In the autumn and winter of 2023, how can you protect your family and stay away from the recent epidemic?Last week, my eldest daughter came back from school and said, "Mom, there are only five students in the next class today, and half of our class is gone." This is not the first time this year has happened. When my youngest daughter, who is in elementary school, came back with a look of displeasure, I knew that it was another day of quarantine because more than 20 classmates in my class had a fever, and their class had been quarantined for a week. Every time I go to physical education class, I can't go to the big playground to eat, and I can't go to the big cafeteria, and the children are not strong enough to be adults. Last Friday, I counted that there were already seven doctors and nurses in the entire center who were on leave, and there were so many patients, which was a real headache. You may also be muttering, what's wrong with this year, there has never been such a large-scale epidemic of colds in autumn and winter in previous years.
Research published in The Lancet found that the number of children infected with RSV in the UK decreased by 99.5 per cent between the winter of 2020 and 2021. This virus is the virus that sweeps children around the world every winter and spring, and it is also the most common virus in pediatric outpatient clinics. With a drop of 99.5 percent, you can speculate that in the winter for two consecutive years, children in Britain hardly caught a cold or had bronchitis pneumonia. Why?Because of the quarantine measures for the new crown at that time, it also reduced the spread of other pathogens in a short period of time. Since the start of the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, the incidence of many viral and bacterial infections in children worldwide, including bronchiolitis, chickenpox, measles, pertussis, pneumococcus, and meningococcal, has declined.
However, at that time, due to the reduction of the circulation of various pathogenic microorganisms, bacteria, and mycoplasma virus, and the related vaccine injections were also reduced, the consequence was that the entire population lacked sufficient immune stimulation, which can also be understood as what we often say, the whole group is too delicate to withstand the wind and rain.
In the absence of immune stimulation, the immunity of the herd will form a certain defect, and the proportion of susceptible people will also expand. When the pandemic is brought under control, there will be a retaliatory repayment of the population's immunity debt. Why do people become susceptible when they are not exposed to viruses or bacteria?Recently, a study from Soochow University Children's Hospital gave us a good answer. The study found 368 healthy children, and the blood samples left in 2018 and 2019 were tested for antibodies to respiratory syncytial virus, and then, 368 healthy children were paired to test the samples in 2021 and 2023, and then found that in the 2021 and 2023 specimens, the antibodies of children aged 1 to 2 and 3 to 4 years were significantly reduced, so little that there was no way to fight the virus, and there was no such phenomenon in the previous 20182019 years. This shows that in the past three years, there are no antibodies in the body of healthy children, and the resistance is naturally plummeting. This year, in the winter of 2023, as soon as the respiratory syncytial virus arrived, the children were recruited in groups.
Since it is the immune debt owed by the group, can't every one of us, especially children, avoid it?No, medicine has developed so far that some methods have been accumulated. Because Europe and the United States opened up relatively early, they also have some experience for us to learn from. The specific methods are divided into three main categories.
The first category is protection. These measures are similar to those during the coronavirus, with hand hygiene, wearing masks, and staying away from people who have already been diagnosed.
Needless to say, hand hygiene, you can talk about washing your hands and listen to it again to find a solution. Especially in the season of high incidence of respiratory diseases, it is necessary to prepare alcohol disinfectant gel or alcohol wet wipes for children's small schoolbags and backpacks when they go out. Tell the children that before eating and drinking, if the children around them have sneezes and runny noses, they should use some after contact. Wearing a mask, yes, wearing a mask back is the best protection against the current epidemic. Note that after going to a public place, the mask will be changed before you go home. When the elderly go to the doctor and the children go to school, they must be reminded to wear masks to eat and then take them off. Finally, if the child has a lot of fever in the class and is resting at home, one is to remind the child to stay away from the symptomatic children, and the other is to take the child home for isolation for a few days if possible.
The second broad category of methods is contact. There are two kinds of contact, one is active contact, to get vaccinated During the immunization war, you should pay special attention to the vaccination of various vaccines. Every autumn and winter, there are general flu vaccination tips in the school community, and you should pay special attention to this information this year. As soon as you bring the elderly at home and the children get vaccinated, you can also take the initiative to go to the epidemic prevention station of the community hospital and check it on the Internet, and you can generally find it. At the same time, if the child has not been vaccinated in the past three years of the epidemic, make up for the vaccine as soon as possible.
The third type of approach is preparedness, preparedness for infection. Some people will say, I'm all infected, what else do I do?Do you remember how you prepared when COVID hit?First of all, you have to know what you are infected, and this is the biggest preparation. At the time of the new crown, many people had self-test strips, and only when you know what disease you have, you will know what will happen next. You will know if the disease can be hard, you should rest well, know that you may have a high fever, and prepare fever reducers in advance. If there are elderly people in the family, you will also prepare a blood oxygen saturation check, prepare ** medicine for severe cases, and so on.
I hope you and your family and children can have a smooth ride and build your own immune barrier.