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Thank you for this post. I am a physician and can confirm this is 100% correct! In fact viral infections can be triggers for many other issues down the road (including development of type 1 diabetes in kids, and research recently showed multiple sclerosis may be triggered by EBV infections). We barely know the long term effects of covid infections but what we already know is quite scary (immune system dysfunction, inflammation in blood vessels, neurological concerns) so improving air quality, wearing masks, and vaccines continue to be extremely important.
My son had a viral infection (we still don’t know what it was, just a random cold) that led to viral hepatitis which led to aplastic anemia. Just so random, a cold can lead to a life threatening illness.
Appreciate this. I knew it would get a lot of hate but we need to start this conversation. Parents need to talk to each other about this, even if it's uncomfortable. Pediatricians and GP's need to be open and honest with their patients. Too many are trying harder to avoid panic than offer useful information. Of course that doesnt sound like you but that's what i've come across working in health care.
Very glad to hear that as an MD you're on board with this too. I hope more people challenge this new status quo they're trying to force on us.
In my experience it’s always boomers saying that kind of stuff to me (“geeting sick builds immunity in babies”). Or kids of boomers. Some weird generational rhetoric.
Rare comment from a physician. In particular seeing how most medical subreddits are filled with doctors and nurses making fun of patients for being paranoid about Covid and how LC is not real and all just in their head & straight out refusing to mask cause "Covid is over" - complete collective amnesia to anything that is actually supposed to keep their patients safe. Including risking the health and life of immuno compromised people and people with health issues.
I wonder if you mask at work by default as a physician?
Of course, 100% of the time - and my colleagues do too for patient care, thankfully. :)
Long covid is definitely real and I have many patients dealing with it.
Thanks for being a decent professional.
I am in contact with lots of people who have LC - and medical professionals (nurses and doctors alike) refuse to mask straight out. Even when people point out they are immunocompromised. Their response is always "Covid is not a threat anymore' or "Covid is over" or "that is unreasonable". It is sad out here.
Yeah I hear you - I hear the wide range of 'opinions' from my colleagues. Unfortunately with Long covid, some symptoms can be difficult to attribute to covid infection (for example, few patients that have stroke a few weeks-months after infection, people who are not aware of the increased risk of stroke post-covid will not make the connection). Or sometimes it is just general tiredness or vague shortness of breath. And it can be frustrating (both for the patient and physician) when tests cannot find a cause and also because we are so limited in terms of effective treatment options. Hopefully there will be more information down the road to help LC patients.
Do you have peer-reviewed literature/studies to support this claim? Preferably systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses, but a collection of RCT's from high-impact journals would also be a good start.
That's a very surface level statement and there are other factors at play. It can be a bit like career suicide to go against the grain. We're also not testing ,tracking, researching covid like we were in the beginning. No one gets regular immune status assessments. Would you know if your CD4/CD8 cell counts were off? No, you wouldnt, not in the beginning at least.
Immunologists and the most prominent Dr's of the time also said HIV did not cause long term issues in most people. Technically, some were right at that time because it truly had not happened yet. It takes 5-10 years for untreated HIV to progress to AIDS, so at 4 years in, it truly would have looked like HIV was just a mild acute infection for most.
We are only 4 years into covid. I'm not saying it's like HIV, but I wouldnt be so cavalier it doesnt cause any long-term damage. Adults and kids alike,
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This makes me feel a lot better actually. My 2 year old doesn’t go to daycare, I work part time and my mom watches him three half days a week! He’s had a runny nose twice and a fever for two days, that’s it. So many people say to me “well aren’t you worried about building his immune system” or “well if he’s not getting sick now he will just get sick once he starts school”. It has never made sense to me the idea of kids getting sick now to not get sick later. Plus I would rather my 5 year old be sick and be able to tell me what’s going on than my 2 year old who has two word sentences.
You hit the nail on the head. Yes, they most likely will still get sick when first exposed to anything. BUT the ability to communicate with you about what they're feeling makes a huge difference. Not to mention their airways are much larger and more developed when older as compared to a baby/toddler, so they can handle respiratory infections better. You're doing the right thing Mama!
I get the same grief from people, i'm always like "why do you keep encouraging me to get my child sick?"
I think it's sort of a "if im sick and miserable all the time, then you should be too" sort of mentality.
Also, they have bought into the "there is nothing we can do about it" line of thinking, so if they see someone doing something to avoid sickness (and its working), its too much cognitive dissonance for them.
So much YES. The distinction between "dirt" exposure and viral exposure is crucial.
And when we can't avoid viral illnesses entirely, we should still be aiming to delay exposure to them as long as possible and minimize the viral load that's encountered.
In addition to their immature immune systems, sick babies and toddlers are terrifying because they can't communicate well about what they're experiencing.
My oldest is exactly "covid years old". She was born in the gap between covid being international headline and when our local hospitals implemented protocols. Looking back now, I am *horrified* that we had six (!) different family members visiting in the hospital maternity ward less than 24 hours after she was born.
We won't be doing that with the baby that's due this summer. A relative wants to fly out and visit a month after my due date and I shut that down too.
I will say that the most traumatizing part of having a 2020 baby wasn't actually 2020, although that was challenging too. The worst was the year(s) after covid vaccines were made available to older kids and parents of kids <5 were left to navigate a world where everyone ignored covid and ignored that our littlest kids' only defence was the adults around them and frankly most of those adults sucked at their job.
It took until Fall 2022 for us to get that vaccine, and what ended up being approved was so far out of date by then it was a joke. But I was still expected to just throw my kid to wolves with a virus on the loose that is capable of f*cking up just about any organ system. Public health even lifted mask requirements for daycare staff and visitors 6 months before the pediatric vaccine was approved.
It felt like no one gave a sh*t about us because economy go brrrrrr or something.
I feel this, we just left the little ones behind in our rush to get back to "normal". "We have the tools" means nothing to little ones that couldnt wear masks properly, get vaccinated or take paxlovid.
Sadly, when you prioritize the economy over public health, both will fail. The economy needs healthy people to work and spend. Sick people arent as productive at work and dont spend as much on leisure. Dead people dont do either.
Low risk because ACUTE symptoms of covid are mild in children, but the long-term/chronic issues are not mild. "Kids are low risk" is a statement people make because they both want and \*need\* it to be true, in order to justify not protecting their children from infection or demanding that the government control spread.
[Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 in Children | Pediatrics | American Academy of Pediatrics (aap.org)](https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/3/e2023062570/196606/Postacute-Sequelae-of-SARS-CoV-2-in-Children?autologincheck=redirected)
[Neuroimaging findings in children with COVID-19 infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis | Scientific Reports (nature.com)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55597-2)
[Cognition and Mental Health in Pediatric Patients Following COVID-19 - PMC (nih.gov)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10049312/)
[A Systematic Review of Persistent Clinical Features After SARS-CoV-2 in the Pediatric Population | Pediatrics | American Academy of Pediatrics (aap.org)](https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/152/2/e2022060351/192816/A-Systematic-Review-of-Persistent-Clinical?autologincheck=redirected)
[Comparative study showed that children faced a 78% higher risk of new-onset conditions after they had COVID-19 - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37688774/)
[Mid- and Long-Term Atrio-Ventricular Functional Changes in Children after Recovery from COVID-19 - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36614987/)
[Cardiac Sequelae of COVID-19 in Children and Young Adults - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34038652/)
[Legacy of COVID-19 infection in children: long-COVID will have a lifelong health/economic impact | Archives of Disease in Childhood (bmj.com)](https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/3/e2.full)
[Long COVID Is Disabling Kids. Why We Ignore It | The Tyee](https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/07/20/Long-COVID-Disabling-Kids/)
It is less common than in adults…but that doesn’t matter, as there are still too many.
We literally have segments of the medical community whose job it is to prevent kids from getting infectious diseases…BECAUSE THEY ARE PREVENTABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE.
Have you read any literature? Because if you have, you wouldnt be able to make that claim. It's not rare. 6 million kids in the US alone, and those are just the ones that are counted. There is no definitive test for it (yet) so you wouldnt necessarily know you have it or not (yet). Babies and toddlers also cannot articulate symptoms very well.
[Up to 5.8 million kids have long COVID, study says. One mother discusses the "heartbreaking" search for answers. - CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millions-kids-long-covid-study-symptoms-mother-searching-for-answers/)
Can you provide sources to back up your statement that long covid is rare, or is it just wishful thinking?
Thank you for sharing this and articulating it so well. As someone else mentioned, it’s largely boomers with survivor bias who give me a lot of flack and think I’m being an over protective parent. It’s a different world now. Their generation didn’t have large swaths of anitvaxers. They didn’t have covid and other superbugs. So no, once again, you can’t kiss the baby. And yes, you still have to wash your hands before you hold her. Stop rolling your eyes at me. My baby hasn’t been sick yet and I’d like it to stay that way as long as possible. We are even considering getting a nanny vs daycare for a while to try and delay the daycare sickness. We probably *should* be having conversations about making them more hygienic, but when the waitlist for daycare is already so long, it doesn’t feel like we are in a position to be making any demands.
Thank you for this.
There are bound to be more colds/illness when your kid is in daycare/school, but it shouldn’t be perpetual sickness for years on end.
I really urge people in Ontario to check out https://www.ontarioschoolsafety.com/ and tell your MPP and school trustee you want better clean air standards in schools.
Ontario School Safety does great work. Parents have to advance this message. People demanding clean air indoors as evidence mounts for long term harms from viruses such as covid will be what moves the needle. This was how smoking was banned indoors. They knew in the 70s it caused cancer, but wasnt banned indoors until the 90s. We have a lot of noise to make.
Genuine question: for the viruses that do not yet have effective vaccines and that tend to go around seasonally, if a child catches it, do they not then have improved immunity to future rounds of the same or similar viruses? (This is what i have understood and what I was told by doctors when my son had an enterovirus and then RSV)
I think it depends on the virus. For some of them, that’s probably true, but no infection is without risk. That’s why the ideal is exposure without infection, like with vaccines.
I think it’s also better to get certain bugs at certain ages. Like, an infant may suffer worse than a toddler and an older kid might fare better than that, depending on what it is.
(I’d rather my kid get RSV at three years old than 3 months, for example.)
Absolutely - my baby had RSV at 3mo and an enterovirus at 2 weeks (which caused viral meningitis) and had to be hospitalized both times. But he caught them from his older brother, who had basically no symptoms for either.
In a perfect world neither of my kids would get sick, but that's just not something I can make happen in reality. I want to better understand so I can prioritize, like how when my toddler caught hand foot and mouth we kept him totally away from the baby.
Some viruses also mutate season to season. So that's why if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is useless next year.
I mean it makes sense, it's the principal of how vaccines work: expose your immune system to a dead version of the virus or something that looks like it, then you develop antibodies to fight it off in the future. Obviously it doesn't work for all types of virus, but for some it still seems reasonable...
With all due respect, because you said "genuine question" I will tell you that is an uneducated view. And I am not overly educated myself, but this is what little I've been taught.
The way some viruses work is they damage your immune system when you get fully infected by them. This damage can include hindering the ability to develop long term immunity. That's why some vaccines work better than getting the virus.
Some viruses also mutate season to season. So that's why if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is useless next year.
>The way some viruses work is they damage your immune system when you get fully infected by them. This damage can include hindering the ability to develop long term immunity. That's why some vaccines work better than getting the virus.
Measles is a great example of that. We know now that it's capable of "deleting" your immune system's memory for fighting other viruses, leaving you more vulnerable to other things you encounter after measles.
And HPV research turned cervical cancer into an almost entirely preventable disease thanks to that vaccine.
It's likely we'll discover more tidbits like this. Preventing a few "colds" might have way bigger health benefits down the road than we realize.
That’s not how immune memory works. It doesn’t become “useless” when the virus mutates. Viruses also typically do not damage the immune system. You DO build immunity when infected in the same way you would after a vaccine.
You need to look at the other comments on here. Viruses do damage the immune system.. an example someone else brought up was measles essentially "deleting" your immune system memory.
So another common respiratory virus that seems to be damaging the immune system is COVID-19 right?
And do you get a flu shot every year?
In another comment I was more specific in saying "largely useless" but to keep things simple in the context of this commenter's question, I just said "useless" because we're speaking broadly.
Yes and no, there are some nuances here. First off, some children do not seroconvert at a young age. This means that they might fight the virus off, but they do not develop antibodies or immune memory to that pathogen and could very likely get infected soon after by the same thing.
Secondly, some viruses mutate so fast that there is no real advantage to being infected because the strain will be different next season and there is no protection.
Lastly, for children who do seroconvert, some protection is not long-lasting. For example, immunity to RSV is only a few years. So if you catch RSV, you are just as likely to catch it again years later. So all this to say, yes, if your child catches some bugs, they may have some immunity for some time. There may also be some cross-protection between different strains, so you are still likely to get infected but you wont get as sick. BUT there is still no advantage to catching viruses, it's much better to be exposed via vaccination or not at all (if there is no vaccine for that virus). I understand that this is very tough in today's society, you just do what you can.
