This is unlikely to be true for respiratory viruses. Compared to an ancestral environment, we have:

* Much less contact with bacteria, dirt, allergens, due to sterilization

* Much more contact with respiratory viruses, due to enclosed spaces and modern energy efficiency standards

The whole overactive immune system/hygiene hypothesis is much more likely linked to lack of exposure to the first group of pathogens and substances.

But that's the trick; I can temporarily remove all contact with people and animals, while there's an active deadly virus killing astronomically large numbers of people in my country.

Will I need to be like this forever? No. Can I be like this for another year or so? Yes. It's highly unpleasant, but I (and some others like me) can actually isolate to the degree you jokingly suggest.

And why wouldn't I? Because of some primitive need for physical social interaction? Because of my weak will, my inability to place the needs of others before the totally optional needs of my own?

It just seems like anyone who can isolate and doesn't should have a hard time looking themselves in the mirror. It's obviously a different story for those who can't (most people, really).

Humans aren't robots. There's nothing primitive or optional about the need for physical social interaction. The people who disagree with you aren't wrong, they simply have different subjective priorities and values.

There absolutely is something optional about the need (as in food, water) for physical social interaction, and the people who disagree with me are, factually, incorrect, know they're incorrect, and are acting selfishly at the cost of human lives.

Is it entirely pleasant? No. Is it temporary? Yes. You will survive without physically being around your buddies for a few years while a global fucking pandemic is resolved...

That is one way of looking at it, the other is why force yourself to suffer if neither you nor anyone around you is at threat from the virus.

My threat model is different, everyone around me is healthy and young--with I myself being the only one with a chronic condition leaving me more vulnerable to Covid but still no that much--locking myself would be more unhealthy.

I don't see it as selfish, I'm not forcing anyone who is at risk to take the risks I am taking. They can stay at home for as long as they want, it is their life after all.

There is a long religious tradition of suffering for the sake of faith in order to signal one's virtue or gain favor with a deity. While some pandemic control measures such as vaccination and mitigating co-morbid conditions are well supported by evidence based medicine, others have become kind of a weird secular religion largely detached from science.

I think some people just want to feel like they're in control. Surely if I dance in a circle while beating a drum the rains will come. Surely if I wear the sacred garment and perform the proper cleansing rituals the virus will see my piety and spare my life.

Who's talking about sterilizing their environment? Reply to wrong comment?

Of course I'll get sick, I've had the cold a few times this year already. That doesn't mean I try to get sick. Don't you wash your hands?

Wearing a mask on a crowded train with people sneezing and coughing seems pretty rational to me. I don't like catching a cold and will take reasonable measures to avoid it. Wearing a mask for an hour is hardly a big deal.