[Arnt]

That sounds plausible, but do you think it's better to be more sick than less?

Or do you just think that having a few sick days per year is better than marching into work no matter what state you're in? A very different proposition.

[nradov]

I suspect it's probably better to shift the sick days earlier in life. We probably can't significantly reduce the total. There are hundreds of endemic upper respiratory viruses and we all eventually get infected with most of them. It's just a matter of time. Our immune systems generally degrade as we age, so over the long run it's probably better to get infected when we're younger so that we can build immunity that protects us when we're older.

[coryrc]

> We probably can't significantly reduce the total

That's ridiculous. During the crisis times of covid, the incidences of other communicable disease dropped significantly. Plus, to be frank, this is just an idiotic suggestion with zero reasons to think there's some set number of days people are sick. Before having kids in daycare I was rarely sick. I had a child not in daycare and was never sick. Now we're sick all the time, which wouldn't happen if my wife could stay home with them or we didn't have kids.

[Izkata]

"Other" meaning "flu", which only dropped because they stopped tracking it to give resources to SARS-CoV-2. There was a note on the CDC website that very few people actually noticed, and almost all claims of reduced transmission used the CDC's FluView as their evidence.

[nradov]

That's ridiculous. The interventions put in place during the crisis times of COVID were obviously unsustainable. When restrictions were lifted, the incidence of all other types of respiratory viruses spiked up.

I've had kids in daycare as well. Occasionally you get the sniffles. So what.

[Arnt]

The story describes something that cut the average number of sick days by around 30%. Is 30% significant, in your opinion?

[consteval]

> We probably can't significantly reduce the total

Considering it used to be commonplace to have 10 children and then maybe 2/3 make it to adulthood, I would say we absolutely can and have reduced the total number of sick days. We've also reduced the severity of sickness.

[pjc50]

> We probably can't significantly reduce the total

We can and we have. Through things such as the measles vaccine.

People forget that child mortality used to be a thing.

[nradov]

Sure, childhood immunization is great but we're not discussing measles here. Measles is a single, relatively stable virus that's easy to vaccinate against. But children in daycare facilities mostly get infected with upper respiratory viruses. There are literally hundreds of such endemic viruses, especially rhinoviruses but also coronaviruses and others. We aren't likely to have effective vaccines against those any time soon. If children aren't exposed to them in daycare then they'll be exposed somewhere else. Those viruses aren't going away and will continue circulating through the population no matter what we do.