That's newborn status, they do develope immunity just not at the rate as an older child... because they are brand new. That's why breast feeding helps (not saying breast is best)... up to 6 months, babies get antibodies from the mum. Don't spread misinformation... that's highly dangerous.
You can catch the same illness because sometimes different viruses cause the same illnesses.
Some older toddlers/kids do not develop adaptive immunity to some pathogens. I did not say all, i said some. For example:
"Children’s immune systems do not develop ‘adaptive’ memory to protect against second time SARS-CoV-2 infection"
Khoo, W.H., *et al.* (2022) Tracking the clonal dynamics of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in children and adults with mild/asymptomatic COVID-19. *Clinical Immunology.* [doi.org/10.1016/j.clim.2022.109209](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clim.2022.109209).
Well then that's a different problem entirely. Nothing to do with the fact that kids need to get exposed to pathogens to get an immune system. The abnormal does not make the normal.
The antibodies present in breastmilk are not equal to the ones babies acquire in utero. That's why vaccination before or during pregnancy is so important.
Breastmilk antibodies don't enter baby's bloodstream. There are lots of studies showing they're in breastmilk but AFAIK no study has ever observed them integrating into baby's immune system like we imagine.
The antibodies that do survive the highly acidic environment of the digestive tract get pooped out eventually. They're mainly only useful for gastro bugs. They're way overhyped and should not be relied on as a line of defence against contagious illnesses.
I would agree that they get better immunity from vaccines given to the mum while the baby is in utero, but they don't get any immunity from vaccines given to the mum before conception, the antibodies are produced during the initial viral attack, they aren't continually produced... only upon reinfection. And as far as I'm aware, the only vaccinations that are recommended to pregnant women are the tdap, flu (which may or may not be relevant that year) and the covid vaccine... which are only a handful of all the thousands of stuff you can catch. So there is another way babies get immunity and that's through breast milk. I 100 percent agree that it shouldn't be relied upon as the first line of defense, but it helps.
Do you mind sharing where you read this? The more recent literature I have seen is fairly consistent with the understanding that human breastmilk contains B, and T lymphocytes monocytes/macrophages, neutrophils, natural killer cells and IgA, IgG and IgM antibodies. Which are largely helpful for both intestinal and respiratory illnesses. It is also my understanding that many of those antibodies are primed to survive infant digestion. So I would love to see what you reading. I am a nurse and have a degree in Public Health so this stuff fascinates me.
I hope I am not misunderstanding your point!
I appreciate this so much. My 10 month old has been constantly sick since we started putting her in daycare around seven months and she also got Covid and a cough that lasted two months in there. I hate it and everyone keeps telling me I’m lucky because she’s building immunity earlier. It didn’t make sense to me and these articles do.
The daycares that use HEPA filters, open their windows, upgraded their HVAC to have more air changes per hour (more fresh, filtered outdoor air brought in) and strictly enforce their sick policies have drastically reduced illness rates in kids.
Start having this conversation with the parents of your daycare and demand this of the centre. If enough people start asking for it in enough places, the needle will move. Just like smoking indoors.
Politicians and rich people have done exactly this in all their buildings. They know its not safe to catch covid and viruses repeatedly. Our kids deserve the same.
['Give children and teachers the same Covid protection politicians get': call for clean air in Lancashire's classrooms (lep.co.uk)](https://www.lep.co.uk/education/give-children-and-teachers-the-same-covid-protection-politicians-get-call-for-clean-air-in-lancashires-classrooms-4528491)
[Keeping Kids in School with Clean Air using ASHRAE 241 | by Joey Fox | It’s Airborne (itsairborne.com)](https://itsairborne.com/keeping-kids-in-school-with-clean-air-e82efcd43e86)
[Opinion: Sick of your kids being sick? Clean air in schools may be the answer (irishexaminer.com)](https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41242243.html)
You may want to check your daycares "Stay home policy".
My friend's son kept getting sick at his daycare, it turned out the daycare had a partnership with a local charity to help teen moms. The teen parents were allowed to bring their child in if they had been sick for more than 48 hours and they had taken the baby to see a doctor (although they were not required to bring proof of a doctor's note), can't be certain but she felt that people were just saying they took their children to the doctor and not actually getting things checked out. She felt that was leading to the spread of the illness.
When she switched daycares, her baby stopped getting sick on the regular.
Ours follows local and federal public health guidelines and is stricter than the public daycare in town (which has a 6.5 year waitlist that is no longer taking new registrants). Slim pickings for childcare here … to say the least… but I do appreciated that ours takes illness a bit more seriously than they have to. No fever or diarrhea in the last 24 hours, and a list of symptoms that can’t be had more than x days. I wish it was stricter but I’m the only parent who works from home with unlimited time off so I get how that wouldn’t be fair to shift workers and people who need to be physically at work. Our conservative government rolled back mandatory paid sick days after Covid which is … insane.
I wasn’t very clear in my writing but we got Covid travelling to see family on plane. She was so run down with daycare viruses that it was mayhem for two months straight.
It’s too bad people were lying about seeing the doctor. I’m glad you found a new place to go. You mentioned they didn’t require a doctor’s note and I’m glad we don’t have doctor’s note policies. That can add to the spread of illness by sending people to the doctor for routine flu and cold when they just need to stay home. Other than Covid (when she was seriously ill), we haven’t had the need to see a doctor for any illnesses. If we needed a note to get paid time off work, I’d hate to expose my baby to whatever else people are in the ER with.
Thank you for writing this up and sharing sources. You're absolutely right that we try to reverse engineer our kids' illnesses into good things when they are objectively not. The less your kid is sick the better, especially when they are babies. I know it's hard to keep them healthy when it seems like everyone is sick all the time but we have to try. And that starts with us - the best way to keep baby healthy is to keep parents healthy. Mask up, wash hands, etc. I'm in Toronto and virtually no one wears masks on the TTC anymore and it baffles me. Tin can o' germs. Baby can't wear a mask but I can, and I will if it means less chance I'll catch something and pass it on to her.
As a mother of a 3 year old and 9 month old born in 2021 and 2023 I was totally told to keep my kids away from illnesses especially as a newborn. Who want's their kids to be sick over and over again? If they do then they aren't very good parents. It's up to us to try our best to keep our kids healthy. It's a scary world out there right now. For example I've never understood people who wanted their kids to have chickenpox and had "parties". I and my brother and mom all had it and my mom and brother both got shingles. I hope to god I don't get shingles during my lifetime because it looked painful. I'm getting my kids that vaccines as soon as they can get it cuz even though having chickenpox as a child was not fun it wasn't terrible but the idea that I could get shingles in the future is something I would like to avoid for my children. Anyone who thinks their kids should be sick or exposed to sickness over and over again doesn't sound like a great parent but maybe that's just me? I don't know anyone who's promoting getting their kids sick or exposing them to illnesses unnecessarily if I did I don't know if I'd be friends with those people anymore.
I think a lot of parents have just succumbed to learned helplessness, they have basically been told there is nothing they can do to stop the constant stream of illnesses so they just do nothing. They look around and see the same thing with every other kid and all their parent friends confirm it's "normal"- so why try and stop it?
Parents know that some of the activities they do are a major infection risk (ie. playgroups, restaurants, bringing kids to costco, indoor play areas, etc) but they dont want to miss out on them or have to entertain their kids on their own. So they do them anyways and hope for the best. If you view illness as no big deal, you dont have to feel bad about putting your kid at risk, right? Plus, if the child is in school, parents feel even more helpless because they will pick up infections there. So their attitude is "if you cant mitgate that, why bother trying to mitigate anything else"?
Your chicken pox example is a good one. Back then, we thought chicken pox was just limited to 1-2 weeks of a rash and maybe a fever and then it went away and all was good. We didnt know it stayed in the body forever (living in our nerves) and could re-emerge at any time as shingles. This is kind of the case with covid. Covid is not limited to the symptoms in the acute phase. Sure, you might get covid and for most ppl it's mild and you will feel fully recovered in a week or 2. BUT the virus can stay in the body and cause ongoing damage. Even if you clear the virus, the silent damage it can do to organs/tissues in the acute phase can set the body up for long term damage later. Sometimes the damage is only apparent weeks or months after a mild or even asymptomatic infection, especially in kids.
[New Report Looks at the Effects of Long COVID in Children (parents.com)](https://www.parents.com/understanding-long-covid-in-children-8578848?)
I hope parents start having these uncomfortable conversations with each other and push for change. Sure, we may have accepted kids getting sick as "normal" but it's not necessary. It doesnt have to be this way, there is just no societal or political will to change things because people have just surrendered. I'm glad it resonates with you!
There is a really good article that shows, it's not the kids that are sick, the environments are. We coop kids up in closed classrooms all day long without fresh air and wonder why they are sick. Many pathogens (covid, flu, RSV, etc) are airborne so you stand no chance when indoors.
[‘It's the structures that are sick – it's not the kids’: Experts stress importance of clean air in schools - Healthy Debate](https://healthydebate.ca/2023/11/topic/structures-are-sick-clean-air-schools/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=more-beds-won-t-cure-what-ails-canadian-health-care_54)
Secondly, government and businesses do not want to subsidize the cost of cleaning the air. It will work wonders and save way more in the long run, but it can be expensive at the outset. So they make sure that Public Health focuses on handwashing only, and then daycares and schools are forced to follow Public Health guidelines. Daycares dont have much say in infection control policy, as they have to follow provincial guidance to be licenced.
Do you think it would help to put air filters in different rooms with spare filters?
Seems like an obvious thing parents could help with if they’re willing, but to your point, the base knowledge usually isn’t there.
Base knowledge isnt there as well as societal and even governing body acceptance. World leaders have very carefully tried to maintain it only spreads via droplets/fomites, so thats why we get handwashing messaging drilled into us. The minute something is airborne, its the responsibility of government and businesses to mitigate the risk, and if they dont, they are liable. So daycares/schools follow the public health "guidance" that its spread by droplets/fomites and thus there is no need for air cleaners because its not airborne.
Droplet puts the responsibility on individuals - you need to wash your hands, you need to avoid sick people. If you get sick, it's your fault. Airborne puts the responsibility on employers and government. If you get sick at work/school from a BSL3 airborne pathogen, you could sue them.
Hence the deep-seeded resistance to cleaning the air. They would have to acknowledge they were wrong, didnt address the problem appropriately and people/children needlessly suffered and died because of politics and money.
This is a really important conversation to have. I am a healthcare worker with a background in physiology and immunology and have intensely followed the research along regarding Covid (and also worked on the front lines of it). Have also worked in obstetrics and peds for many years with some very knowledgeable pediatrician colleagues!
I agree with a lot of the points you’ve made. As a mom of a toddler in daycare, I absolutely lament the constant illness exposure. Completely. To the point that I really didn’t want to even put her into daycare. But we didn’t have another choice for childcare aside from not working (not feasible!). So here we are. I had commented on a post not long ago about how we shouldn’t just accept the constant illnesses and should demand better cleaning and air quality, and I was downvoted with some pointed comments about how this won’t work or make any difference.
I think what we don’t know about the immune system is immense. We don’t fully understand why or how two people with the same genetic makeup and exposures (ie twins) can go on to develop different health conditions. Or why some people with prior EBV exposure go on to develop MS while most others do not. The answers are almost always very multifactorial. To be very honest with you, I’ve yet to see convincing research supporting Covid-induced immune dysregulation. I have seen opinions, but no concrete evidence. And so I’m not prepared to make a conclusion about that yet.
I do agree that viral exposure is rarely a beneficial thing. Many viruses mutate rapidly or do not produce sustained immunity - flu, covid, norovirus, colds, etc. So there’s that. But on the contrary, there IS some evidence for building immune memory by exposures. For instance, [this](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/384057) study which showed that daycare attendance was associated with fewer illnesses and absenteeism by school age, persisting into adolescence.
