爱达荷州蒙彼利埃-羽衣甘蓝·沃思里奇（Kale Wuthrich）看着医生在急诊室将儿子围住，通过静脉输液给他注入液体，进行了一系列测试并试图稳定他。自从他12岁那年在轻度冠状病毒发作后几周突然病倒以来，他一直感到困惑和恐惧。
伍思里希说：“他当时很接近没有做到这一点，基本上他们告诉我坐在角落里祈祷。” “这就是我所做的。”
感恩节后不久，这个来自爱达荷州一个僻静山谷的男孩成为美国数百名被诊断出对COVID-19罕见，极端免疫反应的儿童之一，这种儿童被称为多系统炎症综合症。父亲说，库珀·伍思里奇（Cooper Wuthrich）的发烧猛增，因为他的关节和器官发炎，包括他的心脏，这使他的生命处于危险之中。
“库珀在每个器官的关节中都有它。卡勒·伍思里奇（Kale Wuthrich）说：“他的脚肿了我的脚，肿胀的眼睛是红色的，从脑袋里钻出来的，非常昏昏欲睡，非常害怕。库珀永远也不会抱怨痛苦，但这就是他能做的告诉我他受了多大伤害。”
住院几天后，库珀回到家中。但是，这个爱滑雪橇和滑雪的孩子随后几天大部分时间都在爱达荷州蒙彼利埃（Montpelier）休息室的沙发上度过，他的卡车停靠在他父母的手中。短暂的步行使他流鼻血，他仍在接受每天两次注射的药物治疗。
对于库珀的父母来说，他的病加深了他们戴口罩的决心，并敦促其他人戴口罩，尽管保守的爱达荷州的推倒可能会很激烈。数月以来，数百人抗议口罩的使用要求，甚至迫使一名博伊西市卫生官员本月赶回家，因为担心她的孩子，因为抗议者在她的前门外射出一声枪响。
即使冠状病毒患者遍布爱达荷州的医院，对限制措施的反对依然强烈。州长布拉德·利特尔（Brad Little）警告说，如果床位耗尽，可能需要在医院会议室治疗车祸受害者。他鼓励人们戴口罩，但他是大约十二位尚未发布全州授权的州长之一。
库珀的母亲丹妮·伍斯里希（Dani Wuthrich）说，库珀在10月下旬发现了这种病毒，很可能在学校就读了，不需要面对面罩就可以进行面对面的上课。
她说：“他已经扎根，所以除了上学之外，他不允许去任何地方。” “我们有点不知道他除了学校以外还能得到它。”
几天后他康复了，经过两周的隔离后回到了打篮球。
但是随着感恩节的临近，库珀打电话回家练习，这对于一个精力充沛的孩子来说是不寻常的。他的发烧高峰超过103度，父母给他的药对他没有帮助。他呕吐了；他在晚上辗转反侧。
随着日子的流逝，库珀的发烧拒绝了，他的父母将他赶到了一家当地医院，医生在那里进行了化验，试图找出问题所在。他们没有看到病情改善，也没有怀疑阑尾炎，于是他们将他装上一辆救护车，经过三个小时的白指驱动器穿越群山，到达盐湖城的初级儿童医院。
致力于研究这种疾病的儿科心脏病专家Dongngan Truong博士说，库珀是大约40名在小学儿童中接受过炎症综合症治疗的孩子之一。
Truong说：“幸运的是，这是一种罕见的并发症，但这是一种并发症，可以使孩子很快生病。” “我们需要认真对待它，因为我们不知道对孩子的身体，心脏，其他器官系统的长期影响。”
疾病预防控制中心8月份的一份报告发现，许多患有这种疾病的儿童患有严重的并发症，包括心脏发炎和肾脏损害。在近三分之二的病例中，儿童去了重症监护病房，平均加护病房停留时间为五天。调查发现，西班牙裔和黑人儿童占该综合征的四分之三。
疾病预防控制中心（CDC）数据显示，截至12月4日，全国共有1,288名儿童被诊断出患有该综合征，其中23人死亡。
根源似乎是免疫系统的功能障碍，当暴露于病毒时，它会加速过度运转，释放出可损害器官的化学物质。症状包括发烧，腹部或颈部疼痛，呕吐，腹泻，皮疹，眼睛有血丝和疲劳。
Truong说，一开始可能很难识别，因为有些孩子有轻微的COVID-19症状，以至于父母直到炎症综合征出现时才知道自己感染了这种病毒。她说，目前尚不清楚为什么有些孩子得了这种综合症，而另一些孩子却没有，因此防止这种病的唯一方法就是通过面具和社交疏散等步骤阻止孩子感染该病毒。
伍兹里奇人回到爱达荷州的家中，试图说服朋友和家人采取预防措施。对于狩猎伙伴，甘蓝·伍思里奇（Kale Wuthrich）通过将其与戴鹿时放于脸上的伪装进行比较来制作自己的口罩。
他们需要在卡车停靠站和餐厅Ranch Hand Trail Stop为其员工准备口罩，在那里他们从洗碗到服务零件所有者一路攀升。
但是，他们并不能总是让客户在前哨的沿山蜿蜒曲折的高速公路上戴口罩，其陡峭的屋顶和白色的隔板墙成为长途卡车司机的避难所。最近，许多没有面罩的人在餐厅入口处被牛仔模特戴着美国国旗图案的面具通过。
“我们真的希望他们能在我们县的州内执行面具任务，”丹尼·伍思里希（Dani Wuthrich）说。但是“我认为那永远不会发生。”
MONTPELIER, Idaho -- Kale Wuthrich watched doctors surround his son in the emergency room, giving him fluids though IV tubes, running a battery of tests and trying to stabilize him. He was enveloped by the confusion and fear that had been building since his 12-year-old suddenly fell ill weeks after a mild bout with the coronavirus.
