Dr. Janet Gilsdorf, author of June release Fever, provides an informative and reassuring outlook on the pandemic for parents with children returning to the classroom.

Epidemics of nasty new germs are upon us; COVID, monkeypox, and hepatitis in children from adenovirus are the latest. In addition, old germs have raised their ugly heads (or will soon): polio, measles, and maybe the causes of other vaccine-preventable diseases. That’s a lot of worry for parents, especially since it’s back-to-school season and children will begin doing what they do so well: sharing with others—their ideas, their food, their dreams, and their infections.

My novel Fever also deals with the outbreak of an infectious disease in young children. That one actually happened in Brazil in 1984, and Fever offers a fictional depiction of the outbreak and the efforts of Dr. Sidonie Royal, a young physician-scientist, to figure it all out.

The outbreak in Brazil, called Brazilian Purpuric Fever or BPF, differed in many important ways from the current outbreaks. With BPF, the epidemic eventually burned out. While that definitely won’t happen with COVID, it may, in odd ways, happen with adenovirus-associated hepatitis and monkeypox. With BPF, all the affected children died while most children affected with modern epidemic microbes survive. The most important difference between BPF and COVID is that we have the means to prevent transmission of the COVID virus to children, and to treat serious infections if they occur.

The fact that such valuable tools are available to us, less than three years after the first appearance of SARS CoV 2 (the virus that causes COVID) is a miracle. Not a Biblical-type miracle, but the miracle of modern science and the scientists who developed the technology for RNA-vaccines over twenty years ago and then applied it to COVID when it emerged, and who built upon previous treatments to develop new anti-viral drugs and anti-inflammatory agents. We are so very fortunate this time. The next epidemic or global pandemic may not work this way.

So, as children return to school, we can be reassured that their COVID vaccinations will go a long way in protecting them from getting infected with SARS CoV 2. In addition, as that wily virus evolves and changes, we have additional tools to protect kids in school from newer, more transmissible SARS CoV2 variants. Children are very adaptable, and they manage masks much, much better than many adults do. Enlightened schools have updated their HVAC systems to maximize air-exchange in classrooms, thus diluting any viruses that find their way in. Newer vaccines are on the horizon.

Just as Dr. Sidonie Royal worked day and night to understand the BPF outbreak in Fever, physicians and scientists around the world are working day and night to more completely understand COVID and other contemporary epidemics, so that medical science can protect us and our precious children even better. We are indeed fortunate.