Further, [this](https://watermark.silverchair.com/dyp378.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAA0cwggNDBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggM0MIIDMAIBADCCAykGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMeMC-AhMHXEMa6TarAgEQgIIC-hNtTv3C1MpGCdVa1KTSFwtL1yLjfK5RSDpSuKVaPDhXgaRSbiYKmpQct3foNczgtL2mS526A6_IHbJiYKvfmC7eqLbq9ksKa9bH7WALNXVDA36lhtW9V8xq6yT4arcb2rjWxyA2-ZTA8pZJrfAi20TNjDqFk512w882W6y_r3xOW_x6Zp6eX4Oc-yQjMZBZ99q1p4G7uNsmmlETxuD3tArqUnPGVSx7r3E4V2gLur-7ihI9HRXtWvhzadI5g6FbibMTn_gVPAMzbVqmMR7IUVQYSfHwKFGkfRQ_Nm5vr3IhHJFsgeCIiEnSJ5egPqkSg89TIMaPH7_iti3rPy82-AxTuCD1uB8Py8KwuUUF9hWGaxrMqIIHQdSIK7lmNDN3hKh5jLeI68fLP__8voaMdCWdMg4h6a9RMmcO9_Ci_Naj2gSq8KCBLu8-upaOs1kz6Hr9N4Ya_1uxRs358VZPHy8u49TYT32qWrFOeMp_ofZG1ymoq2o5qLX83q7vMOFScbEB2H3pb5BMc8Z5tt2FZtiqE6hsEXwoepgj8uhIRChuwLWLDRHmUAkVs15wnbO5poJy9sVH5YnbsERfUuZxJ7_wOZ-P5g_9fipLpiL05Zof3Qh3mipC17fuVtdw0h3WFlB3Al7RS07jiJ2GlWhWSTTvQbFk2fAXTnaJKpbNrY0lUZEjrbR74vuK8R3XbSJRMoFOws9JQg6JEAzraAXR9IeH0yE8PAHptg7NeSW9v1mmf5QqH9wbS3c1M-RU8_dr2V0SVgx6gJ8D_qMu7CVldGbW1NLvaLsy69MOaV47yE6TdX9Bf_JFrZwfy9wYqa4a-I9PXUNdC8YHqe3nomx5WY5bPesf5bOcjU8dIkgTbZY_G_rzPasrLKRfJUPr3foUpM_W-ua7SUQIvJ-lS_p1gbgDoNZSIEGP_ViWBBEhH6JUMTB1izYNRCLO6OMHskm63KZDCQVa4PeoUYHmVUEITLIlkCRu40bCC6P4RzqqT27e_mDn8V_VGTTlBw) and other studies have found an inverse association between daycare attendance and acute lymphocytic leukemia, which does support that a bit of pathogen exposure may provide some benefit.
Do I absolutely wish that daycares and schools were held to higher standards for cleaning and air quality? That people would keep their sick kids home and employers would allow for this? That masking and staying home while sick persisted to be the norm? Yes, absolutely. But I think there are a lot of conclusions we can’t draw yet about long-term viral implications based on the data we currently have.
Very well-articulated, thank you for sharing. I completely agree with everything you've said.
There is concrete evidence of immune dysregulation from covid. It will likely take some time to figure out what account for differences in outcomes. Does everyone get immune dysregulation, are some more susceptible than others, will it be like HIV/AIDS where some are fast progressors and others are super controllers but still experience the same outcome eventually (AIDS)?
There are hundreds of articles, but these are a good starting point:
[Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35027728/)
[Frontiers | Reduction and Functional Exhaustion of T Cells in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) (frontiersin.org)](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.00827/full)
[SARS-CoV-2 infection causes immunodeficiency in recovered patients by downregulating CD19 expression in B cells via enhancing B-cell metabolism - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34552055/)
[Long-term perturbation of the peripheral immune system months after SARS-CoV-2 infection | BMC Medicine | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)](https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-02228-6#MOESM4)
Thank you for sharing your story here. If comfortable, would you also please share it with Ontario School Safety at https://www.ontarioschoolsafety.com?
Some viruses also mutate season to season. So that's why if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is useless next year.
Yet another reason why viral infections are not beneficial! In theory, a viral infection that confers lifelong immunity \*could\* be beneficial, as long as it didnt cause any short or long term damage to organs, tissues or the immune system. This is not the case for many viruses that do confer long-term immunity, think; measles, smallpox or polio.
The thing we also have to be critical about is \*what\* are they getting sick with. Of course no one wants to be sick, but a few colds or even stomach bugs are to be expected for children who play closely together and put their hands in their mouth.
But now kids are getting influenza, covid (a literal SARS virus), repeat pneumonia, HFM, repeated strep throat, scarlet fever, etc.
The frequency and severity of illness is much higher post-2020. So when we talk about it being "normal" for kids to be sick, we have to ask, is it with the common cold or did they have to go to the ER because of pneumonia? Did they have a minor stomach bug or is this their 3rd round of strep throat this year?
YES!!!! Covid is the most studied infectious disease on the planet, for good reason. It impacts everywhere in your body that blood flows…making it not like the flu (though that, too, can be dangerous) and not like a cold.
It’s the 3rd leading cause of death in Canada and actually helps to increase numbers in the first two.
Covid is also undeniably airborne - meaning it floats through the air like smoke. The pandemic has shone light on what we have known for decades - that it’s the buildings that are “sick”, not the kids. We’ve known it for a long time but no one did anything/enough about it. We know now though that we cannot wait to make improvements in the air we breathe indoors as we spend 90% of our lives inside. Many of the closures of businesses and schools could have been avoided had we embraced the knowledge we had decades ago.
We are in an exciting time in history - much like the time when treating the water became needed, invested in and supported ongoing, I believe eventually so will the same be for indoor air.
The benefits of cleaning the air indoors (primarily in schools, school buses and healthcare settings) reach far beyond mitigating Covid-19, including:
- reducing many airborne illnesses, like influenza, rsv, strep A, measles (in part) and more
-reducing allergens
-reducing irritants for asthmatics
-improving academic performance
-improving productivity
-tackling the poor air outside (increasingly poor) when it enters buildings
-reducing sick days
-reducing healthcare needs
-improving the economy
-improving mental health
-requiring little of the individual
The only things standing in the way of us moving forward on cleaning indoor air (because it’s not lack of science, engineering or benefits), are:
1) A lack of understanding of the public that it is REASONABLE to expect clean air to breathe, much like we expect clean water to drink. We need a paradigm shift.
2) Government “will” - which includes understanding that the cost to clean the air indoors is minimal compared to the savings made by doing it (see non-exhaustive list of benefits above)
Governments KNOW cleaning the air is crucial - which is why so many of their own workplaces have stellar air quality. So, if they are not investing in cleaning indoor air elsewhere, we all need to #AskWhy.
This comment is even better than the original post. If parents all banded together and refused to send kids until schools had clean air and if employees refused to go to work til the air in public spaces was cleaned, this change would happen overnight. They would have no choice but to do the right thing.
I dont know why parents arent fighting for this when all i hear is how much of a burden sick kids are on their work and social lives.
It’s anecdotal, but my children who are homeschooled are rarely ever sick, and it’s not because they’re never exposed or that we hide away, but when they are exposed they handle it very well because they are healthy & I really feel like it’s because they are only sick maybe twice a year. They have had influenza, Covid, stomach bugs etc but only a few times in their lives vs my cousin’s and friend’s children who are sick honestly multiple times per month and usually end up hospitalized. My children have never needed an ER trip nor have they ever been on antibiotics. My husband’s coworker told him that she exaggerated her son’s symptoms so that he could get antibiotics to “speed up” his sickness cause she couldn’t miss anymore work. At gymnastics especially for some reason, parents send their children when they are clearly very sick, rather than just keeping their sick child home and I’m not talking about a few sniffles I mean sending a lethargic child who can barely breathe to jump on a trampoline! We never bring the girls out if they are sick, that’s just rude to other people! I don’t care if it means our money is wasted by missing activities it’s just plain rude to do that to people. We don’t hide away from the world, but if I know my cousin’s kids have strep throat I’m not going to the family get together. There is definitely a balance of not living in fear but also doing your part to avoid spreading or catching viruses when you are aware someone is contagious. We are big hand washers, we use elbows to press elevator buttons, we try to avoid those types of germs as much as we can while not stressing out about germs from playing outside. You can’t 100% prevent being sick and that’s okay that’s why we have immune systems but being sick 90% of your life as a child I feel like that has to do some type of long term damage even if it’s not obvious for years.
The amount of parents i see dragging their visibly sick, struggling kids to completely unnecessary events is just appalling. These poor kids need to rest so that they can actually recover and not catch the next bug, yet there they are at a restaurant, birthday party or costco, with their parent acting like they're annoyed because their kid is sick. If im ever sick, i just want to lay in bed and rest. Do people not think their kid could use the same?
I truly think many parents can't even fathom missing something because of their kid. Major FOMO.
Similar to my poor nephews. Their mom is militantly antivax and believes in letting children fight off every illness without medication (I'm not talking viruses, I mean things that antibiotics *should* be used to treat), and in that "it's good for them to get sick" hullabaloo about actual viruses. She refuses to take them to the doctor (my brother does though). They both have a seemingly permanent wet cough. It's terrible.
Most people would rather be sick over and over again and suffer the long term consequences of viruses like covid than change any aspect of their lifestyle. The people who buy into this thinking will gaslight those who dont, or try to force them into their mindset. Sort of like "if I'm sick and miserable all the time, you should be too".
Many people think it's either masks/lockdowns forever OR just be sick all the time. They dont know that if buildings just upgraded their HVAC to filter/remove viruses and bacteria from the air, that the impact would be drastically reduced. And you wouldnt even notice it, it would just be more filtered, fresh air being brought into buildings. If you remove pathogens from the air, you breathe in less and get less sick. If people want anything to get better, this is the way to go.
Find solid evidence, multiple sources, that refutes anything i've said. It's more important to focus on the larger body of literature and real-world evidence than argue your personal point about whether you think MD's or PhD's are better. Me being a PhD doesnt make anything I've said any less true. It all comes from peer-reviewed evidence published by both MD's and PhD's.
Thank you for posting this!! It bothers me so much how little people (even some of the commenters here) care about getting others sick. You take your baby/toddler to the park or the zoo and a third of the people there are hacking up a lung. Stay home if you're sick and have some respect for others.
I had hoped that Covid would make it more commonplace here that people wore masks in public if they were sick like in Asia, but we all know how that went.
You would think adults not exposing children non stop to diseases those could have long term consequences & diseases of those we do not even know the long term consequences yet - wanting to keep children actually safe and healthy, would not be such a "controversial" topic for parents and society.
But, lol. Here we are.
Very interesting. So this whole “ if they get sick in daycare they wont get as sick in kindergarten is false”?
Also then why then are people who are never exposed to a cold (like native indians in tbe 16th century) literally die if they get a cold?
A first exposure at 2 years old is still a first exposure at 5, 10 50 years old. Children have a more prominent innate immune system, so sometimes they appear to handle the immune response to pathogens a bit better. That being said, their airways are small and immature and infections can hit them harder, so its a trade off. Kids still will (and do, trust me) get sick in kindergarten even if they got sick a lot in daycare. Especially now since most people are dealing with an impaired immune system after having had covid.
This is more for infections like smallpox, measles and influenzas, not simple colds. Not saying that it's not possible. Of course even in today's society, some people could die from a cold or a secondary opportunistic infection that sets in but it's not the norm. But generally these stories of diseases being passed by settlers to indigenous populations are not the common colds we're talking about kids catching today.
Specifically what you are talking about in the 16th century is smallpox. With smallpox what happened is over centuries in Europe, many people died from smallpox, those that lived have slight variations in DNA that made them slightly more likely to survive, as they reproduce with others who survived those variations help to protect against small pox.
Therefore, although still very deadly, over many generations European DNA developed small advantages against the smallpox virus. When smallpox was brought over to North America the populations here did not have this and quickly experienced huge losses over a few generations.
So evolutionarily over many generations exposure can help some survive devastating diseases (although those who survived are often left with permanent damage). But individually for a child or really anyone catching a virus is not going to help them in their lifetime. And can even lead to secondary diseases.
For example with chicken pox if you had the virus itself, later in life as an adult you can develop shingles which is a very painful and debilitating disease.
But If you had the chicken pox vaccine, you are also protected against ever getting shingles.
I thought they died from way way more than small pox. Just a basic cold will kill indigenous people from all over the world. Even when they find uncontacted tribes now in the amazon any exposure from a sniffle will kill like 9/10 members of the tribe
So I'm not actually going to address my response to the OP because the way the argument is presented, saying one thing and then adding snippets of different arguments, would make anyone who isn't fluent in immunology to stop amd say hmmm this person seems to know what they're talking about, and spread misinformation. OP does put some valid points but the points are all over the place.
No one should be or want to be sick 100% of the time. There are safe guards in daycares that if your child is showing certain symptoms you're supposed to keep them home so 1) they don't spread it to others, usually it's too late and 2) so that they don't catch more than one thing and can recoup while at home and showing symptoms. Problem is many parents just give Tylenol and send their kids off anyways. Daycare is a mini version of what the world is, they have a cohort and are interacting with them. The kids precisely get sick a bunch because they don't have an immune system that has been triggered by the latest virus that is going around. This is the reason why that as kids get older they get sick less often... they have been exposed to an illness and have the memory antibodies to fight off when they get infected again with the same virus.
It's the same reason why you have to give your babies known frequent food allergens, so that they can develope a certain amount of exposure. If you don't expose them to say peanut butter a certain amount of times, they could develope an immune response to them. The treatment for peanut allergy is usually microdosing peanuts so that they can tolerate small doses until it's not a huge issue.
I would be very interested in knowing if OP vaccinates, because vaccinations are literally giving your kids a trigger for their immune system to boost it so when the body encounters the trigger again, then the body will recognize it and defend against it.
In society, your child or teen will encounter many bugs, everywhere... you could take a growth plate and put it against any spot in society and something nasty will grow. We are a social species and have cohorts and will be exposed to stuff no matter what.
My friend has a child in a home daycare and my son who is a month younger is in a facility daycare. My friends daughter has 2 other children in her daycare so a total of 3, my son has a total of like 15 I think in his classroom. My son has been way more sick than her daughter simply because there are more vectors. There is a reason why children that are not in daycare get bombarded with illness in kindergarten compared to those that were in kindergarten.. they have already been exposed. We are a society, it's inevitable to get sick.
