I'm going to make the Covid / Flu comparison...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

40. Yes. Overprotecting kids has a downside.

Polio is more or less a disease of affluence. From various things I've read, children in the past or in third world countries were exposed to lots of things that gave them immunity to polio. In first world countries, those exposures didn't happen, hence polio outbreaks.

There's also a lot of evidence that kids who grow up with dogs and other animals wind up with far fewer allergies than those kids not so exposed.

You are absolutely right that those kinds of exposure make people far more resistant. Here's my own history: I'm a middle child of six kids. From age 2 to 7 we lived in a low income housing project, surrounded by lots and lots of other kids. I was sick a lot in my early years, through kindergarten. My first grade year, I was only sick one day. After that, aside from finally completing the childhood diseases of the time (measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox) and occasional influenza, including the Asian Flu of 1957, I wasn't sick all that often. At least not by the standards of the time. Over the years I got my share of colds and various other unnamed, undiagnosed diseases. I'm now 72. For at least 20 years I have almost never been sick. I'm sure it's because I've been exposed to most of what is out there, and so am immune. I have gotten the recent two-shot shingles vaccine, and the J&J one and done Covid vaccine.

But back to your question. There is a lot of evidence that overprotecting kids is not the right thing to do. Those people who are pleased that this past season went with almost no colds or flu, and so they should continue masking, simply don't understand the immune system and how it works. It's designed to be challenged with lots of stuff so that it gets strong. If that challenge is circumvented, the immune system simply won't be as strong.

There's actually a lot to be said about survival of the strongest.