Actually, it's not a bad thing to get sick as a kid. It save you from getting
more sick as an adult. Chickenpox is a good example of that- it's an uncomfortable nuisance for children but can be fatal for adults. This is why there was such a brouhaha over the vaccine- if it wears off, there could be a lot of very sick grownups in ten or twenty years. Most of these viruses just come and go every year, eventually most people wind up getting everything anyway and then becoming immune. Might as well get it when you're young best able to fend it off.
For example, colleges often have epidemics because it's the first time many of these kids are in such close contact with each other (i.e. living in a dorm together). I even got whooping cough in college because my childhood vaccine wore off. That was
very unpleasant.
My kids were less sick when they were homeschooled, but they were older, too and had already had a lot of those viruses already. I couldn't really say if they were healthier or not. However, if there were a really bad bug going around, I absolutely would pull them out of school again and homeschool. By bad, I mean meningitis or avian flu.
The only homeschooling might avoid is an outbreak of strep or other bacterial infection. It doesn't help a kid do get that, one doesn't become immune to bacterial diseases, but fortunatley they are less common than viral ones. Interestingly, I kept getting
bona fide strep throat one year, over and over. Eventually, we found out my toddler was a strep carrier. A regular Typhoid Mary! He was never sick but kept giving it to us again and again.
