If you don’t have young children, or don’t work in a pediatric intensive care unit, you might not know about the current respiratory viral outbreak.
Unlike COVID-19, the plague of the respiratory syncytial virus is very dangerous to young children. Perversely, the RSV outbreak, in its second year, might have been caused by our efforts to fight COVID-19.
CHILDREN’S HOSPITALS STRAINED BY SURGE IN RESPIRATORY VIRUSES
Hospital emergency rooms, especially on the East Coast, have seen their populations explode in recent weeks, even doubling. RSV is the reason.
“The virus is encountering a highly vulnerable population of babies and children who were sheltered from common bugs during the pandemic lockdowns,” the Associated Press reported.
“Immune systems might not be as prepared to fight the virus after more than two years of masking.”
“You have an entire group of kids over the last three years that haven’t been exposed to those respiratory viruses, RSV included, and that led to essentialy three times the amount of kids that are susceptible,” explained Dr. Michael Koster, the infectious disease director at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island.
Keeping children out of play dates, out of day cares, out of school, out of the grocery store, and out of sports robbed them of the ability to build up their immune systems. Mothers who masked and stayed at home during pregnancy also ended up passing fewer antibodies to their babies.
That’s why RSV started to flood hospitals in the summer of 2021. For older children and for adults, RSV appears as a typical cold. For babies, it can severely inhibit their tiny lungs from breathing, interfere with eating, and send blood-oxygen saturations to dangerously low levels.
A bad case lands the baby in the PICU for a few days, hooked up to oxygen or even a ventilator.
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So by locking up and masking children during a pandemic involving a virus that didn’t particularly affect children, we seem to have triggered an outbreak of a virus that does particularly affect children.
None of this is surprising, but it guides us toward the awkward conclusion that those keeping students out of school and forcing masks on their faces weren’t acting with the best interests of children in mind.
