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A fascinating study was published in the journal Pediatrics last month which confirmed what many physicians and scientists thought would happen to children as a result of the pandemic lockdowns and social distancing. When compared with previous years, the rates of many typical childhood infections have plummeted since March 2020. In fact, some common infections like influenza, croup, and bronchiolitis, have almost disappeared! You can read the full article here.
At first glance, this may appear like a very good thing. We don’t want children to get infections do we? Isn’t it wonderful that children are no longer getting sick? What an amazing testament to the effects of social distancing!
Well, I hate to break it to anyone who is applauding these study results. If you ask many doctors, including myself, we will tell you that these findings could prove disastrous for our future wellbeing—if sustained over anything but a very short time period. Let me explain why. Human beings are social animals who interact with each other at close quarters. Bacteria and viruses are ubiquitous—they always have been—and we have an in-built defense against them: our immune system. It’s biology 101, and our immunity exists to fight off the constant threats to us from pathogens. The immune system has almost become an afterthought in the whole COVID-19 response and discussion, and I’m not quite sure why. It’s also the reason why most people exposed, estimates suggest up to 80 percent of us, have no symptoms whatsoever (a similar statistic to Flu exposures). Your immune system has reacted and stopped the virus from proliferating. Comedian Bill Maher put it very well when he said that he didn’t understand why so many experts were saying at the beginning of the pandemic that “our bodies didn’t know how to deal with the new virus” (his exact words were: “Bull####, of course our bodies know how to deal with it, that’s why most people don’t even know they had it!”).
Childhood is when our immune systems develop, and as much as it may sound strange to say: children need exposure to the common pathogens in order to properly develop their immune systems. They get sick with viral illnesses all the time and recover fast. That’s just how it is. It’s understandable with the emergent measures to reduce coronavirus transmission, children (and indeed all of us) have been asked to socially distance for a while. Hopefully this does not last any longer than it needs to (and certainly no more than a year or two maximum) or lead to some new societal trend of thinking we should obsess over avoiding all contact with others to avoid any bacteria or viruses. Because if it does, we are going to have a generation of sickly children that we’ve produced as a result—with under developed immune systems. And I am okay as a medical doctor going on the record saying that this will be a big potential threat to our future health.
Suneel Dhand is a physician, writer, and YouTuber. He is Founder at MedStoic Lifestyle Medicine and DocsDox . Follow him on YouTube and Instagram.