#a socially awkward kid in quarantine supposed to watch in social studies

[hillbroski]

today in my history class, we read the Haitian Declaration of Independence, a very serious and important document, and so, I was not prepared to be *jump scared* and activated like a sleeper agent by the phrase 'independence or death'

I had a visceral reaction to that like it was not good

[unproductivx]

Dealing with the pressure to achieve

Inspired by @collegemode‘s post about gifted kids. 

Link to the post is here. It got me thinking a lot about how, so often, many of us [particularly here where I live, in Asia] are faced with the pressure to do well in school, to excel, and to achieve. We go to schools that, from young, drill a mark-objective mentality into learning. If it’s not from the schools, it just exists SO much in our societies. As someone who goes to a very academic, result-oriented school, I know what that’s like. 

Don't get me wrong, I love my school. I miss going there so much (with the quarantine and all) and I love my friends and all of my teachers. It's been a place of wonderful memories and learning.

But I wrote this in the hopes that sharing my story may help those of you who are also struggling with this problem. 

PROBLEM #1: Resting VS Unproductivity

It's just... I read a lot about "burn-out" and I am so scared it will happen to me. Maybe you’re scared it will happen to you. Maybe it has happened to you. I'm trying to find a balance between working hard and taking rest, but the whole "resting" thing is kind of alien to me to the point where I don't really know when it's TOO much or not enough. And I think that is the first problem. We are always being pushed to fill our time with things deemed ‘productive’ - our extra-curricular activities are tailored to ensure success in our tertiary education.

It’s been quite difficult to come to terms with the fact that taking a break is okay. Not every second needs to be filled with purpose. Sometimes, it’s good enough to just exist. It might be a little unnerving. Maybe you’re afraid you’ll get so used to ‘resting’ you’ll never be able to work again, or that you’ll become a lazy couch potato. 

And that’s the thing. We need to learn how to relax. How to unwind. How to watch Netflix and not get addicted. There’s nothing wrong with binge-watching: except when that binge-watching is replacing studying for an upcoming test. Believe you me, I had that problem. My solution was to stop watching Netflix entirely during schooling days, but I’ve realised that was never a viable solution. I essentially ‘ran away’ from my problem. We need to learn it’s okay to like things, and learn how to do so in moderation. If you’re planning on watching then getting back to work, write it down in a schedule and commit to going back to work after your break. 

Little by little, discipline will form.

PROBLEM #2: Misconceptions about hard work.

 I know the grades I achieve come from hard work (and not from being intrinsically genius) but a lot of times my peers don't see that, so they continue to project that unhealthy mentality of "gifted kids" no matter how much I try to change their minds. It’s a huge labelling thing, that I am guilty of too.

“He/she is the smart kid.” The ‘smart’ kids being people who’d achieve the best grades, top all the exams. They were the ones people wanted in their group projects. Then of course, there were the ‘quiet’ kids, and all the other classroom personalities. 

A lot of the time, I was labelled as one of the smart kids. I suppose in a sense, it could be flattering, but then we’ve got this huge huge huge misconception about what it means to be ‘smart’. It’s also a little heartbreaking, specially in Primary school, when people only want to befriend you because they think you’ll help them out, or join their group and do most of the work. 

I've always held back from speaking out about it, because, nobody wants to hear the ‘smart kid’ complain. I'm afraid people will think that I am being ungrateful, that I'm complaining about getting good grades. But it's not like that at all, and I really hope it doesn't come across that way.

I’m tenth grade, and have another one and half years to go before I graduate from school. I have this huge pressure to do well for my igcses and get all A*, and sometimes I'm not sure if I can do it myself. It's a goal I would like to achieve,, but it's kind of scary. My peers, and my teachers too, I think, are kind of expecting this and I have this horrid fear that I won't make it and everyone will be disappointed! I've ranked first in the year every year since Year 3. And even writing that, and admitting it, is scary to me.  I don’t like talking about those achievements, because there is just so much doubt that follows.

It is motivation to go further, but at the same time, it's "holy shit if I don't make it this year then im going to look like such a disappointment ohmygod ohmygod.. "

“All those books and articles about high-school burn out are right, what if I really have ‘peaked in high school’ and I’m never going to do well in ANYTHING ELSE ever again?” 

It scares me. It really does. But at the same time, I know a lot of these thoughts are not me, but the manifestation of the pressure being put on me. It’s one of those things where you know you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, but it’s just so hard not to.