“He was very close at that point to not making it, and basically they told me to sit in the corner and pray,” Wuthrich said. “And that’s what I did.”
Shortly after Thanksgiving, the boy from a secluded valley in Idaho became one of hundreds of children in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with a rare, extreme immune response to COVID-19 called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. Cooper Wuthrich’s fever spiked as his joints and organs became inflamed, including his heart, putting his life at risk, his father said.
“Cooper had it in every organ, in his joints; his feet were swelled up the size of mine, his poor eyes were red, bugged out of his head and very lethargic, very scared," Kale Wuthrich said. “Cooper would never, has never complained about pain, but that’s all he could do was tell me how bad he hurt.”
After days in the hospital, Cooper is back home. But the kid who loves sledding and skiing spent much of the following days on the couch in the lounge of the Montpelier, Idaho, truck stop that his parents partly own. A short walk left him with a bloody nose, and he’s still on medications that require twice-daily injections.
For Cooper’s parents, his illness deepened their commitment to wearing masks and urging others to do so, though pushback can be intense in conservative Idaho. Hundreds of people have protested mask requirements for months, even forcing one Boise health official to rush home this month in fear for her child as protesters blasted a sound clip of gunfire outside her front door.
Opposition to restrictions is strong even as coronavirus patients fill Idaho hospitals. Gov. Brad Little warned that car crash victims could need to be treated in hospital conference rooms if beds run out. He's encouraged people to wear masks but is among about a dozen governors who haven't issued a statewide mandate.
Cooper caught the virus in late October, likely at school, which is open for in-person classes without a mask requirement, said his mother, Dani Wuthrich.
“He had got himself grounded, and so he hadn’t been allowed to go anywhere except for to school,” she said. “We kind of don’t know anywhere else he could have gotten it besides school.”
He recovered in a few days and was back to playing basketball after a two-week quarantine.
But as Thanksgiving approached, Cooper called to come home from practice, unusual for a kid with bottomless energy. His fever spiked above 103 degrees, and the medicine his parents gave him didn’t help. He was throwing up; he tossed and turned at night.
As the days wore on and Cooper's fever refused to break, his parents rushed him to a local hospital, where doctors ran tests to try to figure out what was wrong. Not seeing improvement and suspecting appendicitis, they loaded him into an ambulance for a three-hour white-knuckle drive through the mountains to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.
Cooper is one of about 40 kids treated for the inflammatory syndrome at Primary Children’s, said Dr. Dongngan Truong, a pediatric cardiologist who is helping with a study on the illness.
“Luckily, it is a rare complication, but it’s a complication that can get kids pretty sick pretty quickly,” Truong said. “We need to take it seriously, because we don’t know the long-term effects on the child’s body, the heart, the other organ systems.”
An August report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that many children with the condition had severe complications, including inflammation of the heart and kidney damage. In nearly two-thirds of cases, children went to intensive care units, and the average ICU stay was five days. It found Hispanic and Black children made up three-quarters of those with the syndrome.
A total of 1,288 kids nationwide had been diagnosed with the syndrome as of Dec. 4, and 23 had died, according to the CDC.
The root seems to be a dysfunction of the immune system, which kicks into overdrive when exposed to the virus, releasing chemicals that can damage organs. Symptoms include fever, abdominal or neck pain, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, bloodshot eyes and fatigue.
It can be tricky to identify at first because some kids have such mild COVID-19 symptoms that parents didn't know they had the virus until the inflammatory syndrome appears, Truong said. It’s unclear why some children get the syndrome and others don't, so the only way to prevent it is to stop kids from getting the virus, with steps like masks and social distancing, she said.
Back home in Idaho, the Wuthriches are trying to persuade friends and family to take precautions. To a hunting buddy, Kale Wuthrich made his case for mask-wearing by comparing it to the camouflage he puts on his face while staking out deer.
They require masks for employees at their truck stop and restaurant, Ranch Hand Trail Stop, where they worked their way up from dishwashing and serving to part owners.
