Doctors are sounding the alarm on the damage that lockdowns have had on children’s immune systems, with some saying that kids are coming in with as many as three illnesses simultaneously.
According to pediatricians at the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, children have begun piling into the hospital with an alarming number of respiratory viruses, even though the regular flu season is over.
The viruses found include rhinovirus (the cause of the common cold, which rarely hospitalizes people), adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, and parainfluenza. They’ve even begun diagnosing more kids with COVID, which has been linked with other surges.
“That’s not typical for any time of year and certainly not typical in May and June,” explains infection-control expert and Yale professor Thomas Murray.
Other pediatricians have noted that not only are respiratory viruses becoming more prevalent, but symptoms also seem to be getting worse than usual.
Moreover, those dealing with the sudden surge say that much can be attributed to lockdowns and isolation from everyday activities that would have built up young immune systems.
“It’s a massive natural experiment,’ said epidemiologist and chief science officer at eMed Michael Mina.
“The moment you stop seeing a virus on this regular cadence, as happened during the pandemic, that natural balance is upset,” he continued.
“The extraordinary measures we took to limit exposure to the coronavirus — necessary steps to contain a deadly new foe — also limited our exposure to other viruses. If you do get exposed to a virus again once too much time has passed, you may not be able to protect yourself as well, leading to out-of-season surges across the population and surprisingly virulent infections for individuals.”
He adds that not only has this time away from regular life impacted the ability to fight off viruses but it’s also increased the window for kids to be infected by viruses rarely experienced outside Fall and Winter.
“When you have a lot of people who don’t have immunity, the impact of the season is less. It’s like free rein,” Mina said.
The profound, long-lasting effects of lockdowns are made worse by the fact that risk from COVID is highly correlated with age (which Bill Gates recently conceded). This suggests that most kids weren’t at risk from COVID but may have sacrificed their immune systems to keep the elderly safe.
And that’s without mentioning the potential adverse reactions that come with taking the COVID vaccine for a virus that posed a next-to-zero risk for the young.
