Exposure is definitely helpful in building an adaptive immune response, but what age is best is an open question.
We have to distinguish between the biological fact of establishing an adaptive immune response and the practical implication that chronic childhood infections are not worth avoiding or are net beneficial. We can’t assume that the marginal expected effect of an infection at any age is beneficial to health.
As you know, there are immunocompromised children who are forced to live in perfectly sterile environments. That is clearly not what I am talking about.
A scientist’s job in public communications is to help separate the facts we know from the uncertainties, and the positive questions from the normative.
Strawman statements like “sure, you can life the rest of your life in a perfectly sterile environment” are the opposite of that. They encourage audiences to collapse those vital distinctions and introduces unnecessary volatility and distraction into the discussion.
I framed the question as “is it better to get sick earlier or later” and you said “actually, it’s better not to get sick”. Yes, that is technically correct, but is also not engaging with the question, and also not at all practical.
EDIT: perhaps I read your comment incorrectly, but this is how I interpreted it.
I think from context and from the article I’m commenting on that it was obvious I was talking about relatively mild childhood infections with few long-term effects (that we know of). I was not talking about polio, or HIV, or Ebola. I thought it was clear, but perhaps it was not.
There is a separate question on whether what we think are benign childhood infections have long-term negative consequences that we consider normal or normative. That may be possible, but given the wide prevalence of these pathogens the question again becomes whether you are infected earlier or later, or if you can spend your life in a sterile bubble.
We have to distinguish between the biological fact of establishing an adaptive immune response and the practical implication that chronic childhood infections are not worth avoiding or are net beneficial. We can’t assume that the marginal expected effect of an infection at any age is beneficial to health.
Sure, you can live the rest of your life in a perfectly sterile environment, but then other costs are at play in sustaining that.
It’s an interplay between severity of disease at age, chronic effects, and cost of avoidance.
As you know, there are immunocompromised children who are forced to live in perfectly sterile environments. That is clearly not what I am talking about.
A scientist’s job in public communications is to help separate the facts we know from the uncertainties, and the positive questions from the normative.
Strawman statements like “sure, you can life the rest of your life in a perfectly sterile environment” are the opposite of that. They encourage audiences to collapse those vital distinctions and introduces unnecessary volatility and distraction into the discussion.
I don’t think your framing is helpful.
I framed the question as “is it better to get sick earlier or later” and you said “actually, it’s better not to get sick”. Yes, that is technically correct, but is also not engaging with the question, and also not at all practical.
EDIT: perhaps I read your comment incorrectly, but this is how I interpreted it.
I think from context and from the article I’m commenting on that it was obvious I was talking about relatively mild childhood infections with few long-term effects (that we know of). I was not talking about polio, or HIV, or Ebola. I thought it was clear, but perhaps it was not.
There is a separate question on whether what we think are benign childhood infections have long-term negative consequences that we consider normal or normative. That may be possible, but given the wide prevalence of these pathogens the question again becomes whether you are infected earlier or later, or if you can spend your life in a sterile bubble.