Too sterile environments

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03/06/2021 21:37

Subject: Too sterile environments

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Anonymous

Does anyone worry about our creating too sterile of environments due to COVID and any potential repercussions of that? For example, yes parents hate their kids get sick when starting off childcare arrangements outside the home however, getting sick actually helps build little ones immune systems so they are better equipped to fight off illnesses in the future. It is a balance for sure, ensuring children aren't too young for a fever to be dangerous and keeping at bay the really dangerous illnesses but kids need to eat dirt and share spit and eat off the floor. Maybe every once in a while they get sick but ultimately this leads to their being healthier in the future. I keep hearing these comments of how great it is that someone's child hasn't gotten sick all year due to distancing or being at home or masks or whatever you want to cite as the reasoning but is this really and truly a good thing?

Side note but related, I would be interested in a study done on for example the slums of India or places in Africa were there is overcrowding and just aren't the resources for the level of hygiene we are accustomed to here in the US. I say this because there have been relatively few cases in India and Africa. Sure you can cite the lockdowns India had but lockdowns or not, that really does nothing to stop the spread in overcrowded slums. I wonder if it is precisely due to there not being an overuse of antibacterial everything and Lysol, etc that has allowed some sort of natural immunity to new virus', at least immunity to low levels of serious illness.

Yet another side note but also related, interesting article from the UK citing leukemia causes, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/30/children-leukaemia-mel-greaves-microbes-protection-against-disease, here is a cut and paste of the really interesting part and what makes it related to my points above:

“For an immune system to work properly, it needs to be confronted by an infection in the first year of life,” says Greaves. Without that confrontation with an infection, the system is left unprimed and will not work properly.” And this issue is becoming an increasingly worrying problem. Parents, for laudable reasons, are raising children in homes where antiseptic wipes, antibacterial soaps and disinfected floorwashes are the norm. Dirt is banished for the good of the household. In addition, there is less breast feeding of infants and a tendency for them to have fewer social contacts with other children. Both trends reduce babies’ contact with germs. This has benefits – but also comes with side effects. Because young children are not being exposed to bugs and infections as they once were, their immune systems are not being properly primed. “When such a baby is eventually exposed to common infections, his or her unprimed immune system reacts in a grossly abnormal way,” says Greaves. “It over-reacts and triggers chronic inflammation. As this inflammation progresses, chemicals called cytokines are released into the blood and these can trigger a second mutation that results in leukaemia in children carrying the first mutation"