the fact they went deep into the second day indicated there were major sticking points.

The London talks were organised after a one-and-a-half-hour phone conversation between US President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping last week.

The phone call, initiated by Washington, was held as it became clear that the “truce” agreed to in Geneva last month was about to break down with both sides denouncing the other for not carrying out the agreement. The US accused China of a slow rollout of rare earths while Beijing pointed to the imposition of additional high-tech controls and threats to exclude Chinese students.

Before getting underway the head of the White House’s National Economic Council Kevin Hassett indicated the talks would centre on the issue of US high-tech bans on China and the supply of rare earth minerals to the US.

He told the US business channel CNBC at the weekend that “after the handshake … export controls from the US will be eased and the rare earths will be released in volume.”

But Hasset made clear that the “very, very high-end Nvidia stuff is not what I’m talking about.”

Nvidia is the world’s leading manufacturer of the most advanced chips used in the development of artificial intelligence. Hassett indicated that there could be a loosening of controls on less advanced semi-conductors which were “very important” for China.

During the talks there was virtually no news on their content apart from limited comments by Lutnick and Bessent. Lutnick said at the start of the yesterday’s second round that they were “going well.”

At the end of the day, Bessent returned to Washington to testify before Congress. “We’ve had two days of productive talks, they are ongoing” he told reporters. The discussions would continue between Lutnick and Greer and their Chinese counterparts “as needed.”

It appears they centred on what bans on semi-conductors from the US would be lifted in return for an increased supply of rare earths.

Any concession on this score, when the framework is announced, provided Trump agrees with it, would represent a blow to the US. Its key objective is to crush China’s technological development which is regarded in all sections of the American political and military establishment as being central to the maintenance of US global dominance.

“A US decision to roll back some portion of the technology controls would very much be viewed as a win by China,” Dexter Roberts of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub told Bloomberg. The possibility of unwinding “any controls” had seemed “pretty much unthinkable” until recently.

The measures instigated by the US have certainly impacted China, but as is widely acknowledged they have not stopped its high-tech development.

As a recent article in the New York Times noted: “The US has tried almost everything to win the tech race against China—across areas as varied as AI, energy, autonomous vehicles, drones and EVs. So far, none of it has worked.”

No doubt with an eye on the profits to be made in China, Jensen Huang, the head of Nvidia which is at the centre of the bans, called into question their efficacy during an earnings call last month.

“Shielding Chinese chip makers from US competition only strengthens them abroad and weakens America’s position. Export restrictions have spurred China’s innovation and scale.”

If China has forced some concessions, it will be due to the stranglehold it has on critical minerals.

There have been concerns expressed that unless their supply is increased, sections of US industry, especially auto production, could start coming to a halt.

China has a near monopoly on the processing and manufacture of rare earths needed in the production of magnets which can function at high temperatures. Auto producers have warned they could run out of supplies in a matter of days or weeks.

The magnets are used in the electric motors that run brakes, steering and fuel injectors. According to a recent article by New York Times Beijing correspondent Keith Bradsher, who has made a study of rare earths for more than a decade, said: “The motors in a luxury car ... use as many as 13 magnets. Factory robots depend on rare earth magnets too.”

The problem with the supply of rare earths, which are also vital in semi-conductor production, is not so much finding them but in extracting and processing them. They are bound together chemically in the raw minerals and can require a sequence of possibly more than 100 processes using strong acids. China refines more than 99 percent of heavy rare earths, the least common.

“Processing rare earths is technically demanding,” Bradsher wrote, “but China has developed new processes. Rare earth chemistry programs are offered in 39 universities across the country, while the United States has no similar programs.”

In an article published this week, he drew attention to another rare earth, samarium, which is used almost entirely in military applications to make magnets that can stand temperatures high enough to melt lead without losing their magnetic force. Other rare earths can withstand the heat of a petrol engine but not the greater heat in a military application.

“The main American user of samarium is Lockheed Martin,” Bradsher wrote, “an aerospace and military contractor that puts about 50 pounds of samarium magnets in each F-35 fighter jet.”

While China eased some of the controls on rare earths, there had been no sign of the loosening of restrictions on the supply of samarium. The rare earth Mountain Pass mine in California, which has a history of opening and closing, attempted to produce samarium when it reopened in 2014. But it closed again a year later when it could not compete with China—problem for many sections of US industry.

If the US has been forced to make concessions to China in the London talks, it will not mean any lessening of its economic war against Beijing. Whatever tactical shifts it may be forced to make, the guiding strategy of suppressing China remains and the increasing failure of economic measures to achieve this goal, means military measures will be intensified.

The economic war is thus intimately connected to the ongoing coup by the Trump administration to establish a fascistic presidential dictatorship—war against the geo-political and geo-economic rivals of US imperialism requires the abolition of democratic rights at home.