Illinois Pediatrician: "We Owe It to Our Children to Restore Normalcy"

Quincy doctor Todd Porter says county health department & school district should reject state's interim covid-19 guidance for schools

Many Illinois pediatricians have either been slavishly devoted to the false narrative that covid-19 is dangerous to children, or afraid to risk their jobs by speaking out publicly against public health propaganda. Todd Porter, a community pediatrician with the Quincy Medical Group, is an exception.

Dr. Porter’s viewpoint originally appeared in the Quincy Herald-Whig print and online editions of July 16, 2022, and is re-published here with permission. (See his related articles on Brownstone Institute here and here.)

It's Time to Stop Chasing COVID-19 Case Counts in Adams County by Dr. Todd Porter

Last month a national group of physicians and scientists sent an Open Letter to both the White House Covid Response Coordinator and CDC Director urging for the cessation of ongoing COVID-19 testing, isolation, and vaccination mandates for children. I am a community pediatrician and co-authored this letter as a physician member of the Urgency of Normal, which advocates for the urgent restoration of our children’s pre-pandemic lives.

At this point, most high-income nations have moved on from implementing COVID-19 public health restrictions on children. School closures, repeat testing and quarantining, covid vaccine requirements and forced masking, especially of special needs and lower income children, have lead to immeasurable learning loss, an acceleration of our epidemic of childhood obesity, and expanded a growing mental health crisis.

School closures, repeat testing and quarantining, covid vaccine requirements and forced masking, especially of special needs and lower income children, have lead to immeasurable learning loss, an acceleration of our epidemic of childhood obesity, and expanded a growing mental health crisis.

However, the CDC, our nation’s premier public health institution, continues to double down on non-evidence-based mitigations related to masking, testing, isolation, and vaccination that continue to negatively impact our children’s access to school, sports and social connectedness.

Seroprevalence studies last updated February 2022 showed that approximately 75% percent of children have already been infected and 99% percent of the country has either immunity from previous infection or vaccination, yet we continue to approach COVID-19 as if it were a novel challenge to our immune systems posing a unique threat to our health. Rather, the infection fatality rate of covid-19 in children is now below what it is for seasonal influenza, and in adults it is similar.

Despite this, IDPH’s current COVID-19 Interim Guidance For Schools (Revised 6/27/22) continues to endorse CDC guidance recommending testing and isolation of all symptomatic students with minimum 5 days of isolation for all positive cases with additional donning of a mask for another 5 days when out in public.

This is the outdated and harmful public health guidance that our pediatric clinic provides parents to this day, resulting in forced absenteeism from school and extracurriculars for a now endemic respiratory virus that poses no greater threat to children than other seasonal respiratory viruses for which we have never imposed systematic testing and isolation. In fact, countries such as Norway and Denmark now specifically state children should not be tested for COVID-19, as making them stay home would do far more harm than the virus.

Locally, I can tell you that the pediatric patients I have cared for in hospital were admitted for respiratory complications due to Rhino/Enterovirus and not for COVID-19.

It is time to de-mystify the COVID-19 virus and categorize it along with all other seasonal respiratory viruses. We need to end the distortion of risk that exists within our societal psyche. The truth is that COVID-19 positivity in healthy children is not coupled with severe disease. For example, the entire country of Iceland has had no hospitalization or deaths from COVID-19 in children the entire pandemic.

It is time to de-mystify the COVID-19 virus and categorize it along with all other seasonal respiratory viruses. We need to end the distortion of risk that exists within our societal psyche. The truth is that COVID-19 positivity in healthy children is not coupled with severe disease. For example, the entire country of Iceland has had no hospitalization or deaths from COVID-19 in children the entire pandemic.

In the U.S., we have not been given accurate information by our CDC on whether children have died or been hospitalized from or simply with COVID-19 and this has caused a vast misunderstanding of how severe COVID-19 is in children.

Vaccination does not prevent infection nor transmission of the virus. Most everyone will thus at some point be infected, most of us many times and infection acquired immunity appears to be more robust and longer lasting. Masking, outside of a well-fitted N-95 mask to provide one way protection for the wearer, is ineffective in reducing transmission of respiratory viruses such as COVID-19.

Therefore it is time to stop all elective and mandatory testing for COVID as there is rarely an impact on treatment recommendations. Testing should be reserved for hospitalized or very sick children. It is a sacred tenant in medicine, that our interventions and treatments must not be more harmful than the disease. Another way of saying this is First Do No Harm.

Currently in my pediatric practice, I am trying to help struggling readers who have missed a cumulative of months of school over the past 2 years due to imposed quarantines and isolation or because they exhibited mild symptoms of sore throat or cough. I have even seen clinic patients miss summer school due to positive COVID-19 test results.

We have encouraged chronic absenteeism in our students and fundamentally altered both the relationship of our children and school as well as the role of school nursing and staff in the execution of public health policy.

It is time that Adams County Health Department and the Quincy Public School District publicly state there will be no endorsement of IDPH COVID-19 Interim Guidance For Schools recommending needless isolation of students and contacts for an endemic respiratory virus. It is time for parents and all medical clinics to stop routine testing for the mere purpose of chasing COVID-19 case counts. Instead, all children who are fever free for 24 hours and feeling well enough to attend school, childcare, or extracurriculars should be allowed to return as before regardless of etiology of infection.

It is time for parents and all medical clinics to stop routine testing for the mere purpose of chasing COVID-19 case counts. Instead, all children who are fever free for 24 hours and feeling well enough to attend school, childcare, or extracurriculars should be allowed to return as before regardless of etiology of infection.

Our health is more than the mere absence of COVID-19 and we owe it to our children to restore normalcy to their lives. We must continue to stand up for our children. Sign our letter at https://www.urgencyofnormal.com

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EW: I encourage every Illinois parent to flood their superintendent’s & school board members’ inboxes with Dr. Porter’s commentary and the Urgency of Normal letter.

Two other doctor-authored pieces worth sharing: 1) Chicago Tribune op-ed by pediatrician Mary Hall & retired intensive care physician Cory Franklin and 2) Leslie Bienen & Margery Smelkinson’s article in Slate.

For simple graphics that show what returning to normal looks like, see my January 2022 Substack post. I illustrated the insanity of exposure quarantines here.