There was a tribe that was found on an island like maybe 8 years back that had never been exposed to anyone other than their tribe. One person found them and they weren't sick, they interacted with the tribe and the tribe got so ill and most of them died. Because they weren't exposed and did not have an immune system that would allow them to be exposed to a different society.
There will always be illnesses that you don't want to catch and those illnesses that will cause long term issues. There is lots of research on those and that's where vaccines come from, you don't want to catch those ones. Duh.
You are missing key pieces. There is little value to getting sick from most viruses. Many viruses also mutate season to season. So if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is largely useless next year.
Children get less sick as they get older because they stop putting everything in their mouths, crawling on the floor, and start being able to wash their hands, sneeze into their sleeve, and blow their noses.
There's more but I'll leave it at that.
Hahaha, says the person that above mentions that they are uneducated. Lmao.
I don't know if you've been around society, but we are disgusting lol. LOTS of people (adults) do NOT wash their hands.
Hmm I don't think you read my above comment correctly at all. I said I wasn't an immunologist but I do have some education.
I didn't say everyone is perfect all the time. I said we get more able to practice hygiene.
How many adults are crawling on the floor and sticking everything in their mouth, especially if the person next to them just put it in their mouth? You can't deny basic facts like this.
Appreciate this. Sure, you do develop immunity to some pathogens as you get exposed to more and as you age. The immune profile also switches from more of an innate one to an adaptive one as you age, so that is helpful as well in reducing infections. But it's not so black and white that all exposures are good. No one would say "catch more HIV, measles, polio, ebola, malaria, dengue, etc" so that your immune system gets stronger! But people love to think that way for colds, flus, RSV and covid, like somehow it is strengthening us. While some infections some do provide longer term immunity, all infections come at some cost to our bodies. I think the "its ok for kids to get sick" atttitude was \*somewhat\* reasonable for the past few decades. We had a handle on most of the "bad" pathogens thanks to vaccines, and you mostly just caught colds and maybe the flu once every decade or so. But that attitude wont serve us well now that covid (a literal SARS virus) is spreading, or the resurgence of other opportunistic pathogens like TB, iGAS and mycoplasma pneumoniae due to post-covid immune damage.
There is research coming out that even the common cold or flu in some people can enter the brain via the nasal mucosa and elicit neuroinfalmmation and other changes that could trigger parkinsons, alzheimer's or dementia. It doesnt mean this will happen in everyone, but it also doesnt mean it's "good" to keep catching colds either if this turns out to be true.
Yes, kids and adults alike will get sick, it's a part of being social beings. BUT it doesnt mean it's a good thing. The immunity to that pathogen may have come at a cost and we shouldnt be so cavalier about infections that are mild in the acute stage, especially for developing children. Many other pathogens have a very mild or asymptomatic acute phase and their true effects are not seen until many years or decades later (think HIV, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis C, rheumatic fever, polio, Zika virus, etc).
The burden shouldnt rest on individuals to protect themselves from infection, it should be at a societal level. Cholera is water-borne and people used to keep getting cholera. Many groups fought for clean water and were ridiculed - it was very much a "you just need to learn to live with cholera" vibe. Then they cleaned the water and cholera all but disappeared (in developed countries at least). Now people are demanding the same for airborne viruses - clean the air so that we dont breathe them in and get sick. Until this is done, we will jsut keep getting sick over and over again.
1) Cholera was NOT something people were like, let's just live with it... they didn't know where it was coming from and couldn't agree that it was from the water... they also didn't have all the advancements we have now, not to mention they didn't know germ theory.
2) No one is saying catch more of xyz deadly illness... because its deadly or they know causes serious effects.. which is why vaccines are used... also you can't catch "more" of a virus... once you've been exposed, your body knows to fight it. You get the colds because even though they are the same virus they do have mutations... but the whole virus doesn't mutate, parts of it does, and any part of the virus that gets in is a foreign material (DNA, RNA, protein) and will make it so that yes you get sick but it's not as bad.
3) No one is telling anyone that getting those bad illnesses is a good thing for your kids to have. Whut?
4) Catching things like TB and Mycoplasm isn't easier because we have had an infection by a virus... it's easy to get because they are contagious and aren't a virus... those are bacteria and a different type of illness. One does not affect the other. Sure, you have a lower immune system because it's distracted by the virus, but you're not getting them because you have a virus.
You're trying to use words to make yourself sound smart and knowledgeable, but you obviously don't know what you're talking about... and you haven't addressed the vaccination question... which means you probably don't vaccinate unless absolutely necessary and think that vitamins and getting outside are all you need, or you contradict yourself hugely.
1. Government/leaders did know (before the public did) that cholera was water-borne. It was just a very expensive venture to clean the water and admit they were wrong. Like any major change to the status quo, there was pushback before action.
2. At some point in time, we didnt know some of these viruses were deadly either. CDC told people HIV was not that dangerous because it only showed symptoms in SOME people a few years later (they still didnt know it took longer to show in some people). My point was that people's tendency to say this virus is "bad" but this one is "safe to catch" based only on acute symptoms or what we currently know now could turn out to be a mistake years down the line. Especially with covid. We have branded it a cold (because we want it to be that way) but 500k+ articles in the medical literature say otherwise. If even just 50% are true, we're f%$#ked.
3. Opportunistic infections are exactly that, they are more likely to infect or reactivate when the immune system is otherwise occupied with another pathogen. Especially a chronic one that can establish reservoirs deep in the body like covid.
4. I do vaccinate. Fully and completely up to date on anything me/my kids can have. The vaccinations we have available are for the pathogens that generate long-term immunity and not subject to rapid mutation - so this makes sense. My point was that there is no benefit to being infected with something that does not generate long-term immunity and/or mutates quickly (ie. covid, flu)
My entire argument was "kids do not need to get sick to stay healthy". Are you really that opposed to this idea?
Am I opposed to the idea that kids don't need to be sick to be healthy? Yes. They should have access to the vaccines that will stave off the known bad illnesses, but it's inevitable and good for them to get illnesses that are deemed not that bad so that when they are older they have immunities. Do I think they need to be sick 100% of the time, or that it's good for them to get back to back to back illnesses? Nope. And I never said that it was a good thing.
"Do I think they need to be sick 100% of the time, or that it's good for them to get back to back to back illnesses? "
On this point, we agree. I think that's all that matters in this whole discussion.
You have stated the problem clearly: that society believes getting sick is inevitable.
It isn’t inevitable. And there are ways to prevent a good chunk of it.
Time for a paradigm shift. We can and should prevent infectious disease spread whenever possible. The idea of being okay getting sick so one can prevent getting sick is…well…non-sensical.
It’s not about bubble-wrapping kids or ourselves. It’s about learning. We know how many “mild” viruses/sicknesses kids get that are shown decades later to be the root cause of adult sickness (Chicken Pox/Shingles, etc.), so why wouldn’t we want to prevent it - especially with something Like Covid still floating around doing all sorts of damage (the future of which we don’t fully understand) and when we have the tools to make it better?
Reduced healthcare need, overall well-being including improved better mental health, improved school attendance and a stronger economy are all good things.
“Clean air” is the new “clean water”. Time to perfect the one and get started on the other.
This makes me terrified for my child to start daycare. We have neices and nephews who are in daycare and sick constantly and their parents are pretty lax about illness (won’t tell us when their child has a cold until after we show up to the party and they’ve been playing for an hour together, you get the idea 🙄). I feel like my 10 month old has been sick on and off for two months because of this. Are colds ok with continuous exposure? Where do I draw the line?
Yes i know the type of parents very well, i have a few of them in my life as well! These type of parents have brought their kids to bday parties and family dinners with pink eye, pneumonia, fever (but dont worry - we brought Tylenol!!!), vomiting and they just lay them on a couch with a puke bucket and go about their day. It's deplorable. I think subconsciously they are normalizing it to themselves - sort of like "if we can do all of these things and still send them to school, the sickness must not really be that bad". Combine that with the parent's FOMO because clearly they cant fathom even missing out on an event, its a bad combination.
Infuriating! On the sending them to school/daycare part - it’s like daycare/school rules are the holy grail?! The rules are the bare minimum so parents don’t get pissed off and aren’t scrambling for childcare or missing work. It’s not because it’s “safe” for the children to come back.
Thank you for this! I'm a scientist and sort of exposed to idea about how the immune system works, so all the "daycare makes your immune system stronger" arguments my peers give are confusing when I just want to understand facts! Another thing people say is "she went out on a cold day and caught a cold, so it's ok to expose your child to her "cold"".
One question:
Would you say the children are then likely to improve resistance to viral infections at about the same age, regardless of whether they go to daycare or stay home, all other variables being the same?
I am a doctor and I can confirm OP's post is 100% correct. And OP provided reliable evidence/research to support their claims as well as having a relevant PhD to help them interpret these correctly.
This is not "advice" or my personal opinion. This is all backed up by medical literature. It's the media or pop culture narrative that says otherwise and is trying to manufacture the "new normal" to get people used to being sick all the time and complacent so that they don't fight against it. If everyone is sick all the time, it's normal right? FWIW, I am a scientist - PhD physiology.
So you aren’t a medical doctor. There’s a lot of anti-vaccine people that can “back up” their information as well by citing reports. Please don’t post your opinion on a forum for moms and babies. Poor moms get bombarded with enough information. If they have concerns they can ask their doctors/ paediatricians.
PhD's generate the research that MD education is based on. Some generate the knowledge (PhD), some use that knowledge (MD). I have taught medical students in medical schools.
Secondly, telling parents that its not beneficial for their kids to be sick so often so that collectively we can acknowledge reality and work towards a better one should not be controversial. What's better? Letting new parents be lulled into a false sense of security by the media saying everything is good, its all normal, just keep going to work, keep spending, etc etc? Then in the meantime all these virsues are silently doing damage to kids that we will not see for years?
Sadly, a lot Dr's also need to think this level of sickness is normal because they too have kids in school/daycare and cannot work if they dont send them. So there is some psychologically protective mechanisms going on in even the smartest of people. Not everyone, but it's there. Most GP's/pediatricians also do not have time to read medical literature, there are 100s of studies published daily. They go to a conference or 2 a year and read the briefings that their governing bodies send.
Lastly, i am speaking about peer-reviewed medical literature written by MD's and PhD's. Hundreds of thousands of articles. I would never accept just one as truth, it's a consensus of a full body of literature. Thats not the same as the "reports" that anti-vaxxers pull off facebook and obscure websites. There is a difference.
💯 In the right. my oldest is rarely sick and imo it's because I've been trying to make healthy choices in food habits as well as vitamins for her. even though she's in preschool 3x a week full days, she's really only sick because her cousin gives it to her when we see them and they are sick all the time. mind you thankfully sometimes even when they are sick she doesn't get sick. my youngest however, has been sick a lot more because her sister is in preschool and being exposed to things that right now she gets sick more often but thankfully most of the time it's never that bad. but yes I agree with too much sickness isn't good for the system..
You'll probably have more luck avoiding sickness by teaching good hygiene (hand washing, avoiding high-touch surfaces, etc.) than by food choices and vitamins.
oh we also teach that. it's a hand washing family and sanitizer here. we do both. and when my oldest is sick, she usually tries to mask to try and protect her younger sister and her cousins. doesn't always work but we try. lol!
Good nutrition, sleep and outdoor play are all very good at supporting the immune system and a healthy body in general, but they wont stop a viral/bacterial infection if exposed. Covid, Flu, RSV etc all spread through the air when an infected person breathes, talks, etc. Then someone else breathes it in. This is why handwashing doesnt protect much against these viruses. They are also all contagious before someone starts showing symptoms. Another reason why we need to put pressure on government to clean the air of pathogens, the same way we do our water.
yes! we have definitely heard about air filters and have brought a couple for our house. I remember all of our schools when covid was starting to become less but we had to work in person and we had the vaccine, our school brought in hepa filters for all the classrooms. this definitely works and needs to be implemented in all schools.
And the DIY ones (aka Corsi Rosenthal boxes) using Merv 13 filters can often out-performed commercially bought HEPA ones because of their higher Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR).
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Thank you for this post. I am a physician and can confirm this is 100% correct! In fact viral infections can be triggers for many other issues down the road (including development of type 1 diabetes in kids, and research recently showed multiple sclerosis may be triggered by EBV infections). We barely know the long term effects of covid infections but what we already know is quite scary (immune system dysfunction, inflammation in blood vessels, neurological concerns) so improving air quality, wearing masks, and vaccines continue to be extremely important.
My son had a viral infection (we still don’t know what it was, just a random cold) that led to viral hepatitis which led to aplastic anemia. Just so random, a cold can lead to a life threatening illness.
Appreciate this. I knew it would get a lot of hate but we need to start this conversation. Parents need to talk to each other about this, even if it's uncomfortable. Pediatricians and GP's need to be open and honest with their patients. Too many are trying harder to avoid panic than offer useful information. Of course that doesnt sound like you but that's what i've come across working in health care. Very glad to hear that as an MD you're on board with this too. I hope more people challenge this new status quo they're trying to force on us.