Talking to someone you trust helps.

My ex-Principal and I were quite close, and "close" in the sense that I felt I could talk to her about stress, or feeling pressured, and all that sort. I joined the Prefectorial Board in my school in Year 7, and she was the Prefect Advisor, and that’s really how she got to know me, and perhaps vice-versa. It was only really in Year 8 and 9 when I opened up about my feelings.

Talking to her was probably the first time I had ever talked to anybody, properly talked to anybody, about how stressed and worried I was. I didn't even realise it was something that I had been bottling up, because I literally just burst into tears when she talked to me. 

God, it was kind of embarrassing. We were on our way back from a Leadership conference and I guess the ‘trigger’ was me, having an argument [no, more accurately my dad scolding me on the phone about something] and me, feeling so upset that I finished her box of tissues and I was just like NSKSJSKS :"((.

I've always been someone who can appear confident. I'm a loud, outgoing, extroverted person so maybe that's why. But sitting with my principal and talking to her literally made me realise I had so many insecurities and anxieties that I kept telling myself I didn't have, or I kept pushing away. 

I find it difficult to tell people no, and it’s because I hate letting people down. Out of all my fears, my fear of disappointing others is huge - especially my parents, and it doesn’t really help that I do have that typical ‘Asian mentality’ of doing whatever it takes to make mom and dad happy. They don’t pressure me outwardly, but it’s still ��there”. 

To use an euphemism, my ‘bruhh’ moment of realisation was when my principal said to me, ‘nobody really knows, nobody really sees everything behind your results’ - a tip of the ice-berg kind of thing. Hell, I haven’t even summoned the courage to talk about this to my parents. You can’t expect people to psychically know how you feel if you don’t talk to them. I agree - I love both of my parents. I know everything they do is just for the betterment of my well-being.

“Why haven’t you talked to them?” she asked.

I don’t know. I don’t want them to be disappointed, or to be more honest, I don’t want to be a ‘burden’. It sounds stupid... but they’re busy people. My dad is really stressed a lot of the time, and additionally, I only rarely feel so low. 

I’m not going to tell you to talk to your parents if you’re not comfortable, because neither am I [though I hope to get there someday], but you do need to ‘let it out’. Someone you trust, someone who’s going to listen and give good advice is the one you need to talk to.

And hey, my DMs are open too. Though please excuse my social awkwardness sometimes - I will be listening too. 

Something she said that really stuck with me [no, it’s not really anything cosmically amazing], was she asked me:

“What do you want?” 

What do you want to achieve? Is this something that’s going to make you happy? 

And I think in dealing with the pressure to achieve... this is something that’s so, so, so important. If you’re going to be working hard, you should work hard for something that’ll make you happy. Don’t lie to yourself, because then you’ll be lying to yourself for the rest of your life.

This doesn’t mean don’t think about others. Thinking about what you want doesn’t automatically make you a selfish person. It’s something that has helped me move away from being hyper-competitive. It’s a slow, long journey.... but we will all get there, eventually.

<3 lots of love, 

- tv

[mortvivanthqs-blog]

welcome to the outpost, violet lewis, we’re sure you’ll find the place accommodating. danielle campbell is now taken! please review our checklist and send in your account within twenty-four hours!

🡶 OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: tee !

AGE: twenty-one.

TIMEZONE: aest (or gmt+10!!).

PRONOUNS: she/her.

🡶 IN CHARACTER:

NAME: violet lewis.

FACE CLAIM: danielle campbell.

GENDER & PRONOUNS: cis!female, she/her.

BIRTHDAY: june 19th, 1997.

BIRTHPLACE: seattle, washington.

JOBS: medic.

KILL COUNT: one (she considers her mother’s death her fault).

