A chunk of the "kids should get sick more" discourse is citing https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/191522

But if you look at Table 1 in that paper, kids who went to a small daycare had higher rates of frequent illness at all points except year 8.

Are they really saying that getting kids sick 150% as often is bad (small daycare) but 220% the infections (large daycare) is good?!?

And at years 2, 3 and 13, the large day care cohort was sick 1.2x to 2.2x more often than baseline (home care), but at years 6, 8, and 11 were sick a fraction as often.

So is "good" supposed to mean, "higher odds of frequent infections before age 6 and after age 11, but lower odds of frequent infections from age 6-11"?

Also unfortunate:

• they mention that incidence of frequent infections varies quite a bit by cohorts outside of this study, and don't attempt to explain why this specific study might generalize
• results are by self-reporting
• they only report the threshold above/under "9 or more infections/year" instead of giving all data points, suggesting that threshold is a metapraameter that they selected to get a result
• no mention of MS due to EBV, and similar, because the paper predates that discovery

#health #pediatrics #publicHealth