But they can’t always get customers to wear masks at the outpost along a windswept highway edged by mountains, its peaked roof and white-clapboard walls standing out as a refuge for long-haul truckers. Recently, plenty of people without face coverings passed by a cowboy mannequin with an American flag-patterned mask set up at the entrance to the restaurant.
“We really wish that they would instate a mask mandate here in our county,” Dani Wuthrich said. But “I don’t think that will ever happen.”
“He was very close at that point to not making it, and basically they told me to sit in the corner and pray,” Wuthrich said. “And that’s what I did.”
Shortly after Thanksgiving, the boy from a secluded valley in Idaho became one of hundreds of children in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with a rare, extreme immune response to COVID-19 called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. Cooper Wuthrich’s fever spiked as his joints and organs became inflamed, including his heart, putting his life at risk, his father said.
“Cooper had it in every organ, in his joints; his feet were swelled up the size of mine, his poor eyes were red, bugged out of his head and very lethargic, very scared," Kale Wuthrich said. “Cooper would never, has never complained about pain, but that’s all he could do was tell me how bad he hurt.”
After days in the hospital, Cooper is back home. But the kid who loves sledding and skiing spent much of the following days on the couch in the lounge of the Montpelier, Idaho, truck stop that his parents partly own. A short walk left him with a bloody nose, and he’s still on medications that require twice-daily injections.
For Cooper’s parents, his illness deepened their commitment to wearing masks and urging others to do so, though pushback can be intense in conservative Idaho. Hundreds of people have protested mask requirements for months, even forcing one Boise health official to rush home this month in fear for her child as protesters blasted a sound clip of gunfire outside her front door.
Opposition to restrictions is strong even as coronavirus patients fill Idaho hospitals. Gov. Brad Little warned that car crash victims could need to be treated in hospital conference rooms if beds run out. He's encouraged people to wear masks but is among about a dozen governors who haven't issued a statewide mandate.
Cooper caught the virus in late October, likely at school, which is open for in-person classes without a mask requirement, said his mother, Dani Wuthrich.
“He had got himself grounded, and so he hadn’t been allowed to go anywhere except for to school,” she said. “We kind of don’t know anywhere else he could have gotten it besides school.”
He recovered in a few days and was back to playing basketball after a two-week quarantine.
But as Thanksgiving approached, Cooper called to come home from practice, unusual for a kid with bottomless energy. His fever spiked above 103 degrees, and the medicine his parents gave him didn’t help. He was throwing up; he tossed and turned at night.
As the days wore on and Cooper's fever refused to break, his parents rushed him to a local hospital, where doctors ran tests to try to figure out what was wrong. Not seeing improvement and suspecting appendicitis, they loaded him into an ambulance for a three-hour white-knuckle drive through the mountains to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.
Cooper is one of about 40 kids treated for the inflammatory syndrome at Primary Children’s, said Dr. Dongngan Truong, a pediatric cardiologist who is helping with a study on the illness.
“Luckily, it is a rare complication, but it’s a complication that can get kids pretty sick pretty quickly,” Truong said. “We need to take it seriously, because we don’t know the long-term effects on the child’s body, the heart, the other organ systems.”
An August report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that many children with the condition had severe complications, including inflammation of the heart and kidney damage. In nearly two-thirds of cases, children went to intensive care units, and the average ICU stay was five days. It found Hispanic and Black children made up three-quarters of those with the syndrome.
A total of 1,288 kids nationwide had been diagnosed with the syndrome as of Dec. 4, and 23 had died, according to the CDC.
The root seems to be a dysfunction of the immune system, which kicks into overdrive when exposed to the virus, releasing chemicals that can damage organs. Symptoms include fever, abdominal or neck pain, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, bloodshot eyes and fatigue.
It can be tricky to identify at first because some kids have such mild COVID-19 symptoms that parents didn't know they had the virus until the inflammatory syndrome appears, Truong said. It’s unclear why some children get the syndrome and others don't, so the only way to prevent it is to stop kids from getting the virus, with steps like masks and social distancing, she said.
Back home in Idaho, the Wuthriches are trying to persuade friends and family to take precautions. To a hunting buddy, Kale Wuthrich made his case for mask-wearing by comparing it to the camouflage he puts on his face while staking out deer.
They require masks for employees at their truck stop and restaurant, Ranch Hand Trail Stop, where they worked their way up from dishwashing and serving to part owners.
But they can’t always get customers to wear masks at the outpost along a windswept highway edged by mountains, its peaked roof and white-clapboard walls standing out as a refuge for long-haul truckers. Recently, plenty of people without face coverings passed by a cowboy mannequin with an American flag-patterned mask set up at the entrance to the restaurant.
“We really wish that they would instate a mask mandate here in our county,” Dani Wuthrich said. But “I don’t think that will ever happen.”