ANYTHING ELSE: klfdjs hello i have No self control thank u

🡶 BIOGRAPHY:

violet: unshrinking. she had always been a force of nature. relentless, iron-willed. she couldn’t be convinced the world wasn’t hers for the taking. the second of two children, violet was forever nipping at her older sister’s heels — desperate to be all grown up, big enough to walk and talk like the big kids. nine years her sister’s junior, violet had reason to feel left out. an accidental pregnancy, she was born into a family of ‘creatives’. her father a cartoonist, and her mother an art teacher. their household was rather unconventional; full of wind chimes, buckets of paint, crystals, and other miscellaneous ‘hippie crap’ — as violet so affectionately liked to call it. her parents were the softest kind of people, and that suited them well. but violet? violet was never soft.

the girl was remarkable. clever as the devil and twice as cunning, she spent her idle time outsmarting her parents and playing pranks on her older sister. she was a menace, in her younger years — but all she really craved was attention. attention from parents who, try as they may, just couldn’t relate to their youngest daughter. but violets older sister? oh, they doted on her. it was nobody’s fault, really. violet’s sister was a creative, just like their parents. whereas violet, she needed more mental stimulation. chewed up science textbooks for fun, spent hours down at the local natural history museum, and watched documentaries after school instead of cartoons. but to their credit, violet’s parents knew she was gifted. they did their best to keep up with her; but she was already leaps and bounds ahead.

violet didn’t keep many friends, as a child. kids at her school found her an easy target: bushy brows, strange parents, know-it-all tendencies. the latter was something she worked on improving, over the years, although the first two couldn’t be helped. over the years, violet taught herself how to brush it off — tried not to take things so personally. but years of trying to justify herself left her defensive, and suspicious of anyone being too overtly kind. in a word, you might call her pessimistic. but growing pains subsided, and she eventually grew out of her awkwarder of phases (thankfully). as she bloomed into her adolescence, violet even found herself gaining a little popularity — shock horror. after all, she was confident, intelligent, and as she would soon come to realise, beautiful. her latter years of high school were a breeze. she made friends, topped her classes, and kept her nose out of trouble. violet reasoned she didn’t have time for drinking, or boys, or partying. even at her parents insistence that she join in on the fun, she refused. after all, she was going to go to med school. she was going to be a doctor. that would be plenty fun enough for her.

after graduating high school, violet was offered a full ride to study medicine at one of the best universities in the country. she was born for this. so, never more eager to fly the nest, violet packed her bags and headed for baltimore. and that was it, she had made it: adulthood. out on her own for the first time, violet felt like she had the world at her feet. she was smart, and capable, and brilliant. perhaps a little sheltered, a little green – but tenacious none the less. she adored her studies, and devoted all her spare time to her school work. but her social life quickly fell by the wayside. violet failed to make herself new friends, never wanted to attend parties or social events, and the relationship with her family grew even more distant than before. she convinced herself she didn’t need anyone else — that she was her own best company. but deep down? violet was lonely. craved all those simple, normal things she missed out on when she was growing up; too busy trying to be brilliant. but still, she tried not to dwell. violet wasn’t overly fond of self-pity.

as it usually did, guilt dragged violet back to seattle for the weekend. she rarely visited, anymore. three years moved out, it often took several awkward calls from her mother to lure her back home. and washington was dismal, as far as violet was concerned. that’s what they got for living in one of the rainest cities in america. but, she would have to endure it for at least a few days, for the sake of her grandmother’s 95th birthday. violet spent most of the weekend locked away in her childhood bedroom, avoiding the festivities as best she could. even her older sister – who violet had once so adored and admired – was practically a stranger, by this point. she had expected the weekend to be one of the dullest of her life, but little did violet know, it would change her life forever.

everyone had heard the news reports. and violet found it fascinating, naturally. although, admittedly, she thought it was all a little silly — no doubt blown out of proportion. just like swine flu, and ebola, and all those other ‘pandemics’ that never came to be. it certainly didn’t scare her, that’s for sure. but then she got an email saying her flight back to maryland had been cancelled, in an attempt to quarantine the state. had things really gotten that bad? more so annoyed than anything, violet resigned herself to the fact that she would have to spend a few more days in her family home – ugh. but days turned to weeks, and things only escalated. still convinced it would all blow over, none of it felt real until martial law was declared. and all at once, things started to spiral. her parents insisted they bunker down and stay put, wait it out. but violet and her sister? for the first time in years, they agreed on something: they all needed to get the hell out of seattle. as chaos started enveloping the city, their window of opportunity started getting narrower and narrower; they needed to go. and so, finally, their parents agreed. and so, all four of them piled into an suv, and they headed east.

