[jacobolus]

Of course kids in {daycare, school, the playground, riding the bus, ...} get sick (especially lots of minor viral infections) more often than kids who live in a hermetically sealed bubble, never share toys, and only ever interact with a couple of adults. Adults who never leave home also get sick less often than adults who go to school, work, etc.

But it is also the case that the human immune system remembers various kinds of foreign agents that it has seen and is more effective fighting them off later (hence immunization as an idea), and there seems to be some evidence that excessive hygiene results in allergies, autoimmune diseases, etc. See for a start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

It is pretty unfortunate if parents can’t afford to keep their kids home for a week or two if they get seriously sick, though.

[DoreenMichele]

We have 7 billion people on the planet and in my lifetime we went from more than half of all people living in rural environs to more than half of all people living in cities. Your hostile description of living in a bubble was the default norm for human life until very recently. The aberration here is not people with limited contact to others. The aberration is that in recent decades it is the new norm to work at a job that exposes you to many people every day and attend a public school that exposes you to many people every day.

We do nothing to really account for this being a historical aberration for the species and then wonder why we have antibiotic resistant infections. They get that way in part by running through many, many people and having vastly more chances to evolve.

[jacobolus]

The “default norm for human life” through most of time was either living in the forest, or living as a peasant on a farm. Peasants living on farms have historically had half of their children die in infancy, and generally poor health and short life spans afterward, because they eat an unbalanced diet mostly consisting of staple starches, spend half their time breathing wood smoke near a hearth fire, do strenuous repetitive manual work their whole lives, etc. People living in the forest were generally healthier, except sometimes they starved, were violently killed, or the like.

Folks living on farms or in the forest generally don’t have autoimmune problems because they have constant exposure to animals, a wide variety of plants, etc. On average (especially the peasants) they have poorer health than folks living in cities, but the distribution of health problems is fairly different between the three groups.

Deadly plagues (viral and bacterial) have ripped through through and decimated agricultural societies relatively often, at least in the past couple millennia. Many crippling diseases have also been endemic in many places (especially tropical regions) as far back as we have records. Modern medicine and lifestyle (indoor plumbing, vaccines, antibiotics, refrigeration, mosquito control, medicines for killing parasites, ...) have done an amazing job preventing those in wealthy countries.

Does anyone wonder why we have antibiotic resistant bacteria? I thought that was pretty widely understood (at least by those who accept the science of evolution)...

[DoreenMichele]

None of your points in any way justifies suggesting one is living in a bubble if they choose to limit their exposure to large groups as a form of germ control. I don't live in a bubble. I do avoid large crowds, among other things.

I see zero reason to suggest that trying to keep small kids home and out if public daycare somehow us weird, aberrant, helicopter parenting. Small kids being at home with family was the norm for most of human history.

Tossing in stats in how bad life was for peasants isn't genuinely a rebuttal. It is, at best, smoke and mirrors to deflect the point.

[jacobolus]

You can’t talk about the “default norm for human life” without acknowledging that infant mortality is lower in current developed countries than it has ever been anywhere in the history of the world, is my point.

Keep kids home for the first 5 years and don’t let them play with other kids if you want, but I haven’t ever seen careful research showing that e.g. preschool or playground time leads to widespread permanent health problems, either for the kids at the time or later in their lives. I admit I have never tried to research this question, so it’s possible it has been studied.

[DoreenMichele]

You probably also have not seen careful research proving that putting kids in daycare at an early age is better for their health, both physically and socially. This in no way prevents you from maligning the other choice as living in a bubble.

Basically you are speaking from prejudice while acting like it is science. You only want scientific proof for things you disagree with, not for your personal preferences.

[jacobolus]

Here’s an example:

> The presence of one or more older siblings at home protected against the development of asthma (adjusted relative risk for each additional older sibling, 0.8; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.7 to 1.0; P=0.04), as did attendance at day care during the first six months of life (adjusted relative risk, 0.4; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.2 to 1.0; P=0.04). Children with more exposure to other children at home or at day care were more likely to have frequent wheezing at the age of 2 years than children with little or no exposure (adjusted relative risk, 1.4; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.1 to 1.8; P=0.01) but were less likely to have frequent wheezing from the age of 6 (adjusted relative risk, 0.8; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.6 to 1.0; P=0.03) through the age of 13 (adjusted relative risk, 0.3; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.2 to 0.5; P<0.001).

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200008243430803

[dragonwriter]

> We have 7 billion people on the planet and in my lifetime we went from more than half of all people living in rural environs to more than half of all people living in cities. Your hostile description of living in a bubble was the default norm for human life until very recently

Modern rural living in the developed world is not much like rural living in most of history, so, no the modern rural living the GP criticized was not the “default norm” for most of history.

> The aberration here is not people with limited contact to others. The aberration is that in recent decades it is the new norm to work at a job that exposes you to many people every day and attend a public school that exposes you to many people every day.

From the various descriptions of historical rural life (e.g., medieval European village life) I've seen, neither adults nor children having daily contact with numbers of other people rather than being isolated with their nuclear family was at all uncommon; for most of history that wouldn't be school for children or wage labor for adults, but it would still happen.

[DoreenMichele]

You have a personal track record of attacking me and being incredibly dismissive of me. I asked you once to simply leave me alone. You informed me that was not a reasonable request and affirmed your right to do as you please towards me.* I view your behavior towards me as a form of harassment.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15848464