You know how our culture is often that we go to work even while ill? A good 3/4 of my school’s population has a cold. Not many people called in sick, and the nurse sent kids home ALL day. We’ve had 12 school days; my cold started yesterday. Others had this last week.
Imagine that when the % ill hit some threshold, school were cancelled so we could all recover faster / stop the spread. Would this be a “helps now, hurts long-term” in terms of building immunity to future colds? That is, would lowering the # of people who get this now just make us all more susceptible to the next bug that will no doubt come? Or would it have no impact?
It feels like the answer has something to do with herd immunity, but I’m way out of my area here.
Quick answer, it depends. Fastest way to get through would be to get everyone in a room at once and let everyone get sick. But. We generally like to limit disease spread to protect the vulnerable. Would that strategy provide protection next time? Depends how similar the second bug is to the first. Note, we give a different flu shot each year for a good reason. Not a population health person, but have some overlap in the area.
we may have the fastest method, then, given the number of students and faculty storming the cafeteria at Breakfast Break!
Thank you!
tangential question: how long do we need to wait to know if this year’s flu shot is any good? academic question, I’d rather risk the reaction on the chance it’s not super than wait to see if it’s doing its job
I don’t know. I know plenty of people that monitor the circulating strains. Those data are public and when compared to the strains chosen for the northern vaccines, might prove predictive. I see negligible risk personally for getting the shot. YMMV.
Not an expert here. For future immunity, one of the “arguments” against taking measures to fight COVID was the idea of “immunity debt” that you suggest. It really isn’t a thing (https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1733)
My wife (who retired this past June!) was an AP CS teacher since COVID started. Teachers got it, kids got it, staff got it. When restrictions lifted, everyone and their brother got sick as you have seen. Not a day went by without multiple students coughing and going to the nurse and/or home.
My wife never got sick. Not COVID, not a cold, not RSV, not the flu. How? She wore an N95 mask all the time. She had a quality air filter in all her classrooms (How to build your own Corsi-Rosenthal Box - Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation). She stayed up-to-date on all her COVID and flu vaccinations.
We did see an increase of certain illnesses several years after covid lockdowns. I saw this in my general practice office. More strep throat than normal. More RSV than normal and more elderly and infants getting bad RSV infections. Another example is vaccinating against chicken pox. Early in my career I would see one or two cases a shingles a year. About ten years ago which was twenty years after the chickenpox vaccine appeared way more shingles. I once saw two cases in one evening clinic. The theory is that periodically exposure to wild chickenpox used to cause a boost in immunity to older folks who had chickenpox as infants. With much less virus circulating that effect went away. I still see more shingles than before but not as much as say ten years ago. I would still rather see kids vaccinated against the pox.
All those kids vaccinated against the pox likely will never get shingles because they never had a chickenpox infection so in the end net positive.
I doubt occasionally shutting down schools when they get to a certain threshold would change immunity patterns much. By the time you hit the threshhold likely a lot of kids infected. But like Windy says society would likely rebel primarily due to childcare issues
Everyone gets sick at the start of the school year and just after winter and spring break. You just roll with it. it will burn itself out in another week or two.
As for the flu vaccine, my immunologist buddy said that even if they get the particular strain wrong in a given year, he would always get the shot. He said for anyone below the age of retirement the value of the annual flu shot is in building up a library of resistances that will pay dividends when you are older.
that’s useful; thank you. I got a flu shot last Thurs and didn’t have much of a reaction. Just some fatigue. My shoulder wasn’t sore which I appreciated. Covid vax affected my swimming for a few days (obviously worth it though).
I still have a cough but am no longer in the “step out into the hallway and have a coughing fit and hope the kids don’t light things on fire while I’m out there dying” phase so that’s good!
I had a very mild case of chicken pox as a kid. It was great. I got like a week off from school and didn’t have to eat oatmeal because it had been repurposed for bathtime!