their first few weeks on the road were tough. finding food, clean water, encountering other survivors — survivors far more armed and able than they were. violet got her first few up close and personal encounters with the dead, the horror of which she found hard to comprehend. it was all so much, she kept hoping it was some nightmare she had dreamed up inside her head. but no, it was all too real. and violet, she wasn’t built for such a world. she didn’t know how to use a weapon, how to defend herself. hell, she’s 5′2″ for god’s sake — she was barely allowed to ride a rollercoaster, let alone handle a gun. violet could be harsh, and stubborn, and insensitive, but she certainly wasn’t violent. she wasn’t faint of heart, but the first time she put down a walker, she couldn’t stop herself throwing up. but the worst, unimaginably, was still to come.

first, they lost her mother. not to the undead, but to illness. a wound gone septic, violet did all she could. but they had no medicine, no clean water, no food. living amongst the dirt, and the rot of a dying world. violet blames herself, for not being able to save her mother — she’s sure her sister blames her, too. she was supposed to be the great big medical student, after all. if she could do nothing else, surely she could do this. but still, she couldn’t stop her mother from slipping away. her mother as well, was the first person violet saw turn. up until that point, she was convinced a person had to be bitten — that’s what they all thought, and yet. violet’s sister put her mother (or what was left of her) down, and they buried her somewhere peaceful. their father’s death came only three weeks later, his demise far quicker and more violent. caught amongst a horde, he got surrounded. all violet and her sister could do was flee, tear stained and trembling. after that, all they had left was each other. two against the world.

violet and her sister all but tore each other apart, those first few weeks on the road alone. so disagreeable, so set in their ways, compromise seemed impossible. and grieving, the both of them, in staggeringly different ways. violet on one hand, shut down. refused to talk about it, put on her toughest, bravest face; interrupted by the occasional outburst of emotion. whereas her sister grieved out loud — wanted to talk about it, needed a shoulder to cry on. incompatible to their core, seemingly. but still, despite the strain and the heartache, they loved each other; needed each other. what else did they have left, after all? half the battle was getting to know each other all over again. the people they had missed out on getting to know, during their years apart. tensions never entirely faded, but the pair managed to build a few bridges — eventually learning to tolerate each other’s company, even if only some of the time.

after spending time with a few small groups that quickly dissolved, the pair decided the only real option they had was to go it alone. after all, how were they supposed to trust anybody else, anymore? on this, violet and her sister both agreed: they would steer clear of other survivors at all costs. until that is, they met landon scott’s crew. caught amongst a swarm, violet and her sister were quickly losing control of the horde: overwhelmed. but suddenly, a small group flocked to their aid — no doubt saving their lives. to repay the debt, violet offered to help patch up on of the survivors that had been injured in the fight, which ended in her and her sister being brought back to the warehouse. it was a better established base than they had seen in months, and the group (as motley of a crew as they were) were clearly able. therein, they were offered a proposition: if you’re willing to work, you’re welcome to stay. and so, somewhat reluctantly, the pair agreed.

violet is no hardened survivor, nor was she built for such a world. but she’s determined, iron-willed, unwilling to fail. refusing to give up. she bottles her fears, of which there are plenty, and replaces her worry with a stoney facade. she can come off as cold, sometimes. blunt, sarcastic, unconcerned with pleasantries. but that’s the only way violet knows how to cope. if she is to survive, she needs to guard herself closely — maintain the ridged veneer. she knows her sister worries about her, wishes she would talk to her more, but violet is stubborn. she offers valuable assistance as a medic, but she still feels useless when it comes to fighting the undead. she’s learning, of course – teaching herself. one on one, she can take down a walker decently enough, but once they start grouping up? violet panics, gets overwhelmed. compared to some of the other, more skilled fighters amongst their ranks? she feels pathetic.

[preachingcheese]

Since quarantine started about four months ago, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the point of life is. Yes, my depression tends to push the narrative that life is meaningless, but this hasn’t just been one long depressive episode for me. It’s something else. This post is long and maybe a little rambley, just fyi.

I’m a college student. I’m studying to be a high school history teacher. I’ve wanted to do that since I was a sophomore in high school, and I have a scholarship that gives me lots of money but locks me into teaching for five consecutive years. Why did I choose to go into teaching? Simple. It’s about the meaning of life.

I didn’t really have good friends until my second year of high school- the same year I decided to pursue teaching. Up to that point, I of course had family and friends that I loved, but I was much more concerned with imaginary things. Like Doctor Who. Or whatever imaginary scenarios I could play out in my head to distract myself when I was bored. A lot of that was because I almost never got to hang out with my friends outside of school. My parents were a bit strict, worked full-time, and we lived far away from everyone else. I don’t hold that against them.

