I take your point. It is just a tiny bit suspicious, because, for me even if some one was so callous as to use a viral weapon, they still might want to to use one that did not effect the most innocent members of society: children.
However, the 1918 influenza effected the old and young less, and those in between more due to their immune systems being the most healthy, and reacting too much to the new pathogen. The Wired article suggests that perhaps children have cleaner lungs, runnier mucus, less immune response, or perhaps a better immune response to coronaviruses (as colds that they catch at school presumably).
I suggest
here (link) that another possibility is that children (like the original hosts, bats) tend to get hot fevers, hotter than older people anyway, when infected and this may reduce the severity of the illness though I am in no way connected with medicine and attempting to heating yourself may be impossible (
as announced by the WHO), and heating up too much kills many (more?) people too.
People who take too hot baths for too long can suffer from heat stroke, organ failure, especially liver failure, sepsis and death (which seems to come before the "burns" that
the WHO mention). People have died from organ failure as a result of spending too long in a 40C bath. I plan to heat my feet using some sort of electric heater, rather than a foot bath, if I get it.
Apropos of nothing....
The Japanese (I am in Japan) think that they are really hygienic and they are right in the main, but there was a guy reading magazines in my local convenience store, coughing without a mask or elbow. I kept my distance, wore a mask, washed my hands, face, and gargled when I got home, but even so I am scared. I would hate to be the person that buys the magazine that he was reading for free.