COVID-19 is so much more lethal than many think...

But sadly, thanks to all of the online rumors and conspiracy theories, many strongly believe that there is nothing to worry about.

So many people think that COVID-19 is as harmless as the common cold...

And because of this incorrect belief, they feel that wearing masks and sticking to restrictions is unnecessary - which is utterly shocking.

Another misconception is that certain individuals are more immune to the virus than others.

While this is true to an extent (for example, the elderly are at a much higher risk than young people) nobody is safe from contracting COVID-19 and being seriously knocked by its effects.

Even though children have been proven to be at the lowest risk of contracting the virus...

This doesn't mean that they are safe from it.

And this is exactly what one mom from Texas recently learned.

Tara Copeland's 5-year-old daughter, Peyton, recently contracted a rare complication that came from COVID-19 and was dangerously close to losing her life.

Tara decided to share her little girl's story with the world in an attempt to warn other parents about the dangers of this pandemic...

And alongside well-wishers for the family, people were left utterly shocked.

Weeks before Christmas, Tara and her husband tested positive for COVID-19...

And their 5 children, including Peyton, all displayed mild symptoms of the virus. The family immediately went into isolation and thankfully, by Christmas, they had tested negative and felt much better.

But on Christmas morning, Peyton woke up with a low-grade fever and a headache.

She was seen the next day by a doctor at an urgent care clinic and treated for strep throat, but her symptoms continued to worsen. "By the night of the 27th, she came down with a really bad rash, and by this time her lips were swollen, her eyes were bloodshot and her face was starting to swell. She still had a horrible headache and stomachache and kept waking up in pain," Tara explained to Good Morning America.

Tara took her daughter the next morning to the emergency room at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth...

Where she was diagnosed with MIS-C, a condition Tara said she had never heard of before. "They tested her for COVID-19 and said she was negative for COVID but she was positive for antibodies, and they started doing more lab work and figured out she probably had MIS-C. By that night she was in the ICU and about 4 pm the next day she was put on a ventilator."

MIS-C is a condition where different body parts like the heart, lungs, brain, skin, eyes, and kidneys can become inflamed.

The condition occurs in children who have had the virus that causes COVID-19, according to Dr. Nicholas Rister, an infectious disease specialist at Cook Children's Hospital. "It's frustrating because we don't know the exact link to why is COVID doing this in particular," Rister told GMA, "What we've seen previously with other infections in children, and in adults too, your immune system gets really revved up, and starts driving inflammation, which normally isn't bad because that's how your body drives off infections."

In Peyton's case, her symptoms had worsened throughout her body to the point where she was struggling to breathe and maintain consciousness.

She stayed on a ventilator for 2 days and then was placed on oxygen along with a feeding tube because she could not eat. If I had known and been aware of [MIS-C], I might have just gone straight to the hospital instead of to urgent care," the worried mom explained, I didn't know that it existed or the symptoms and because she had a positive strep test, I just thought okay she has strep."

After spending nearly 2 weeks hospitalized, Peyton was discharged on January 7th and is thankfully expected to make a full recovery.

"She's a little miracle really, is what [doctors] say," Tara said, "It'll be a pretty long road to get back to herself but they expect no permanent damage."

The mom said she is sharing her family's experience in the hopes of making more parents aware of MIS-C, adding:

"Parents need to know the symptoms so [they] can bring a child in to be treated as soon as possible."

Because children can often be asymptomatic of COVID-19, experts like Rister say it is important for parents to watch for symptoms in children who have been exposed to COVID-19...

Whether or not they have actually tested positive for the virus.

We're just glad that Peyton has made a full recovery!

And we hope that more parents will be made aware of the dangers of the pandemic through this terrifying story. For more, read on to see why a doctor was left heartbroken over the most recent COVID protest...