In high school, I got a social life basically for the first time ever. I lost my annoying bossiness and awkwardness of middle school, trading it in for a more tolerable perfectionism that was overpowered with an unwavering love for my friends and the teachers that were inspiring me.

I believed I had discovered the meaning of life. I hadn’t even been looking for it, but I found it: the meaning of life is in other people. We live to love each other, and that is our ultimate purpose. Because to me, there was literally nothing more fulfilling in this life than loving my friends and knowing they loved me back. I met a lot of people who agreed with me, feeling the same way about their loved ones, and my hypothesis was backed up even further. Teaching kids about history was certainly important, but being there for these kids while they sorted out the meaning of life felt like my purpose. The social and emotional aspects of the job made me feel right at home. I would be there to love these kids.

Flash forward, four years later. I’ve gotten through two years of college. I ended up adding a music degree in the mix, but my goal to teach stayed the same. Everything was going according to plan. Which is what a lot of people said until coronavirus hit.

Universities everywhere started shutting down, and everything was ripped away from me. My home, my on-campus job, and, most importantly, all of the people I cared about. I went home to my family, who I love very much, but those four people weren’t going to fill the hole made by the others I haven’t seen in so long.

I’m actually very lucky; no one else in my family was laid off, and my parents are more than able to financially support me until I eventually go back. And I know I’m not special for missing people. We’re all suffering hard from this quarantine, and most people are suffering more than I am. I’m just writing about what I’m experiencing, which is heavily influenced by my mental illness.

The meaning of my life was inexplicably gone. I don’t think I left the house for so much as a grocery trip for at least a month. My parents refused to let me go get another job while my bank account slowly drained; while they pay for my food and essentials, things like my online math class (which I need to graduate on time) and little things to keep me busy had to come out of my own pocket. And talking to friends over the phone or through video for like an hour a day wasn’t the same as getting to actually be with them. Not even a little bit.

Yeah, I was pretty fucking depressed for awhile. My brain told me life was meaningless, and I felt I had every reason to believe that. But eventually, when classes ended and I got a little energy, I found something else. I started watching TV again, something I almost never had time for at school. I wrote creatively about whatever I wanted for the first time in years. I picked up painting.

I was back in middle school. Yes, I even rewatched a little bit of Doctor Who. With no access to people, I pursued creativity. Because, honestly, it felt like I had nothing left to live for.

Now I’m supposed to go back to school in five weeks. I should be happy about that because I will continue pursuing my meaning. I’ll get to be with my people. But after four straight months of little to no access to people, of thriving on media and creative pursuits that I won’t have time for at school?

Maybe people aren’t the meaning of life. Or maybe real life is so painful and stupid that it doesn’t have a good enough justifiable purpose. Maybe it’s just better to keep making imaginary worlds with imaginary people that I can’t be torn away from. Maybe the only purpose of real life is to escape from it.

I feel so helpless. There are so many people in this world I want to help. So many people don’t have the health or necessities that I have. It emotionally pains me. There’s really nothing I can do about it. I can’t fix the world, and it doesn’t even feel like I can really be there for other people anymore. So I’m just going to keep creating places to escape to until it’s safe enough to come out. I’d like to turn that into a career in writing, or film, or television, or something like that. That way, maybe I can at least help other people escape, too.

[scootoaster]

The coronavirus might show up in your semen, but don’t panic

Americans around the country are coming down with a near universal side effect: quarantine fatigue. (Pixabay/)

An extreme cold-snap and a surprise snow shower hit parts of the US this past weekend, which would normally make many of us glad to shelter inside and binge-watch Netflix. But Americans around the country are coming down with a dangerous condition: quarantine fatigue. As our nation grapples with the realization that this pandemic isn’t ending anytime soon, the itch to get back to ‘normal’ life is reaching an apex.

However, public health experts and scientists tracking the virus warn that this is not the time to relax our precautions. They argue we need to address this sense of fatigue head on, and find ways to move forward in a socially-distant world. This is especially true as new information emerges on how the novel coronavirus infects kids, and how it spreads. Here’s some of the most crucial COVID-19 news you may have missed in the last few days.

A video clip about a coronavirus conspiracy theory spread around the internet last week. This is what you need to know about it.

