> I often encounter claims that we need to get infections to ‘top up our immunity’, and it’s good for children to get exposed to bugs to ‘build up their immunity’.
Such claims are, I think, mostly wrong. But not always. I don't think people in the 19th century deliberately contracting cowpox were making a mistake. I also don't think (despite a tiny number of tragic deaths), that "chicken pox parties", pre-the-90s-vaccine, were actually a mistake. And getting live vaccines is, in essence, getting exposed to infections (albeit very mild ones) to build up an immunity.
I don't think people treat norovirus any differently to flu or covid. I certainly haven't seen any evidence of this. If anything, I worry less about catching noro than flu or covid, and would be less inclined to avoid meeting someone with it. I tend to experience mild symtpoms from stomach bugs, and if I do get anything, it's over in less than a day. Whereas covid can knock me out for at least a week.
Covid, in 2024, does not substantially change risk calculus on general infection avoidance from 2019. That doesn't mean 2019 behaviour was optimal, of course.
Good point - in the case of 'once and done' infections that are highly transmissible and more severe in later life, moving risk earlier could have a net benefit in the absense of a vaccine.
You can go through life with the constitution of an ox, swatting off "stomach bugs", and still get suddenly flattened by a norovirus infection. It's really worth avoiding discovering for yourself that it is indeed possible to simultaneously be losing the contents of your bowels while projectile vomiting into a bowl and shivering uncontrollably!
What you say about the net costs to an employer of sick workers soldiering on and infecting others in the work place makes it all the more incredible that in 50 years of work I have never once had any employer make it known that he does not want to see sick people at work.
An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services
Your Top 8 Wildest Claims and Why Your Dangerous Pseudoscience Has No Place in Public Health
https://open.substack.com/pub/patricemersault/p/an-open-letter-to-robert-f-kennedy?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
> I often encounter claims that we need to get infections to ‘top up our immunity’, and it’s good for children to get exposed to bugs to ‘build up their immunity’.
Such claims are, I think, mostly wrong. But not always. I don't think people in the 19th century deliberately contracting cowpox were making a mistake. I also don't think (despite a tiny number of tragic deaths), that "chicken pox parties", pre-the-90s-vaccine, were actually a mistake. And getting live vaccines is, in essence, getting exposed to infections (albeit very mild ones) to build up an immunity.
I don't think people treat norovirus any differently to flu or covid. I certainly haven't seen any evidence of this. If anything, I worry less about catching noro than flu or covid, and would be less inclined to avoid meeting someone with it. I tend to experience mild symtpoms from stomach bugs, and if I do get anything, it's over in less than a day. Whereas covid can knock me out for at least a week.
Covid, in 2024, does not substantially change risk calculus on general infection avoidance from 2019. That doesn't mean 2019 behaviour was optimal, of course.
Good point - in the case of 'once and done' infections that are highly transmissible and more severe in later life, moving risk earlier could have a net benefit in the absense of a vaccine.
You can go through life with the constitution of an ox, swatting off "stomach bugs", and still get suddenly flattened by a norovirus infection. It's really worth avoiding discovering for yourself that it is indeed possible to simultaneously be losing the contents of your bowels while projectile vomiting into a bowl and shivering uncontrollably!
What you say about the net costs to an employer of sick workers soldiering on and infecting others in the work place makes it all the more incredible that in 50 years of work I have never once had any employer make it known that he does not want to see sick people at work.