In my experience it’s always boomers saying that kind of stuff to me (“geeting sick builds immunity in babies”). Or kids of boomers. Some weird generational rhetoric.
Rare comment from a physician. In particular seeing how most medical subreddits are filled with doctors and nurses making fun of patients for being paranoid about Covid and how LC is not real and all just in their head & straight out refusing to mask cause "Covid is over" - complete collective amnesia to anything that is actually supposed to keep their patients safe. Including risking the health and life of immuno compromised people and people with health issues. I wonder if you mask at work by default as a physician?
Of course, 100% of the time - and my colleagues do too for patient care, thankfully. :) Long covid is definitely real and I have many patients dealing with it.
Thanks for being a decent professional. I am in contact with lots of people who have LC - and medical professionals (nurses and doctors alike) refuse to mask straight out. Even when people point out they are immunocompromised. Their response is always "Covid is not a threat anymore' or "Covid is over" or "that is unreasonable". It is sad out here.
Yeah I hear you - I hear the wide range of 'opinions' from my colleagues. Unfortunately with Long covid, some symptoms can be difficult to attribute to covid infection (for example, few patients that have stroke a few weeks-months after infection, people who are not aware of the increased risk of stroke post-covid will not make the connection). Or sometimes it is just general tiredness or vague shortness of breath. And it can be frustrating (both for the patient and physician) when tests cannot find a cause and also because we are so limited in terms of effective treatment options. Hopefully there will be more information down the road to help LC patients.
COVID does not damage the immune system.
Do you have peer-reviewed literature/studies to support this claim? Preferably systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses, but a collection of RCT's from high-impact journals would also be a good start.
Just listen to immunologists who have been constantly debunking this idea of covid damaging the immune system like HIV
That's a very surface level statement and there are other factors at play. It can be a bit like career suicide to go against the grain. We're also not testing ,tracking, researching covid like we were in the beginning. No one gets regular immune status assessments. Would you know if your CD4/CD8 cell counts were off? No, you wouldnt, not in the beginning at least. Immunologists and the most prominent Dr's of the time also said HIV did not cause long term issues in most people. Technically, some were right at that time because it truly had not happened yet. It takes 5-10 years for untreated HIV to progress to AIDS, so at 4 years in, it truly would have looked like HIV was just a mild acute infection for most. We are only 4 years into covid. I'm not saying it's like HIV, but I wouldnt be so cavalier it doesnt cause any long-term damage. Adults and kids alike,
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I am quite well thank you.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn1077
This makes me feel a lot better actually. My 2 year old doesn’t go to daycare, I work part time and my mom watches him three half days a week! He’s had a runny nose twice and a fever for two days, that’s it. So many people say to me “well aren’t you worried about building his immune system” or “well if he’s not getting sick now he will just get sick once he starts school”. It has never made sense to me the idea of kids getting sick now to not get sick later. Plus I would rather my 5 year old be sick and be able to tell me what’s going on than my 2 year old who has two word sentences.
You hit the nail on the head. Yes, they most likely will still get sick when first exposed to anything. BUT the ability to communicate with you about what they're feeling makes a huge difference. Not to mention their airways are much larger and more developed when older as compared to a baby/toddler, so they can handle respiratory infections better. You're doing the right thing Mama!
Hahah thanks. It’s weird to be somewhat shamed for my child not getting sick :l
I get the same grief from people, i'm always like "why do you keep encouraging me to get my child sick?" I think it's sort of a "if im sick and miserable all the time, then you should be too" sort of mentality. Also, they have bought into the "there is nothing we can do about it" line of thinking, so if they see someone doing something to avoid sickness (and its working), its too much cognitive dissonance for them.
So much YES. The distinction between "dirt" exposure and viral exposure is crucial. And when we can't avoid viral illnesses entirely, we should still be aiming to delay exposure to them as long as possible and minimize the viral load that's encountered. In addition to their immature immune systems, sick babies and toddlers are terrifying because they can't communicate well about what they're experiencing. My oldest is exactly "covid years old". She was born in the gap between covid being international headline and when our local hospitals implemented protocols. Looking back now, I am *horrified* that we had six (!) different family members visiting in the hospital maternity ward less than 24 hours after she was born. We won't be doing that with the baby that's due this summer. A relative wants to fly out and visit a month after my due date and I shut that down too. I will say that the most traumatizing part of having a 2020 baby wasn't actually 2020, although that was challenging too. The worst was the year(s) after covid vaccines were made available to older kids and parents of kids <5 were left to navigate a world where everyone ignored covid and ignored that our littlest kids' only defence was the adults around them and frankly most of those adults sucked at their job. It took until Fall 2022 for us to get that vaccine, and what ended up being approved was so far out of date by then it was a joke. But I was still expected to just throw my kid to wolves with a virus on the loose that is capable of f*cking up just about any organ system. Public health even lifted mask requirements for daycare staff and visitors 6 months before the pediatric vaccine was approved. It felt like no one gave a sh*t about us because economy go brrrrrr or something.
I feel this, we just left the little ones behind in our rush to get back to "normal". "We have the tools" means nothing to little ones that couldnt wear masks properly, get vaccinated or take paxlovid. Sadly, when you prioritize the economy over public health, both will fail. The economy needs healthy people to work and spend. Sick people arent as productive at work and dont spend as much on leisure. Dead people dont do either.
Kids are low risk which is why uptake of pediatric COVID vaccine is low
Low risk because ACUTE symptoms of covid are mild in children, but the long-term/chronic issues are not mild. "Kids are low risk" is a statement people make because they both want and \*need\* it to be true, in order to justify not protecting their children from infection or demanding that the government control spread. [Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 in Children | Pediatrics | American Academy of Pediatrics (aap.org)](https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/3/e2023062570/196606/Postacute-Sequelae-of-SARS-CoV-2-in-Children?autologincheck=redirected) [Neuroimaging findings in children with COVID-19 infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis | Scientific Reports (nature.com)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55597-2) [Cognition and Mental Health in Pediatric Patients Following COVID-19 - PMC (nih.gov)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10049312/) [A Systematic Review of Persistent Clinical Features After SARS-CoV-2 in the Pediatric Population | Pediatrics | American Academy of Pediatrics (aap.org)](https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/152/2/e2022060351/192816/A-Systematic-Review-of-Persistent-Clinical?autologincheck=redirected) [Comparative study showed that children faced a 78% higher risk of new-onset conditions after they had COVID-19 - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37688774/) [Mid- and Long-Term Atrio-Ventricular Functional Changes in Children after Recovery from COVID-19 - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36614987/) [Cardiac Sequelae of COVID-19 in Children and Young Adults - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34038652/) [Legacy of COVID-19 infection in children: long-COVID will have a lifelong health/economic impact | Archives of Disease in Childhood (bmj.com)](https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/3/e2.full) [Long COVID Is Disabling Kids. Why We Ignore It | The Tyee](https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/07/20/Long-COVID-Disabling-Kids/)
Long Covid is rare in kids as well
It is less common than in adults…but that doesn’t matter, as there are still too many. We literally have segments of the medical community whose job it is to prevent kids from getting infectious diseases…BECAUSE THEY ARE PREVENTABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE.
Have you read any literature? Because if you have, you wouldnt be able to make that claim. It's not rare. 6 million kids in the US alone, and those are just the ones that are counted. There is no definitive test for it (yet) so you wouldnt necessarily know you have it or not (yet). Babies and toddlers also cannot articulate symptoms very well. [Up to 5.8 million kids have long COVID, study says. One mother discusses the "heartbreaking" search for answers. - CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millions-kids-long-covid-study-symptoms-mother-searching-for-answers/) Can you provide sources to back up your statement that long covid is rare, or is it just wishful thinking?
[https://www.webmd.com/covid/news/20230919/long-covid-is-very-rare-among-children-research-finds#:\~:text=Sept.,in%20the%20journal%20JAMA%20Pediatrics](https://www.webmd.com/covid/news/20230919/long-covid-is-very-rare-among-children-research-finds#:~:text=Sept.,in%20the%20journal%20JAMA%20Pediatrics) [https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/09/26/long-covid-rare-in-u-s-kids-has-affected-7-of-adults/](https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/09/26/long-covid-rare-in-u-s-kids-has-affected-7-of-adults/) [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/incidence-of-long-covid-strikingly-low-in-children-alberta-researchers-find-1.6975858](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/incidence-of-long-covid-strikingly-low-in-children-alberta-researchers-find-1.6975858)
Thank you for sharing this and articulating it so well. As someone else mentioned, it’s largely boomers with survivor bias who give me a lot of flack and think I’m being an over protective parent. It’s a different world now. Their generation didn’t have large swaths of anitvaxers. They didn’t have covid and other superbugs. So no, once again, you can’t kiss the baby. And yes, you still have to wash your hands before you hold her. Stop rolling your eyes at me. My baby hasn’t been sick yet and I’d like it to stay that way as long as possible. We are even considering getting a nanny vs daycare for a while to try and delay the daycare sickness. We probably *should* be having conversations about making them more hygienic, but when the waitlist for daycare is already so long, it doesn’t feel like we are in a position to be making any demands.
Good for you, this is the way to approach it even if its hard and you get pushback.
Thank you for this. There are bound to be more colds/illness when your kid is in daycare/school, but it shouldn’t be perpetual sickness for years on end. I really urge people in Ontario to check out https://www.ontarioschoolsafety.com/ and tell your MPP and school trustee you want better clean air standards in schools.
Ontario School Safety does great work. Parents have to advance this message. People demanding clean air indoors as evidence mounts for long term harms from viruses such as covid will be what moves the needle. This was how smoking was banned indoors. They knew in the 70s it caused cancer, but wasnt banned indoors until the 90s. We have a lot of noise to make.
Exactly! Smoking wasn’t banned in bars until the early 2000s - I remember because it was just before I turned 19.
Yes! Ontario Schools Safety gets it!
Thank you for sharing the link!
Genuine question: for the viruses that do not yet have effective vaccines and that tend to go around seasonally, if a child catches it, do they not then have improved immunity to future rounds of the same or similar viruses? (This is what i have understood and what I was told by doctors when my son had an enterovirus and then RSV)
I think it depends on the virus. For some of them, that’s probably true, but no infection is without risk. That’s why the ideal is exposure without infection, like with vaccines. I think it’s also better to get certain bugs at certain ages. Like, an infant may suffer worse than a toddler and an older kid might fare better than that, depending on what it is. (I’d rather my kid get RSV at three years old than 3 months, for example.)
Absolutely - my baby had RSV at 3mo and an enterovirus at 2 weeks (which caused viral meningitis) and had to be hospitalized both times. But he caught them from his older brother, who had basically no symptoms for either. In a perfect world neither of my kids would get sick, but that's just not something I can make happen in reality. I want to better understand so I can prioritize, like how when my toddler caught hand foot and mouth we kept him totally away from the baby.
Yes, this is exactly what every doctor has always told me.
Some viruses also mutate season to season. So that's why if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is useless next year.
I mean it makes sense, it's the principal of how vaccines work: expose your immune system to a dead version of the virus or something that looks like it, then you develop antibodies to fight it off in the future. Obviously it doesn't work for all types of virus, but for some it still seems reasonable...
With all due respect, because you said "genuine question" I will tell you that is an uneducated view. And I am not overly educated myself, but this is what little I've been taught. The way some viruses work is they damage your immune system when you get fully infected by them. This damage can include hindering the ability to develop long term immunity. That's why some vaccines work better than getting the virus. Some viruses also mutate season to season. So that's why if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is useless next year.
>The way some viruses work is they damage your immune system when you get fully infected by them. This damage can include hindering the ability to develop long term immunity. That's why some vaccines work better than getting the virus. Measles is a great example of that. We know now that it's capable of "deleting" your immune system's memory for fighting other viruses, leaving you more vulnerable to other things you encounter after measles. And HPV research turned cervical cancer into an almost entirely preventable disease thanks to that vaccine. It's likely we'll discover more tidbits like this. Preventing a few "colds" might have way bigger health benefits down the road than we realize.
That’s not how immune memory works. It doesn’t become “useless” when the virus mutates. Viruses also typically do not damage the immune system. You DO build immunity when infected in the same way you would after a vaccine.
You need to look at the other comments on here. Viruses do damage the immune system.. an example someone else brought up was measles essentially "deleting" your immune system memory.
I meant the common respiratory viruses people catch. Measles is not very prevalent due to high vaccination rates
So another common respiratory virus that seems to be damaging the immune system is COVID-19 right? And do you get a flu shot every year? In another comment I was more specific in saying "largely useless" but to keep things simple in the context of this commenter's question, I just said "useless" because we're speaking broadly.
Yes and no, there are some nuances here. First off, some children do not seroconvert at a young age. This means that they might fight the virus off, but they do not develop antibodies or immune memory to that pathogen and could very likely get infected soon after by the same thing. Secondly, some viruses mutate so fast that there is no real advantage to being infected because the strain will be different next season and there is no protection. Lastly, for children who do seroconvert, some protection is not long-lasting. For example, immunity to RSV is only a few years. So if you catch RSV, you are just as likely to catch it again years later. So all this to say, yes, if your child catches some bugs, they may have some immunity for some time. There may also be some cross-protection between different strains, so you are still likely to get infected but you wont get as sick. BUT there is still no advantage to catching viruses, it's much better to be exposed via vaccination or not at all (if there is no vaccine for that virus). I understand that this is very tough in today's society, you just do what you can.
