I've got two year old and five year old. Two year old spent most of her first call it 12 months of existence at home because she was born in August 2019, basically 6-7 months before Covid lockdown. She had only been experienced to daycare for like 3-4 months before they shut down.
My 5 year old was sick pretty consistently for like his first 18-24 months. At least a half dozen ear infections, had to put tubes in, I believe at one point around a year old he had the flu and double ear infections at the same time.
BUT, I will say this... my five year old is like super healthy right now and has been for about 2-2.5 years. Any cold he gets is extremely mild, and he has run like one fever in three years. And that's with daycare 5 days a week and now in-person Kindergarten. And I'm extremely confident that a lot of his health now is because he has such great immune system from all the viruses he saw in his first 2 years. I tried to explain to him its like a boxing match. Virus comes in, his body is like "nah, I've seen you before. I already know how to whoop that ass", and his body just punches this shit away.
Might not be true for everybody, but in some ways, its a little better to get them exposed to the normal viruses we see spread daily at a young age. I think you'll find most children will develop strong antibodies and be a lot less sick later on.
Young one's are tougher with illness though, granted. Sleep a lot less, lots of crying, can't easily communicate what the issues are. When my five year old had a fever a few months back, you can just plop him on the couch watching TV for most of the day, takes a long ass nap, and he's rebounding quickly. A lot harder with toddlers. They don't really seem to have the "sleep a long time and rest" gene.
