Even Corporate Media Is Admitting The Truth That Lockdowns Have Made Kids Sicker

Attempting To Isolate Children Against Disease Only Leaves Them Defenseless Later On

Last month I suggested that the rash of pediatric hepatitis cases, along with the rampant yet oft-ignored increase in the incidence of gastroenteritis and related illnesses, was solid proof the lunatic lockdowns have made children sicker.

Hepatitis Is Everywhere. Apparently, So Is Gastroenteritis

Modern Discontent did a deep dive on the topic in his excellent piece on “immunity debt.”

Paying back the Immunity Debt

The proposition is simple: social isolation brought on by the lockdowns has stunted the development of childrens’ immune systems, leaving them less able to contend with the broad array of environmental pathogens (and therefore endemic illnesses) to which they are now being exposed as families seek a return to a pre-pandemic “normal life.”

Increasingly, the corporate media is coming to acknowledge the truth of this proposition. Extending well beyond immunological naivete exacerbating adenovirus infection, children are experiencing viral infections with greater severity and frequency than is typical for this time of year.

The Old Illnesses Are Making A Comeback

At Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, for example, children are showing up ill from an array of at least seven respiratory viruses—some with more than one infection at a time.

At one point last month, children were admitted to Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital with a startling range of seven respiratory viruses. They had adenovirus and rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus, influenza and parainfluenza, as well as the coronavirus — which many specialists say is to blame for the unusual surges.

“That’s not typical for any time of year and certainly not typical in May and June,” said Thomas Murray, an infection-control expert and associate professor of pediatrics at Yale. Some children admitted to the hospital were co-infected with two viruses and a few with three, he said.

Nor is this phenomenon confined to New Haven. Doctors around the United States are reporting similar things with their pediatric patients.

…doctors in the United States have started to notice more people catching a cold, flu, and other respiratory viruses in the spring and summer.

Infection control expert Professor Thomas Murray said: “That’s not typical for any time of year and certainly not typical in May and June.”

Pushing Vaccines

In the minds of some physicians, confronting these mini-outbreaks of infectious disease means pushing more flu shots and other vaccines.

In San Antonio, Texas:

The University Health in San Antonio’s Theresa Barton said the new shift had made her rethink her protocols and increase the promotion of the flu vaccines in March and April.

In the UK:

Dr Vanessa Saliba, Consultant Epidemiologist at the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA), previously told The Sun: “Disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has been the main driver for the fall in childhood vaccine uptake observed over the past two years.

“This decline in coverage means we have reduced protection against infectious diseases such as measles with the risk of outbreaks occurring."

Indeed, doctors across the country interpret the upsurge in pediatric illness as the result of disruptions to the typical patterns of primary care, including missing a number of childhood vaccinations.

In addition, health professionals told the Washington Post they are concerned that some viruses may be surging in children because they missed out on primary care throughout the pandemic, as well as vaccinations not relating to COVID-19.

It should be noted, however, that such disruptions occurred because of lockdowns and isolation protocols mandated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents did not unilaterally stop taking their children to the doctor.

Or Maybe It Was Just Wrong To Put Children In A Bubble?

Other doctors are acknowledging that the COVID lockdowns have backfired in a profound way, leaving children highly vulnerable to what previously were routine and unremarkable viral infections.

Medics believe this could be a direct result of the strict pandemic regulations the world lived through in 2020 and 2021 — because we haven’t had a chance to build immunity to common viruses through exposure.

“All of these decisions have consequences,” Murray told the Washington Post.

“It’s a massive natural experiment,” added Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and chief science officer at the digital health platform eMed.

The consequences of shielding children from exposure to normal pathogens is also creating problems for older adults, who are at increased risk for shingles—a reactivation of the varicella virus that typically strikes older adults with weakened immune systems—in large measure because their children are no longer bringing home the steady influx of chickenpox exposures that naturally boost immune system function.

Before the advent of vaccines against chickenpox, people were typically infected as children and then had a series of natural boosting events throughout their lives, rebooting their immunity as they made contact with infected friends and then their own children and their children’s friends.

Now that those children are protected, they are not providing their parents with those natural boosts, making those adults vulnerable to the virus once again in the form of shingles.

Additionally, for infants and toddlers especially, the lockdowns have blocked the immunological growth and development needed for avoiding life-long health issues such as asthma.

The cohort of babies born over the past two years will yield a lot of information. Normally a child younger than 5 has on average a virus in his or her nose 26 out of 50 weeks of the year. Serious RSV and rhinovirus infections in those early years are associated with the development of asthma later in life.

“Those kids did not have infection at a crucial time of lung development,” Foxman said, making them key to understanding the relationship between the viral infection and asthma.

Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud

While the idea that young children need routine exposure to environmental pathogens as part of their immune systems’ natural development is hardly new, the COVID lockdowns are the first time any society has deliberately acted to disrupt that exposure on a mass scale. Despite the epidemiological data showing consistently that young children were on average the least at risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they were placed in varying degrees of isolation and quarantine along with older children and adults, disrupting virtually all of the myriad social interactions—and thus pathogen exposures—that are the traditional norm in early childhood development.

With most of the lockdown measures—broadly described with the anodyne term “non-pharmaceutical interventions”—now largely withdrawn, children are returning to previous patterns of social interaction and pathogen exposures with immune systems that have been effectively idled for months. As a result, an increasing number of children are proving ill-prepared for the onslaught of viruses that are always lurking in the background. Unsurprisingly, their underdeveloped immune systems are having greater difficulty warding off these pathogens, resulting in more and more serious infections.

While doctors have been willing to concede the role the lockdowns played in creating these mini-outbreaks of infectious respiratory disease in children, the corporate media is only now starting to say the quiet part out loud—that the lockdowns are the cause of stunted immune system development in children and thus are the ultimate cause for many children getting more sick with more infections more often.

Whether the lockdowns were well-intentioned or not, the blunt reality is that not only have they failed time and again to stop community spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they have also made children overall more sick and less healthy.

The goal might have been to curtail disease, but a direct consequence of the lockdowns is more disease.

Virus Gonna Virus

As Alex Berenson is fond of saying, “virus gonna virus.” All viruses, not just SARS-CoV-2, are going to spread how they will, and in ways that frequently confound human efforts to avoid any and all exposure. Viruses do not respect mandates and they do not follow social distancing protocols. They particularly do not respect lockdowns.

It is not simply that the “best defense” against infectious respiratory disease is a healthy immune system. The rash of pediatric viral infections taking place today demonstrates that the only defense against infectious respiratory disease is a healthy immune system. Lockdowns and “non-pharmaceutical interventions” are no substitute for an immune system that is well primed from early and repeated exposures to environmental pathogens, and augmented with plenty of vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and overall good nutrition. Basic self care is by far the most important means for mitigating disease.

It is not possible to keep viruses away from the human body. It was never possible before the COVID pandemic, and it is not possible now. It will never be possible. Whether as children or as adults, if we wish to move about the world, we are going to move through a sea of viruses. It cannot be avoided.

Running away from the real world, locking down and isolating children especially from the real world, does not prevent disease. It only leaves them more vulnerable when at last they re-emerge into the world—where the viruses will be waiting.