This was, to put it mildly, very unwelcome news last week:

And this is even more unwelcome:

The Netherlands is experiencing a bizarre uptick in pneumonia cases among children, marking the second country to report an outbreak of this type this week.

The Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL), a research institute in Utrecht, around 25 miles south of Amsterdam, reports that 80 of every 100,000 children between ages 5 and 14 came down with pneumonia last week.

I believe I speak for all world leaders, heads of state, community leaders and common citizens when I say:

Well, okay, it's not all that bad. Yet. Chinese officials claim that "no new pathogens were detected in the outbreak, and instead the illnesses were caused by known seasonal viruses such as the flu and RSV, along with the bacteria Mycoplasma pneumoniae."

That being said, it is the ChiComs. So you have to kind of reflexively distrust everything they say.

Still, it's not implausible that those viruses are causing the spike. After all, "strict COVID measures, which were lifted at the end of 2022, left the population vulnerable to these annual viruses." Turns out that locking down their country for three years might have been a bad idea. Who knew?

The big problem is the Netherlands.

COVID-related measures have been gone in the Netherlands for some time, making it unclear what would cause such a spike this year.

I worry — just a little bit, but I worry — that before too long we'll have an answer and we won't like it.

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