Robert Wenzel at TargetLiberty reviews an NYT article on how mitigation measures are wreaking havoc on our children's' immune systems to handle disease. Titled "Quarantine May Negatively Affects Kids' Immune Systems" delivers a devastating blow to the paranoia that some exhibit in their rationale for wearing masks to locking down to quarantining themselves and to deny the warm joy of a holiday dinner with friends and family.
He writes,
I often see parents in San Francisco with children who are wearing masks.
Talk about low information sheep.
I love that.
I wish they all would read the following which appeared, in of all places, The New York Times.
The authors are Donna L. Farber, a professor of immunology and surgery at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Thomas Connors who is an assistant professor of pediatrics there.
Here is an excerpt from the NYTimes article:
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely isolating them. In doing so, we have prevented large numbers of them from becoming infected or transmitting the virus. But in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children’s immune systems.
Most children are born with a functioning immune system with the capacity to respond to diverse types of foreign substances, called antigens, encountered through exposure to microorganisms, food and the environment. The eradication of harmful pathogens, establishment of protective immunity and proper immune regulation depends on the immune cells known as T lymphocytes. With each new infection, pathogen-specific T cells multiply and orchestrate the clearance of the infectious organism from the body, after which some persist as memory T cells with enhanced immune functions.
Over time, children develop increasing numbers and types of memory T cells, which remain throughout the body as a record of past exposures and stand ready to provide lifelong protection. For other antigen exposures that are not infectious or dangerous, a type of healthy stalemate can result, called immune tolerance. Immunological memory and tolerance learned during childhood serves as the basis for immunity and health throughout adulthood.
Memory T cells begin to form during the first years of life and accumulate during childhood. However, for memory T cells to become functionally mature, multiple exposures may be necessary, particularly for cells residing in tissues such as the lung and intestines, where we encounter numerous pathogens. These exposures typically and naturally occur during the everyday experiences of childhood — such as interactions with friends, teachers, trips to the playground, sports — all of which have been curtailed or shut down entirely during efforts to mitigate viral spread. As a result, we are altering the frequency, breadth and degree of exposures that are crucial for immune memory development.
While the immune system is influenced by multiple factors, including genetics and everyday exposures to family members and pets, the long term effects of removing the social system that brings children in contact with other people, places and things remains uncharted territory. However, there is now substantial evidence that antigen exposure during the formative period of childhood is important not only for protection but also for reducing the incidence of allergies, asthma and inflammatory diseases. A well-known theory, called the “hygiene hypothesis,” proposes that the increased incidence of allergies and other immune disorders involving inappropriate immune reactions across industrialized societies is a result of the move away from agrarian society toward a highly sanitized urban setting.
Failing to train our immune systems properly can have serious consequences. When laboratory mice raised in nearly sterile conditions were housed together in the same cage with pet mice raised in standard conditions, some of the laboratory mice succumbed to pathogens that the pet mice were able to fight off. Additional studies of the microbiome — the bacteria that normally inhabit our intestines and other sites — have shown that mice raised in germ-free conditions or in the presence of antibiotics had reduced and altered immune responses to many types of pathogens. These studies suggest that for establishing a healthy immune system, the more diverse and frequent the encounters with antigens, the better.
Robert Wenzel is Editor &
publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and
of Target Liberty, where he
discusses issues relating to free markets, liberty, and Private
Property Society theory.
A frequent guest on radio talk
shows, he has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes,
Bloomberg, ZeroHedge, LewRockwell.com, CNBC, and many other media outlets.
Wenzel is an Amazon Bestselling author and has written:
The Fed Flunks: My
Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, 2014.
"Foundations of Private Property Society Theory:
Anarchism for the Civilized Person," 2018.
Problems With Modern Monetary Theory: A Comment on Stephanie
Kelton’s "The Deficit Myth," 2020.
