COVID and Our Warped Sense of Normal

There are vaccine-preventable diseases where we were.

Medscape stated that across the USA.

New cases of COVID-19 in children continued their descent toward normalcy, falling below 100,000 in a week for the first time since early August 2021, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

We can only hope that this news continues. It shows how much COVID has warped our standards for what is normal and acceptable. I'm not trying to single out the author of the article. We have all changed.

I have been paying attention to vaccine-preventable diseases for the past decade. The death of an immunocompromised woman in 2015 was a big deal. I remember when a baby died of the disease in 2019. I remember that it was a big deal when Bevin exposed his children to the disease. The Disneyland measles outbreak was a big deal. I remember when there were over a thousand cases of the disease in 2019.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a paper about the 649 cases of the disease in NYC. The outbreak, which hospitalized 52 people and sent 16 of them to the intensive care unit, was caused by low vaccine rates.

I said at the time that there is nothing benign about a virus that can send 16 people to the intensive care unit. This is why I advocated for the flu vaccine, as well as the other vaccines. I don't want a vaccine-preventable disease in a child.

This was not controversial at the time. Children going to the hospital from a vaccine-preventable disease was unacceptable. We all agreed that a child dying from a vaccine-preventable disease was a tragedy that we should strive to prevent. Most of the anti-vaccine quacks were against vaccinations. Anti-vaxxers who were sheltered from the care of sick people argued with me on social media.

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There are vaccine-preventable diseases where we are.

Things are not the same now.

We are told that we are approaching normal, with over 10,000 cases of COVID and over 100 hospitalizations every day. We are told to get there quickly. Being careful for a few more months, so perhaps children under 5-years can be vaccine free, is portrayed as an intolerable obstacle, even though over 400 children have died.

Today, doctors from prestigious universities who are offended to be characterized as anti-vaccine, say that healthy children should not bevaccinated. Several doctors waged a relentless and successful campaign to make sure as many children as possible were exposed to the virus before they werevaccinated. One doctor said that children who are healthy don't make a difference to them, but we look at it.

Other doctors spread misinformation and downplayed the harms of the vaccine. Some regulators spoke of the benefits of sick children. Doctors who used to call out anti-vaccine doctors now write pro-COVID essays.

When it comes to infectious disease, normality means a world where they are routinely exposed to, and overcome, viral illness. For children, getting sick and recovering is part of a natural and healthy life.

How have we accepted that it is desirable for children to get sick? How is a topic like this up for debate among doctors who want to prevent illness and suffering?

Dr. David Gorski wrote recently.

As I like to ask all these physicians arguing that COVID-19 “isn’t very dangerous” to children, if you make that argument for COVID-19, then why don’t you also oppose school vaccine mandates for MMR and varicella? If you make the same argument about COVID-19 vaccines, like it or not, believe it or not, you are parroting very old and more general antivax talking points.

Indeed.

We have a choice.

The NYC measles outbreak was over when it was over. According to a health officials from NYC, the last infectious day of a patient with the disease is when the outbreak is over. We knew that if we wished it away, it wouldn't go away.

I don't believe that we will eliminate chronic in the way that the Measles outbreak was stopped. The main reason for this is that the COVID vaccine isn't as good as the MMR vaccine, and that's an outcome desired by many influential doctors divorced from patient care.

Few children will not be exposed to the disease for the rest of their lives. We have a choice. We can imagine that sick children don't matter as long as older people suffer more. An effective vaccine can be used to blunt COVID's harms. The vaccine isn't perfect, but recent studies show that it protects against severe disease and should be given to children 5-11 years old. It doesn't mean that children aren't worth saving.

A child getting sick with a vaccine-preventable disease was unacceptable. An unvaccinated child should not be getting sick. Children getting sick should not be normalized, and children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases should not be.

Children are not supposed to die. This used to be controversial.