Last week, a 26-minute Youtube video in which a scientist claims that “global elites” had COVID-19 created in a lab as a means of making profit and gaining power went viral. In the clip, which was supposedly part of a longer documentary called “Plandemic,” a controversial and largely discredited virologist named Judy Mikovits makes unsubstantiated claims about NIAID head Anthony Fauci, saying he buried her work on vaccines and their supposed ability to damage people’s immune systems.

Youtube and Facebook took down the videos, stating that they were providing misinformation about the coronavirus that could harm human health. This video is just the latest in a slew of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, how it works, and its origin. To date, all evidence on the novel virus’ beginning points to a natural source—it likely jumped from bats to an as-of-yet unidentified intermediary animal before it reached humans and spread. Further, researchers across the globe agree that a vaccine is our safest, most effective method for combatting COVID-19.

Studying videos like these and how they go viral can help us better understand how pseudoscientific conspiracies like the anti-vaccination movement spread and endure. But for now, keeping the general public from taking Mikovits’ statements as truth is of paramount importance. If you’re seeing people defend the video on your social media feeds—or you aren’t quite sure how to feel about it yourself—a number of outlets have done a good job of debunking the clip’s contents.

A small study found coronavirus in semen—but this doesn’t necessarily mean the virus can be sexually transmitted.

A study by Chinese researchers published last week in the journal JAMA, Infectious Diseases, found presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the semen of people who had tested positive for the coronavirus. However, outside researchers argue that it’s likely these are nonviable viral fragments that are incapable of infecting other humans. Coronavirus still appears to spread almost exclusively through respiratory droplets. Even so, some doctors say more research is needed to know for sure. And it’s important to remember that if you’re having sex, you’re probably getting exposed to respiratory droplets—unless you’re engaging in activities that keep you several feet apart—so whether or not semen could infect you is sort of a moot point.

South Korea has linked the majority of its new COVID-19 cases to nightlife.

South Korea reported 35 new cases of COVID-19, the highest in more than one month. Most of these—29 in total—were traced back to a number of nightclubs and bars in Seoul. While the availability of this information highlights the success of the country’s contract tracing program, it also raises the question of whether these contract tracing systems can be an invasion of individual privacy—many of the facilities where infections spread cater to the LGBTQ+ community, which could put some of the traced individuals in an awkward position, or even in personal peril, if friends and families do not know they frequent such locations.

According to Reuters, Seoul mayor Park Won-soon begged club-goers to get tested, “promising that personal information would be protected and warning that people caught evading testing could be fined.”

This uptick in cases also highlights the importance of continued social distancing, despite the country’s successful decline in cases.

The Trump administration buried a comprehensive guide for opening up the country.

A 17-page report by an expert team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—"Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up American Again Framework"—was shelved and buried by white house officials, but an anonymous federal employee leaked the text to the Associated Press. The document—which can you read here—is a comprehensive guide aimed to help business owners, religious organizations, schools, and state and local officials reopen without causing huge upticks in COVID-19 cases.

While President Trump’s federal task force remains together for now, it has largely left decisions on reopening businesses and lifting social distancing edicts for individual states to manage. Many health experts fear this could result in a surge of new infections.

Llamas could play a key role in our search for a coronavirus vaccine.

Yup, you read that right. In a study published last week in Cell, researchers found that the antibodies of a four-year-old, chocolate-colored llama named Winter were able to neutralize the novel coronavirus. It turns out that in response to an invading microbe (like SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19), llamas can produce an extra set of protective antibodies. Virologists have been studying viral responses in llamas for years, and hope their excellent immune systems could help protect us from this pandemic and others.

Doctors have reported a rare, life-threatening syndrome in kids with COVID-19.

So far, kids have mostly been spared the worst of COVID-19, with most pediatric cases being mild in nature. But this past week, physicians across the country have sounded an alarm about a set of new and worrisome symptoms. Pediatric multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome is an immune response that seems to strike weeks after an initial infection, and appears to attack the circulatory system rather than the lungs.

Symptoms of this condition can include fever, rash, reddish eyes, and swollen lymph nodes, as well as abdominal pain. These symptoms are unlike the most common ones in adults, which include cough and shortness of breath.

While the condition is incredibly rare, pediatricians and other health experts are urging parents to look out for these symptoms, and to not assume that kids will only have mild cases of COVID-19. Along with new evidence of COVID-19 causing strokes in otherwise young, healthy patients, these reports remind us of how little we actually know about the novel coronavirus.