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By Nancy Thorner -
Although the following article appeared in the EU Times on August 2, 2021, Portugal's Children Are Suddenly Becoming Ill All At Once, its ramifications seem applicable to children in this nation, especially when the Delta virus fear has increased talk among elected leaders and school officials to once again institute so-called "preventive measures."
Pediatrician Joana Martins, one of the child-health experts reports about how confinement and sanitation measures of COVID virus prevention have weakened the immune system, making us (all) more vulnerable to infections. Children need to come into contact with dirt (or put more scientifically: bacteria, microorganisms, viruses in general) in order to build immune systems that will carry them through the rest of their lives.
As pediatrician Mario Cordeiro cited in the article:
“All the sanitary measures used during the Covid pandemic have meant that necessary contact has been massively reduced, leading to babies and toddlers particularly becoming dangerously vulnerable. The effects are most obvious in children whose immune systems are in the making."
Also noted in the E.U. article: "While SARS-CoV-2 infection rarely develop in children to any serious form of Covid-19,
respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can precipitate acute bronchial infections that can see them having to be admitted into hospital. And this is what has already started happening."
Pediatric Doctor Alberto Caldas Afonso reported in the same article that he’s “never seen anything like it in the Centro Materno-Infantil do Norte: many children with respiratory infections, in some cases very serious, being admitted to hospital every day during high summer; which is very unusual."
As the paper further notes: “The unusual affluence over the last few weeks has taken pediatricians all over the country by surprise, and this is happening throughout Europe and in te United States.” “The phenomenon is what various specialists have already dubbed weakened immunity, a state of greater fragility in bodily defenses indirectly caused by the pandemic".
Joana Martins of Lisbon’s pediatric Hospital Dona Estefânia has this to say: “If we hold children back, we’re delaying their contact with viruses that are unavoidable in the construction of their ‘immune library"
Already quoted pediatrician Mário Cordeiro likens the children’s situations as being like ‘greenhouse plants’ (not as robust as plants that have grown naturally). It might be fine if exposure to VSR [RSV] and other microbes now could toughen the country’s youngest citizens up instantly, but doctors are concerned . “If they are getting sick now, at a time when there are less viruses in circulation, specialists fear the size of the wave of infections that could arrive in the autumn/ winter when many more viruses are around and people spend more time in enclosed spaces facilitating contagion."
“Countries in the southern hemisphere (where it is winter now) are being watched carefully. New Zealand, for example, has seen "several hospitals convert surgical blocs into pediatric wards to respond to the number of admissions".
As specialist in clinical immunology Mário Morais de Almeida puts the situation succinctly: “The first two, three years of life are defining for the construction of the immune system. Right now there are children of two years old who have lived practically their entire lives in a pandemic. They have had very little contact with pathogenic agents than would have happened before, thus, as normality returns, they are going to catch anything and everything – at least until they can recover the delay in creating their own defenses."
"For children who have missed so much in this masked and sanitized world, pediatricians simply hope winter 2021/ 22 will be enough to bring their backward immune systems up to speed."
Only time will tell. Parents must get involved to fight against the masking of their children and other mandates which do more harm than good.
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