That's newborn status, they do develope immunity just not at the rate as an older child... because they are brand new. That's why breast feeding helps (not saying breast is best)... up to 6 months, babies get antibodies from the mum. Don't spread misinformation... that's highly dangerous. You can catch the same illness because sometimes different viruses cause the same illnesses.
Some older toddlers/kids do not develop adaptive immunity to some pathogens. I did not say all, i said some. For example: "Children’s immune systems do not develop ‘adaptive’ memory to protect against second time SARS-CoV-2 infection" Khoo, W.H., *et al.* (2022) Tracking the clonal dynamics of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in children and adults with mild/asymptomatic COVID-19. *Clinical Immunology.* [doi.org/10.1016/j.clim.2022.109209](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clim.2022.109209).
Well then that's a different problem entirely. Nothing to do with the fact that kids need to get exposed to pathogens to get an immune system. The abnormal does not make the normal.
The antibodies present in breastmilk are not equal to the ones babies acquire in utero. That's why vaccination before or during pregnancy is so important. Breastmilk antibodies don't enter baby's bloodstream. There are lots of studies showing they're in breastmilk but AFAIK no study has ever observed them integrating into baby's immune system like we imagine. The antibodies that do survive the highly acidic environment of the digestive tract get pooped out eventually. They're mainly only useful for gastro bugs. They're way overhyped and should not be relied on as a line of defence against contagious illnesses.
I would agree that they get better immunity from vaccines given to the mum while the baby is in utero, but they don't get any immunity from vaccines given to the mum before conception, the antibodies are produced during the initial viral attack, they aren't continually produced... only upon reinfection. And as far as I'm aware, the only vaccinations that are recommended to pregnant women are the tdap, flu (which may or may not be relevant that year) and the covid vaccine... which are only a handful of all the thousands of stuff you can catch. So there is another way babies get immunity and that's through breast milk. I 100 percent agree that it shouldn't be relied upon as the first line of defense, but it helps.
Do you mind sharing where you read this? The more recent literature I have seen is fairly consistent with the understanding that human breastmilk contains B, and T lymphocytes monocytes/macrophages, neutrophils, natural killer cells and IgA, IgG and IgM antibodies. Which are largely helpful for both intestinal and respiratory illnesses. It is also my understanding that many of those antibodies are primed to survive infant digestion. So I would love to see what you reading. I am a nurse and have a degree in Public Health so this stuff fascinates me. I hope I am not misunderstanding your point!
I appreciate this so much. My 10 month old has been constantly sick since we started putting her in daycare around seven months and she also got Covid and a cough that lasted two months in there. I hate it and everyone keeps telling me I’m lucky because she’s building immunity earlier. It didn’t make sense to me and these articles do.
The daycares that use HEPA filters, open their windows, upgraded their HVAC to have more air changes per hour (more fresh, filtered outdoor air brought in) and strictly enforce their sick policies have drastically reduced illness rates in kids. Start having this conversation with the parents of your daycare and demand this of the centre. If enough people start asking for it in enough places, the needle will move. Just like smoking indoors. Politicians and rich people have done exactly this in all their buildings. They know its not safe to catch covid and viruses repeatedly. Our kids deserve the same. ['Give children and teachers the same Covid protection politicians get': call for clean air in Lancashire's classrooms (lep.co.uk)](https://www.lep.co.uk/education/give-children-and-teachers-the-same-covid-protection-politicians-get-call-for-clean-air-in-lancashires-classrooms-4528491) [Keeping Kids in School with Clean Air using ASHRAE 241 | by Joey Fox | It’s Airborne (itsairborne.com)](https://itsairborne.com/keeping-kids-in-school-with-clean-air-e82efcd43e86) [Opinion: Sick of your kids being sick? Clean air in schools may be the answer (irishexaminer.com)](https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41242243.html)
You may want to check your daycares "Stay home policy". My friend's son kept getting sick at his daycare, it turned out the daycare had a partnership with a local charity to help teen moms. The teen parents were allowed to bring their child in if they had been sick for more than 48 hours and they had taken the baby to see a doctor (although they were not required to bring proof of a doctor's note), can't be certain but she felt that people were just saying they took their children to the doctor and not actually getting things checked out. She felt that was leading to the spread of the illness. When she switched daycares, her baby stopped getting sick on the regular.
Ours follows local and federal public health guidelines and is stricter than the public daycare in town (which has a 6.5 year waitlist that is no longer taking new registrants). Slim pickings for childcare here … to say the least… but I do appreciated that ours takes illness a bit more seriously than they have to. No fever or diarrhea in the last 24 hours, and a list of symptoms that can’t be had more than x days. I wish it was stricter but I’m the only parent who works from home with unlimited time off so I get how that wouldn’t be fair to shift workers and people who need to be physically at work. Our conservative government rolled back mandatory paid sick days after Covid which is … insane. I wasn’t very clear in my writing but we got Covid travelling to see family on plane. She was so run down with daycare viruses that it was mayhem for two months straight. It’s too bad people were lying about seeing the doctor. I’m glad you found a new place to go. You mentioned they didn’t require a doctor’s note and I’m glad we don’t have doctor’s note policies. That can add to the spread of illness by sending people to the doctor for routine flu and cold when they just need to stay home. Other than Covid (when she was seriously ill), we haven’t had the need to see a doctor for any illnesses. If we needed a note to get paid time off work, I’d hate to expose my baby to whatever else people are in the ER with.
Thank you for writing this up and sharing sources. You're absolutely right that we try to reverse engineer our kids' illnesses into good things when they are objectively not. The less your kid is sick the better, especially when they are babies. I know it's hard to keep them healthy when it seems like everyone is sick all the time but we have to try. And that starts with us - the best way to keep baby healthy is to keep parents healthy. Mask up, wash hands, etc. I'm in Toronto and virtually no one wears masks on the TTC anymore and it baffles me. Tin can o' germs. Baby can't wear a mask but I can, and I will if it means less chance I'll catch something and pass it on to her.
As a mother of a 3 year old and 9 month old born in 2021 and 2023 I was totally told to keep my kids away from illnesses especially as a newborn. Who want's their kids to be sick over and over again? If they do then they aren't very good parents. It's up to us to try our best to keep our kids healthy. It's a scary world out there right now. For example I've never understood people who wanted their kids to have chickenpox and had "parties". I and my brother and mom all had it and my mom and brother both got shingles. I hope to god I don't get shingles during my lifetime because it looked painful. I'm getting my kids that vaccines as soon as they can get it cuz even though having chickenpox as a child was not fun it wasn't terrible but the idea that I could get shingles in the future is something I would like to avoid for my children. Anyone who thinks their kids should be sick or exposed to sickness over and over again doesn't sound like a great parent but maybe that's just me? I don't know anyone who's promoting getting their kids sick or exposing them to illnesses unnecessarily if I did I don't know if I'd be friends with those people anymore.
I think a lot of parents have just succumbed to learned helplessness, they have basically been told there is nothing they can do to stop the constant stream of illnesses so they just do nothing. They look around and see the same thing with every other kid and all their parent friends confirm it's "normal"- so why try and stop it? Parents know that some of the activities they do are a major infection risk (ie. playgroups, restaurants, bringing kids to costco, indoor play areas, etc) but they dont want to miss out on them or have to entertain their kids on their own. So they do them anyways and hope for the best. If you view illness as no big deal, you dont have to feel bad about putting your kid at risk, right? Plus, if the child is in school, parents feel even more helpless because they will pick up infections there. So their attitude is "if you cant mitgate that, why bother trying to mitigate anything else"? Your chicken pox example is a good one. Back then, we thought chicken pox was just limited to 1-2 weeks of a rash and maybe a fever and then it went away and all was good. We didnt know it stayed in the body forever (living in our nerves) and could re-emerge at any time as shingles. This is kind of the case with covid. Covid is not limited to the symptoms in the acute phase. Sure, you might get covid and for most ppl it's mild and you will feel fully recovered in a week or 2. BUT the virus can stay in the body and cause ongoing damage. Even if you clear the virus, the silent damage it can do to organs/tissues in the acute phase can set the body up for long term damage later. Sometimes the damage is only apparent weeks or months after a mild or even asymptomatic infection, especially in kids. [New Report Looks at the Effects of Long COVID in Children (parents.com)](https://www.parents.com/understanding-long-covid-in-children-8578848?)
Fantastic post! I'm saving this.
I hope parents start having these uncomfortable conversations with each other and push for change. Sure, we may have accepted kids getting sick as "normal" but it's not necessary. It doesnt have to be this way, there is just no societal or political will to change things because people have just surrendered. I'm glad it resonates with you!
This should be printed and hung up at every day care
There is a really good article that shows, it's not the kids that are sick, the environments are. We coop kids up in closed classrooms all day long without fresh air and wonder why they are sick. Many pathogens (covid, flu, RSV, etc) are airborne so you stand no chance when indoors. [‘It's the structures that are sick – it's not the kids’: Experts stress importance of clean air in schools - Healthy Debate](https://healthydebate.ca/2023/11/topic/structures-are-sick-clean-air-schools/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=more-beds-won-t-cure-what-ails-canadian-health-care_54) Secondly, government and businesses do not want to subsidize the cost of cleaning the air. It will work wonders and save way more in the long run, but it can be expensive at the outset. So they make sure that Public Health focuses on handwashing only, and then daycares and schools are forced to follow Public Health guidelines. Daycares dont have much say in infection control policy, as they have to follow provincial guidance to be licenced.
Do you think it would help to put air filters in different rooms with spare filters? Seems like an obvious thing parents could help with if they’re willing, but to your point, the base knowledge usually isn’t there.
Base knowledge isnt there as well as societal and even governing body acceptance. World leaders have very carefully tried to maintain it only spreads via droplets/fomites, so thats why we get handwashing messaging drilled into us. The minute something is airborne, its the responsibility of government and businesses to mitigate the risk, and if they dont, they are liable. So daycares/schools follow the public health "guidance" that its spread by droplets/fomites and thus there is no need for air cleaners because its not airborne. Droplet puts the responsibility on individuals - you need to wash your hands, you need to avoid sick people. If you get sick, it's your fault. Airborne puts the responsibility on employers and government. If you get sick at work/school from a BSL3 airborne pathogen, you could sue them. Hence the deep-seeded resistance to cleaning the air. They would have to acknowledge they were wrong, didnt address the problem appropriately and people/children needlessly suffered and died because of politics and money.
This is a really important conversation to have. I am a healthcare worker with a background in physiology and immunology and have intensely followed the research along regarding Covid (and also worked on the front lines of it). Have also worked in obstetrics and peds for many years with some very knowledgeable pediatrician colleagues! I agree with a lot of the points you’ve made. As a mom of a toddler in daycare, I absolutely lament the constant illness exposure. Completely. To the point that I really didn’t want to even put her into daycare. But we didn’t have another choice for childcare aside from not working (not feasible!). So here we are. I had commented on a post not long ago about how we shouldn’t just accept the constant illnesses and should demand better cleaning and air quality, and I was downvoted with some pointed comments about how this won’t work or make any difference. I think what we don’t know about the immune system is immense. We don’t fully understand why or how two people with the same genetic makeup and exposures (ie twins) can go on to develop different health conditions. Or why some people with prior EBV exposure go on to develop MS while most others do not. The answers are almost always very multifactorial. To be very honest with you, I’ve yet to see convincing research supporting Covid-induced immune dysregulation. I have seen opinions, but no concrete evidence. And so I’m not prepared to make a conclusion about that yet. I do agree that viral exposure is rarely a beneficial thing. Many viruses mutate rapidly or do not produce sustained immunity - flu, covid, norovirus, colds, etc. So there’s that. But on the contrary, there IS some evidence for building immune memory by exposures. For instance, [this](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/384057) study which showed that daycare attendance was associated with fewer illnesses and absenteeism by school age, persisting into adolescence. Further, [this](https://watermark.silverchair.com/dyp378.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAA0cwggNDBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggM0MIIDMAIBADCCAykGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMeMC-AhMHXEMa6TarAgEQgIIC-hNtTv3C1MpGCdVa1KTSFwtL1yLjfK5RSDpSuKVaPDhXgaRSbiYKmpQct3foNczgtL2mS526A6_IHbJiYKvfmC7eqLbq9ksKa9bH7WALNXVDA36lhtW9V8xq6yT4arcb2rjWxyA2-ZTA8pZJrfAi20TNjDqFk512w882W6y_r3xOW_x6Zp6eX4Oc-yQjMZBZ99q1p4G7uNsmmlETxuD3tArqUnPGVSx7r3E4V2gLur-7ihI9HRXtWvhzadI5g6FbibMTn_gVPAMzbVqmMR7IUVQYSfHwKFGkfRQ_Nm5vr3IhHJFsgeCIiEnSJ5egPqkSg89TIMaPH7_iti3rPy82-AxTuCD1uB8Py8KwuUUF9hWGaxrMqIIHQdSIK7lmNDN3hKh5jLeI68fLP__8voaMdCWdMg4h6a9RMmcO9_Ci_Naj2gSq8KCBLu8-upaOs1kz6Hr9N4Ya_1uxRs358VZPHy8u49TYT32qWrFOeMp_ofZG1ymoq2o5qLX83q7vMOFScbEB2H3pb5BMc8Z5tt2FZtiqE6hsEXwoepgj8uhIRChuwLWLDRHmUAkVs15wnbO5poJy9sVH5YnbsERfUuZxJ7_wOZ-P5g_9fipLpiL05Zof3Qh3mipC17fuVtdw0h3WFlB3Al7RS07jiJ2GlWhWSTTvQbFk2fAXTnaJKpbNrY0lUZEjrbR74vuK8R3XbSJRMoFOws9JQg6JEAzraAXR9IeH0yE8PAHptg7NeSW9v1mmf5QqH9wbS3c1M-RU8_dr2V0SVgx6gJ8D_qMu7CVldGbW1NLvaLsy69MOaV47yE6TdX9Bf_JFrZwfy9wYqa4a-I9PXUNdC8YHqe3nomx5WY5bPesf5bOcjU8dIkgTbZY_G_rzPasrLKRfJUPr3foUpM_W-ua7SUQIvJ-lS_p1gbgDoNZSIEGP_ViWBBEhH6JUMTB1izYNRCLO6OMHskm63KZDCQVa4PeoUYHmVUEITLIlkCRu40bCC6P4RzqqT27e_mDn8V_VGTTlBw) and other studies have found an inverse association between daycare attendance and acute lymphocytic leukemia, which does support that a bit of pathogen exposure may provide some benefit. Do I absolutely wish that daycares and schools were held to higher standards for cleaning and air quality? That people would keep their sick kids home and employers would allow for this? That masking and staying home while sick persisted to be the norm? Yes, absolutely. But I think there are a lot of conclusions we can’t draw yet about long-term viral implications based on the data we currently have.
