Over thousands of years, viruses and humans have evolved together. The spread of viruses is a basic feature of nature, and it is an immutable fact that controlling nature is difficult, but not always impossible. In this respect, notable human accomplishments include agriculture, sanitation, hydroelectric power, vaccines and aviation. Those, however, are exceptions. More often, attempts to control nature are either extremely limited in success or result in outright failure. Even when successful, the process is long and arduous and often results in tragic missteps. Before aviation became routine with the control of gravity, thousands of passengers and pilots died in plane crashes.
More successful than our attempts at controlling nature has been our ability to accommodate and coexist with it. When it comes to respiratory viruses, children are especially adept at this. Their immune systems are designed to respond immediately and efficiently to viruses they confront for the first time. This is probably why, in the case of COVID-19, they were less likely to get sick than adults, for whom the virus was also a new encounter.
For various reasons, there was very little spread of respiratory viruses for the first two years of the pandemic. Those viruses are spreading now, and children have some catching up to do in their response to the viruses in their environment owing to unusually low viral exposure in 2020 and 2021. Fortunately, kids are well adapted to manage this catch-up process, and the annoyance of them suffering through a seemingly interminable series of viruses actually means we are well on our way through this process.
