That's exactly what they're seeing, and why this article was written:
"An initial study found cardiac damage in as many as 1 in 5 patients, leading to heart failure and death even among those who show no signs of respiratory distress."
Unfortunately the article doesn't say what percent of people with cardiac damage did not have respiratory issues as well.
Patients who had heart disease before their coronavirus infections were much more likely to show heart damage afterward. But some patients with no previous heart disease also showed signs of cardiac damage. In fact, patients with no preexisting heart conditions who incurred heart damage during their infection were more likely to die than patients with previous heart disease but no COVID-19-induced cardiac damage.
Isn't it likely that the patients who had no preexisting heart conditions actually had undiagnosed preexisting heart conditions?
We also don't probably know all the possible heart conditions out there!
Finally, while someone might not have a condition (disease), they also might not have good function of the heart, this is not considered a pre-existing condition. This tends to happen with people who are overweight, leading to arteriosclerosis, but since the norm has moved so far in one direction, our criteria for disease might have moved as well.
Finally, the lungs and heart work in coordination to bring oxygen to the rest of the body. If the lungs stop functioning (which may not have direct symptoms that we expect)... I think it's pretty easy to fill in the rest.
Sure, it might be the case, but you cannot draw any conclusion here unless you compare it to other pneumonia cases.
If two people have similar heart damage but one knows about it and manages the hypertension that caused it, who is in worse shape if a disease adds stress to your system?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105402/covid-hospitaliz...
However we mostly don't try to confirm cases if it won't affect the care we give. We just tell them to self-isolate. We therefore will not have good statistics on what percentage of cases are confirmed until after the immediate crisis is over and we test to see how many have antibodies.
So your figure is, "Of young people who have it severely enough to get tested, 15-20% get hospitalized." This says nothing about what fraction of cases are severe enough to get tested.
Also note that we undercount deaths. If a person dies and was never confirmed to have COVID-19, they are also not counted as a COVID-19 death. Nobody knows how big this undercount factor is.
0–9 years 0 13 0·00% (0·00–0·00)
10–19 years 1 50 0·0408% (0·0243–0·0832)
20–29 years 49 437 1·04% (0·622–2·13)
30–39 years 124 733 3·43% (2·04–7·00)
40–49 years 154 743 4·25% (2·53–8·68)
50–59 years 222 790 8·16% (4·86–16·7)
60–69 years 201 560 11·8% (7·01–24·0)
70–79 years 133 263 16·6% (9·87–33·8)
≥80 years 51 76 18·4% (11·0–37·6)
Data is from Table 3 near end of paper, table title: “Estimates of the proportion of all infections that would lead to hospitalisation, obtained from a subset of cases reported in mainland China“
Isn’t this premature given the lack of data?
We’re seeing an anomaly documented and being studied. It’s not cause for alarm. But neither does it merit such dismissal.
whether any given youtuber deserves that stature and esteem is certainly unclear, as that takes direct observation of the person over time to ascertain.
I.e. in Connecticut, there was a "covid19 infant death". Except that infant died at home due to a horrible accident. Arrived at the hospital deceased. Postmortem, was tested and coronavirus positive, therefore was counted as "Covid19 Death" and "infant dies of coronavirus!!!" in the news.
Death rates and case numbers are terribly skewed, and the data we have is abysmal.
CDC just massively changed the definition of what a "positive" case means. PCR tests have a notorious accuracy problem, so previously the definition of a positive case was consecutive positive PCR/RT-PCR tests.
Now the definition has changed to "if any test has ever come back positive, then positive".
To be clear, this new definition means that if you test positive, then have two consecutive negative tests, you're still counted as a positive case.
Just this redefinition could account for a large part of the increases in "positive" cases we're seeing.
Couple this with allocation of funds and resources based on positive cases and death totals, and you have a situation where it's in everyone's best interest to inflate the numbers as much as possible.
We saw the same issues during HIV/AIDS "crisis".
Be very skeptical of any numbers, rates and data you're seeing. At this point, the CDC and state agencies are refusing to publish their source data (which is very strange).
The most likely cause of the heart damage by far is the systemic inflammation induced by pneumonia. We know this because pneumonia patients of all types often have heart strain afterwards[1]. But that damage is very rarely permanent as the risk subsides back to baseline given enough time.
Until we see evidence of heart issues in patients without pneumonia complications, we shouldn't be any more scared of covid-19 as we were before. In particular young and healthy people still have very little risk from infection. Patients who recover without serious complications should not be afraid of hidden heart damage.
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/heart-attack-ris...