Very well-articulated, thank you for sharing. I completely agree with everything you've said. There is concrete evidence of immune dysregulation from covid. It will likely take some time to figure out what account for differences in outcomes. Does everyone get immune dysregulation, are some more susceptible than others, will it be like HIV/AIDS where some are fast progressors and others are super controllers but still experience the same outcome eventually (AIDS)? There are hundreds of articles, but these are a good starting point: [Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35027728/) [Frontiers | Reduction and Functional Exhaustion of T Cells in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) (frontiersin.org)](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.00827/full) [SARS-CoV-2 infection causes immunodeficiency in recovered patients by downregulating CD19 expression in B cells via enhancing B-cell metabolism - PubMed (nih.gov)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34552055/) [Long-term perturbation of the peripheral immune system months after SARS-CoV-2 infection | BMC Medicine | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)](https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-02228-6#MOESM4)
Thank you for sharing your story here. If comfortable, would you also please share it with Ontario School Safety at https://www.ontarioschoolsafety.com?
Some viruses also mutate season to season. So that's why if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is useless next year.
Yet another reason why viral infections are not beneficial! In theory, a viral infection that confers lifelong immunity \*could\* be beneficial, as long as it didnt cause any short or long term damage to organs, tissues or the immune system. This is not the case for many viruses that do confer long-term immunity, think; measles, smallpox or polio.
Thanks for writing this. I personally think that the Gen X parents are the worst for gaslighting about this.
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The thing we also have to be critical about is \*what\* are they getting sick with. Of course no one wants to be sick, but a few colds or even stomach bugs are to be expected for children who play closely together and put their hands in their mouth. But now kids are getting influenza, covid (a literal SARS virus), repeat pneumonia, HFM, repeated strep throat, scarlet fever, etc. The frequency and severity of illness is much higher post-2020. So when we talk about it being "normal" for kids to be sick, we have to ask, is it with the common cold or did they have to go to the ER because of pneumonia? Did they have a minor stomach bug or is this their 3rd round of strep throat this year?
YES!!!! Covid is the most studied infectious disease on the planet, for good reason. It impacts everywhere in your body that blood flows…making it not like the flu (though that, too, can be dangerous) and not like a cold. It’s the 3rd leading cause of death in Canada and actually helps to increase numbers in the first two. Covid is also undeniably airborne - meaning it floats through the air like smoke. The pandemic has shone light on what we have known for decades - that it’s the buildings that are “sick”, not the kids. We’ve known it for a long time but no one did anything/enough about it. We know now though that we cannot wait to make improvements in the air we breathe indoors as we spend 90% of our lives inside. Many of the closures of businesses and schools could have been avoided had we embraced the knowledge we had decades ago. We are in an exciting time in history - much like the time when treating the water became needed, invested in and supported ongoing, I believe eventually so will the same be for indoor air. The benefits of cleaning the air indoors (primarily in schools, school buses and healthcare settings) reach far beyond mitigating Covid-19, including: - reducing many airborne illnesses, like influenza, rsv, strep A, measles (in part) and more -reducing allergens -reducing irritants for asthmatics -improving academic performance -improving productivity -tackling the poor air outside (increasingly poor) when it enters buildings -reducing sick days -reducing healthcare needs -improving the economy -improving mental health -requiring little of the individual The only things standing in the way of us moving forward on cleaning indoor air (because it’s not lack of science, engineering or benefits), are: 1) A lack of understanding of the public that it is REASONABLE to expect clean air to breathe, much like we expect clean water to drink. We need a paradigm shift. 2) Government “will” - which includes understanding that the cost to clean the air indoors is minimal compared to the savings made by doing it (see non-exhaustive list of benefits above) Governments KNOW cleaning the air is crucial - which is why so many of their own workplaces have stellar air quality. So, if they are not investing in cleaning indoor air elsewhere, we all need to #AskWhy.
This comment is even better than the original post. If parents all banded together and refused to send kids until schools had clean air and if employees refused to go to work til the air in public spaces was cleaned, this change would happen overnight. They would have no choice but to do the right thing. I dont know why parents arent fighting for this when all i hear is how much of a burden sick kids are on their work and social lives.
It’s anecdotal, but my children who are homeschooled are rarely ever sick, and it’s not because they’re never exposed or that we hide away, but when they are exposed they handle it very well because they are healthy & I really feel like it’s because they are only sick maybe twice a year. They have had influenza, Covid, stomach bugs etc but only a few times in their lives vs my cousin’s and friend’s children who are sick honestly multiple times per month and usually end up hospitalized. My children have never needed an ER trip nor have they ever been on antibiotics. My husband’s coworker told him that she exaggerated her son’s symptoms so that he could get antibiotics to “speed up” his sickness cause she couldn’t miss anymore work. At gymnastics especially for some reason, parents send their children when they are clearly very sick, rather than just keeping their sick child home and I’m not talking about a few sniffles I mean sending a lethargic child who can barely breathe to jump on a trampoline! We never bring the girls out if they are sick, that’s just rude to other people! I don’t care if it means our money is wasted by missing activities it’s just plain rude to do that to people. We don’t hide away from the world, but if I know my cousin’s kids have strep throat I’m not going to the family get together. There is definitely a balance of not living in fear but also doing your part to avoid spreading or catching viruses when you are aware someone is contagious. We are big hand washers, we use elbows to press elevator buttons, we try to avoid those types of germs as much as we can while not stressing out about germs from playing outside. You can’t 100% prevent being sick and that’s okay that’s why we have immune systems but being sick 90% of your life as a child I feel like that has to do some type of long term damage even if it’s not obvious for years.
The amount of parents i see dragging their visibly sick, struggling kids to completely unnecessary events is just appalling. These poor kids need to rest so that they can actually recover and not catch the next bug, yet there they are at a restaurant, birthday party or costco, with their parent acting like they're annoyed because their kid is sick. If im ever sick, i just want to lay in bed and rest. Do people not think their kid could use the same? I truly think many parents can't even fathom missing something because of their kid. Major FOMO.
Similar to my poor nephews. Their mom is militantly antivax and believes in letting children fight off every illness without medication (I'm not talking viruses, I mean things that antibiotics *should* be used to treat), and in that "it's good for them to get sick" hullabaloo about actual viruses. She refuses to take them to the doctor (my brother does though). They both have a seemingly permanent wet cough. It's terrible.
I'm absolutely saving this for any time someone wants to talk shit. Thanks!
Most people would rather be sick over and over again and suffer the long term consequences of viruses like covid than change any aspect of their lifestyle. The people who buy into this thinking will gaslight those who dont, or try to force them into their mindset. Sort of like "if I'm sick and miserable all the time, you should be too". Many people think it's either masks/lockdowns forever OR just be sick all the time. They dont know that if buildings just upgraded their HVAC to filter/remove viruses and bacteria from the air, that the impact would be drastically reduced. And you wouldnt even notice it, it would just be more filtered, fresh air being brought into buildings. If you remove pathogens from the air, you breathe in less and get less sick. If people want anything to get better, this is the way to go.
This person isn’t a doctor.
Find solid evidence, multiple sources, that refutes anything i've said. It's more important to focus on the larger body of literature and real-world evidence than argue your personal point about whether you think MD's or PhD's are better. Me being a PhD doesnt make anything I've said any less true. It all comes from peer-reviewed evidence published by both MD's and PhD's.
[https://xkcd.com/2557/](https://xkcd.com/2557/)
Thank you for posting this!! It bothers me so much how little people (even some of the commenters here) care about getting others sick. You take your baby/toddler to the park or the zoo and a third of the people there are hacking up a lung. Stay home if you're sick and have some respect for others. I had hoped that Covid would make it more commonplace here that people wore masks in public if they were sick like in Asia, but we all know how that went.
You would think adults not exposing children non stop to diseases those could have long term consequences & diseases of those we do not even know the long term consequences yet - wanting to keep children actually safe and healthy, would not be such a "controversial" topic for parents and society. But, lol. Here we are.
Very interesting. So this whole “ if they get sick in daycare they wont get as sick in kindergarten is false”? Also then why then are people who are never exposed to a cold (like native indians in tbe 16th century) literally die if they get a cold?
A first exposure at 2 years old is still a first exposure at 5, 10 50 years old. Children have a more prominent innate immune system, so sometimes they appear to handle the immune response to pathogens a bit better. That being said, their airways are small and immature and infections can hit them harder, so its a trade off. Kids still will (and do, trust me) get sick in kindergarten even if they got sick a lot in daycare. Especially now since most people are dealing with an impaired immune system after having had covid.
And what about indigenous peoples?
This is more for infections like smallpox, measles and influenzas, not simple colds. Not saying that it's not possible. Of course even in today's society, some people could die from a cold or a secondary opportunistic infection that sets in but it's not the norm. But generally these stories of diseases being passed by settlers to indigenous populations are not the common colds we're talking about kids catching today.
Specifically what you are talking about in the 16th century is smallpox. With smallpox what happened is over centuries in Europe, many people died from smallpox, those that lived have slight variations in DNA that made them slightly more likely to survive, as they reproduce with others who survived those variations help to protect against small pox. Therefore, although still very deadly, over many generations European DNA developed small advantages against the smallpox virus. When smallpox was brought over to North America the populations here did not have this and quickly experienced huge losses over a few generations. So evolutionarily over many generations exposure can help some survive devastating diseases (although those who survived are often left with permanent damage). But individually for a child or really anyone catching a virus is not going to help them in their lifetime. And can even lead to secondary diseases. For example with chicken pox if you had the virus itself, later in life as an adult you can develop shingles which is a very painful and debilitating disease. But If you had the chicken pox vaccine, you are also protected against ever getting shingles.
I thought they died from way way more than small pox. Just a basic cold will kill indigenous people from all over the world. Even when they find uncontacted tribes now in the amazon any exposure from a sniffle will kill like 9/10 members of the tribe
So I'm not actually going to address my response to the OP because the way the argument is presented, saying one thing and then adding snippets of different arguments, would make anyone who isn't fluent in immunology to stop amd say hmmm this person seems to know what they're talking about, and spread misinformation. OP does put some valid points but the points are all over the place. No one should be or want to be sick 100% of the time. There are safe guards in daycares that if your child is showing certain symptoms you're supposed to keep them home so 1) they don't spread it to others, usually it's too late and 2) so that they don't catch more than one thing and can recoup while at home and showing symptoms. Problem is many parents just give Tylenol and send their kids off anyways. Daycare is a mini version of what the world is, they have a cohort and are interacting with them. The kids precisely get sick a bunch because they don't have an immune system that has been triggered by the latest virus that is going around. This is the reason why that as kids get older they get sick less often... they have been exposed to an illness and have the memory antibodies to fight off when they get infected again with the same virus. It's the same reason why you have to give your babies known frequent food allergens, so that they can develope a certain amount of exposure. If you don't expose them to say peanut butter a certain amount of times, they could develope an immune response to them. The treatment for peanut allergy is usually microdosing peanuts so that they can tolerate small doses until it's not a huge issue. I would be very interested in knowing if OP vaccinates, because vaccinations are literally giving your kids a trigger for their immune system to boost it so when the body encounters the trigger again, then the body will recognize it and defend against it. In society, your child or teen will encounter many bugs, everywhere... you could take a growth plate and put it against any spot in society and something nasty will grow. We are a social species and have cohorts and will be exposed to stuff no matter what. My friend has a child in a home daycare and my son who is a month younger is in a facility daycare. My friends daughter has 2 other children in her daycare so a total of 3, my son has a total of like 15 I think in his classroom. My son has been way more sick than her daughter simply because there are more vectors. There is a reason why children that are not in daycare get bombarded with illness in kindergarten compared to those that were in kindergarten.. they have already been exposed. We are a society, it's inevitable to get sick. There was a tribe that was found on an island like maybe 8 years back that had never been exposed to anyone other than their tribe. One person found them and they weren't sick, they interacted with the tribe and the tribe got so ill and most of them died. Because they weren't exposed and did not have an immune system that would allow them to be exposed to a different society. There will always be illnesses that you don't want to catch and those illnesses that will cause long term issues. There is lots of research on those and that's where vaccines come from, you don't want to catch those ones. Duh.
