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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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LW stalwart discovers kids get sniffles from daycare, obviously this means women have to stay at home to take care of kids and not work:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/byiLDrbj8MNzoHZkL/daycare-illnesses
BTW almost every person born after 1970 in Sweden has been to daycare as a kid, if daycare illnesses had long-term consequences it would be showing up here
They do have consequences! Crowded schools and preschools and daycare spread all kinds of dangerous infectious diseases and there are consequences of getting them. With the arrival of COVID and the decline in vaccination risks are rising.
'Getting sick builds resistance' is another of the folk medicine beliefs which we in the infection control community have been fighting since 2020. Some diseases are milder the second or third time, but generally you want to get as few infectious diseases as possible.
Sweden is an interesting example because they pioneered the let-it-rip approach to COVID. That was less disastrous than it could have been but not great even in a country with a lot of detached housing and nuclear families. https://kevinmd.com/2025/01/swedens-controversial-covid-19-strategy-lessons-from-higher-mortality-rates.html I would not have recommended putting children in daycare without strict indoor-air-quality standards between 2020 and 2024.
Covid is an exception, and believe me, if the main victims of Covid had been kids instead of old people stuffed into elder-care facilities, forgotten by everyone, the dynamics around masking and vaccines and lockdowns would have been a lot different.
My point is that most kids in Sweden go to daycare, "daycare sickness" (where the whole family comes down with enteritis etc) is a common thing, and as far as I know the country doesn't stand out in health stats.
You can argue that the loss of productivity from this is a factor, but as you mention in a parallell comment, the authorities can demand better hygiene and air quality in preschools and schools, and it would be cheaper than outfitting every single home.
In 2026 I would be most concerned about measles.