It’s not the quarantine that made so many other diseases surge: It’s the COVID

The world is nearly four years into the COVID-19 pandemic, but how the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages human lives, both in the short term and across a span of years, is still becoming clear. Earlier this month, a study in Lancet showed that 54% of those infected in the first months of the pandemic were still experiencing symptoms over three years later.

That study, like almost all news surrounding COVID-19, isn’t getting even a fraction of the attention it deserves as media outlets, businesses, and government join a collective effort to ignore the truth about this disease. However, there is another series of studies that should be getting even more attention.

Those studies, as summed up by the World Health Network, show that COVID-19 can have a direct negative effect on the immune system. These results suggest that surges in other diseases in the wake of the pandemic may not be due to “immunity debt,” as many had earlier suggested, but could be spurred by direct damage to the immune systems of those who had symptomatic and even asymptomatic cases of COVID-19. That includes children.