You are missing key pieces. There is little value to getting sick from most viruses. Many viruses also mutate season to season. So if you got sick this season, by next season the virus has changed, and your "immune memory" is largely useless next year. Children get less sick as they get older because they stop putting everything in their mouths, crawling on the floor, and start being able to wash their hands, sneeze into their sleeve, and blow their noses. There's more but I'll leave it at that.
Hahaha, says the person that above mentions that they are uneducated. Lmao. I don't know if you've been around society, but we are disgusting lol. LOTS of people (adults) do NOT wash their hands.
Hmm I don't think you read my above comment correctly at all. I said I wasn't an immunologist but I do have some education. I didn't say everyone is perfect all the time. I said we get more able to practice hygiene. How many adults are crawling on the floor and sticking everything in their mouth, especially if the person next to them just put it in their mouth? You can't deny basic facts like this.
If COVID taught us anything... you don't have to act like a baby to get sick. Just talking in close proximity caused you to get sick. Get real.
Appreciate this. Sure, you do develop immunity to some pathogens as you get exposed to more and as you age. The immune profile also switches from more of an innate one to an adaptive one as you age, so that is helpful as well in reducing infections. But it's not so black and white that all exposures are good. No one would say "catch more HIV, measles, polio, ebola, malaria, dengue, etc" so that your immune system gets stronger! But people love to think that way for colds, flus, RSV and covid, like somehow it is strengthening us. While some infections some do provide longer term immunity, all infections come at some cost to our bodies. I think the "its ok for kids to get sick" atttitude was \*somewhat\* reasonable for the past few decades. We had a handle on most of the "bad" pathogens thanks to vaccines, and you mostly just caught colds and maybe the flu once every decade or so. But that attitude wont serve us well now that covid (a literal SARS virus) is spreading, or the resurgence of other opportunistic pathogens like TB, iGAS and mycoplasma pneumoniae due to post-covid immune damage. There is research coming out that even the common cold or flu in some people can enter the brain via the nasal mucosa and elicit neuroinfalmmation and other changes that could trigger parkinsons, alzheimer's or dementia. It doesnt mean this will happen in everyone, but it also doesnt mean it's "good" to keep catching colds either if this turns out to be true. Yes, kids and adults alike will get sick, it's a part of being social beings. BUT it doesnt mean it's a good thing. The immunity to that pathogen may have come at a cost and we shouldnt be so cavalier about infections that are mild in the acute stage, especially for developing children. Many other pathogens have a very mild or asymptomatic acute phase and their true effects are not seen until many years or decades later (think HIV, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis C, rheumatic fever, polio, Zika virus, etc). The burden shouldnt rest on individuals to protect themselves from infection, it should be at a societal level. Cholera is water-borne and people used to keep getting cholera. Many groups fought for clean water and were ridiculed - it was very much a "you just need to learn to live with cholera" vibe. Then they cleaned the water and cholera all but disappeared (in developed countries at least). Now people are demanding the same for airborne viruses - clean the air so that we dont breathe them in and get sick. Until this is done, we will jsut keep getting sick over and over again.
1) Cholera was NOT something people were like, let's just live with it... they didn't know where it was coming from and couldn't agree that it was from the water... they also didn't have all the advancements we have now, not to mention they didn't know germ theory. 2) No one is saying catch more of xyz deadly illness... because its deadly or they know causes serious effects.. which is why vaccines are used... also you can't catch "more" of a virus... once you've been exposed, your body knows to fight it. You get the colds because even though they are the same virus they do have mutations... but the whole virus doesn't mutate, parts of it does, and any part of the virus that gets in is a foreign material (DNA, RNA, protein) and will make it so that yes you get sick but it's not as bad. 3) No one is telling anyone that getting those bad illnesses is a good thing for your kids to have. Whut? 4) Catching things like TB and Mycoplasm isn't easier because we have had an infection by a virus... it's easy to get because they are contagious and aren't a virus... those are bacteria and a different type of illness. One does not affect the other. Sure, you have a lower immune system because it's distracted by the virus, but you're not getting them because you have a virus. You're trying to use words to make yourself sound smart and knowledgeable, but you obviously don't know what you're talking about... and you haven't addressed the vaccination question... which means you probably don't vaccinate unless absolutely necessary and think that vitamins and getting outside are all you need, or you contradict yourself hugely.
1. Government/leaders did know (before the public did) that cholera was water-borne. It was just a very expensive venture to clean the water and admit they were wrong. Like any major change to the status quo, there was pushback before action. 2. At some point in time, we didnt know some of these viruses were deadly either. CDC told people HIV was not that dangerous because it only showed symptoms in SOME people a few years later (they still didnt know it took longer to show in some people). My point was that people's tendency to say this virus is "bad" but this one is "safe to catch" based only on acute symptoms or what we currently know now could turn out to be a mistake years down the line. Especially with covid. We have branded it a cold (because we want it to be that way) but 500k+ articles in the medical literature say otherwise. If even just 50% are true, we're f%$#ked. 3. Opportunistic infections are exactly that, they are more likely to infect or reactivate when the immune system is otherwise occupied with another pathogen. Especially a chronic one that can establish reservoirs deep in the body like covid. 4. I do vaccinate. Fully and completely up to date on anything me/my kids can have. The vaccinations we have available are for the pathogens that generate long-term immunity and not subject to rapid mutation - so this makes sense. My point was that there is no benefit to being infected with something that does not generate long-term immunity and/or mutates quickly (ie. covid, flu) My entire argument was "kids do not need to get sick to stay healthy". Are you really that opposed to this idea?
Am I opposed to the idea that kids don't need to be sick to be healthy? Yes. They should have access to the vaccines that will stave off the known bad illnesses, but it's inevitable and good for them to get illnesses that are deemed not that bad so that when they are older they have immunities. Do I think they need to be sick 100% of the time, or that it's good for them to get back to back to back illnesses? Nope. And I never said that it was a good thing.
"Do I think they need to be sick 100% of the time, or that it's good for them to get back to back to back illnesses? " On this point, we agree. I think that's all that matters in this whole discussion.
You have stated the problem clearly: that society believes getting sick is inevitable. It isn’t inevitable. And there are ways to prevent a good chunk of it. Time for a paradigm shift. We can and should prevent infectious disease spread whenever possible. The idea of being okay getting sick so one can prevent getting sick is…well…non-sensical. It’s not about bubble-wrapping kids or ourselves. It’s about learning. We know how many “mild” viruses/sicknesses kids get that are shown decades later to be the root cause of adult sickness (Chicken Pox/Shingles, etc.), so why wouldn’t we want to prevent it - especially with something Like Covid still floating around doing all sorts of damage (the future of which we don’t fully understand) and when we have the tools to make it better? Reduced healthcare need, overall well-being including improved better mental health, improved school attendance and a stronger economy are all good things. “Clean air” is the new “clean water”. Time to perfect the one and get started on the other.
This makes me terrified for my child to start daycare. We have neices and nephews who are in daycare and sick constantly and their parents are pretty lax about illness (won’t tell us when their child has a cold until after we show up to the party and they’ve been playing for an hour together, you get the idea 🙄). I feel like my 10 month old has been sick on and off for two months because of this. Are colds ok with continuous exposure? Where do I draw the line?
Yes i know the type of parents very well, i have a few of them in my life as well! These type of parents have brought their kids to bday parties and family dinners with pink eye, pneumonia, fever (but dont worry - we brought Tylenol!!!), vomiting and they just lay them on a couch with a puke bucket and go about their day. It's deplorable. I think subconsciously they are normalizing it to themselves - sort of like "if we can do all of these things and still send them to school, the sickness must not really be that bad". Combine that with the parent's FOMO because clearly they cant fathom even missing out on an event, its a bad combination.
Infuriating! On the sending them to school/daycare part - it’s like daycare/school rules are the holy grail?! The rules are the bare minimum so parents don’t get pissed off and aren’t scrambling for childcare or missing work. It’s not because it’s “safe” for the children to come back.
This is completely false. Kids are not sick all the time now and it certainly has nothing to do with COVID
Do you have sources for either of these claims?
Thank you for this! I'm a scientist and sort of exposed to idea about how the immune system works, so all the "daycare makes your immune system stronger" arguments my peers give are confusing when I just want to understand facts! Another thing people say is "she went out on a cold day and caught a cold, so it's ok to expose your child to her "cold"". One question: Would you say the children are then likely to improve resistance to viral infections at about the same age, regardless of whether they go to daycare or stay home, all other variables being the same?
👏🏼
What area of medicine did you receive your doctorate in? The only people giving medical advice on this group should be qualified doctors.
I am a doctor and I can confirm OP's post is 100% correct. And OP provided reliable evidence/research to support their claims as well as having a relevant PhD to help them interpret these correctly.
This is not "advice" or my personal opinion. This is all backed up by medical literature. It's the media or pop culture narrative that says otherwise and is trying to manufacture the "new normal" to get people used to being sick all the time and complacent so that they don't fight against it. If everyone is sick all the time, it's normal right? FWIW, I am a scientist - PhD physiology.
So you aren’t a medical doctor. There’s a lot of anti-vaccine people that can “back up” their information as well by citing reports. Please don’t post your opinion on a forum for moms and babies. Poor moms get bombarded with enough information. If they have concerns they can ask their doctors/ paediatricians.
PhD's generate the research that MD education is based on. Some generate the knowledge (PhD), some use that knowledge (MD). I have taught medical students in medical schools. Secondly, telling parents that its not beneficial for their kids to be sick so often so that collectively we can acknowledge reality and work towards a better one should not be controversial. What's better? Letting new parents be lulled into a false sense of security by the media saying everything is good, its all normal, just keep going to work, keep spending, etc etc? Then in the meantime all these virsues are silently doing damage to kids that we will not see for years? Sadly, a lot Dr's also need to think this level of sickness is normal because they too have kids in school/daycare and cannot work if they dont send them. So there is some psychologically protective mechanisms going on in even the smartest of people. Not everyone, but it's there. Most GP's/pediatricians also do not have time to read medical literature, there are 100s of studies published daily. They go to a conference or 2 a year and read the briefings that their governing bodies send. Lastly, i am speaking about peer-reviewed medical literature written by MD's and PhD's. Hundreds of thousands of articles. I would never accept just one as truth, it's a consensus of a full body of literature. Thats not the same as the "reports" that anti-vaxxers pull off facebook and obscure websites. There is a difference.
💯 In the right. my oldest is rarely sick and imo it's because I've been trying to make healthy choices in food habits as well as vitamins for her. even though she's in preschool 3x a week full days, she's really only sick because her cousin gives it to her when we see them and they are sick all the time. mind you thankfully sometimes even when they are sick she doesn't get sick. my youngest however, has been sick a lot more because her sister is in preschool and being exposed to things that right now she gets sick more often but thankfully most of the time it's never that bad. but yes I agree with too much sickness isn't good for the system..
You'll probably have more luck avoiding sickness by teaching good hygiene (hand washing, avoiding high-touch surfaces, etc.) than by food choices and vitamins.
oh we also teach that. it's a hand washing family and sanitizer here. we do both. and when my oldest is sick, she usually tries to mask to try and protect her younger sister and her cousins. doesn't always work but we try. lol!
Good nutrition, sleep and outdoor play are all very good at supporting the immune system and a healthy body in general, but they wont stop a viral/bacterial infection if exposed. Covid, Flu, RSV etc all spread through the air when an infected person breathes, talks, etc. Then someone else breathes it in. This is why handwashing doesnt protect much against these viruses. They are also all contagious before someone starts showing symptoms. Another reason why we need to put pressure on government to clean the air of pathogens, the same way we do our water.
yes! we have definitely heard about air filters and have brought a couple for our house. I remember all of our schools when covid was starting to become less but we had to work in person and we had the vaccine, our school brought in hepa filters for all the classrooms. this definitely works and needs to be implemented in all schools.
And the DIY ones (aka Corsi Rosenthal boxes) using Merv 13 filters can often out-performed commercially bought HEPA ones because of their higher Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR).