Is this a "as far as I can tell based on my knowledge of immunology" or "as far as I can tell based off of personal experience and gut feeling"?
I mean, what you're saying sounds plausible, but on the other hand it also sounds plausible that maybe periodic exposure to random viruses and stuff does strengthen your immune system, so I'm curious if your take here is actually based in science or is just an off-the-cuff idea.
What's influenced/improved through (accidental or controlled/vaccines) exposure is it memory.
Although exposure can also have other consequences on the whole body, if the system is overwhelmed/can't cope.
* https://twitter.com/FurnessColin/status/1589103107048624129 (which has an additional interesting take about measles) * https://twitter.com/lisa_iannattone/status/15762315127179919... * https://twitter.com/unbiasedscipod/status/158891593499112652... * https://counterdisinformationproject.substack.com/p/immunity...
which is not necessarily intuitive as well, but still, at this point, makes way more sense than the "immune system is a muscle" discourse.
My comment was mainly to point up the analogy for seeing more infections today primarily because there were fewer infections before, not primarily because everyone's immune system is weakened. There are of course other concerns with disease burden and herd immunity overshoot. I do fear people are stretching the Windows Update analogy too thin, as your immune system isn't a computer and the dynamics are more complex (e.g. it doesn't matter if you avoid Covid Alpha and don't ever become perfectly immune to it, because there is hardly any of it circulating anymore, and your Omicron infection has some cross-immunity).
Granted "to question" is doing a lot of work in my last sentence there. I don't think it is a foregone conclusion. Would be very interested in seeing it explored. Closest my memory has to this is introducing kids to preschools. The new kids are always the ones getting most sick. Same for homeschoolers going to college. They will spend a ton of time catching up on sicknesses they missed out on.
That's not to say the "hygiene hypothesis" is completely false. There's good evidence that exposing children to low level pathogens early and often helps reduce autoimmune conditions like allergies, asthma, and arthritis. It just doesn't effect viral response.
I'll underline that I don't know exactly what the answer is. I think there is plenty to research on this, and excited on us knowing a bit more.
Reminds me of the somewhat silly phrase of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Unless, of course, it leaves you much much weaker. Which is very possible.
That said, I did not take that to mean that restrictions would be the only active component. I don't see any reason to think we can isolate this down to just a single prime mover.
I think this is more of an “it depends” situation than a hard and fast rule.
Boosters are a good option for many people (talk to your doctor). But using antibody levels as a basis for scheduling boosters is completely unscientific. As a society we can't boost our way out of the pandemic.
This panel discussion with a group of leading physicians goes into more detail on the issue.
> You'll be slammed with updates when you turn it on.
For a computer that isn’t an issue. But consider the health impact of “getting slammed” with several months, or take to an extreme, several years of missed immunity “updates”
Even in theory, our bodies pay a non-zero cost for each “update”
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/consumers-biolo...
[1]https://news.yale.edu/2020/09/04/common-cold-combats-influen...
Some people treat "the immune system" like a muscle, where stress strengthens. Similar stressors can have cross-reactive effects, but unrelated ones do not.
This can go the other way too: people who have uncontrolled celiac disease (as in, they're still consuming gluten on a regular basis) can also have issues with avenin (a somewhat similar protein in oats) or even lactose. For a lot of folks those sensitivities disappear when they get their gluten consumption down.
I used to get injections to diminish my hay fever symptoms. I finally mostly grew out of hay fever around the age of forty, though I'm still allergic to horses and cats, if I have direct contact.
Don't those injections comprise increasing challenges to the immune system using the allergens themselves, to make it less prone to mount a histamine response (i.e. runny nose, itchy eyes)?
It’s bad even by ‘2 yr old at daycare’ standards.
5 ER trips and a hospitalization due to breathing difficulties bad.
As pointed out elsewhere in the thread, RSV is more dangerous to younger children, so delaying infection is probably advantageous on a population level. I don't think there is any evidence that the severity of any of these diseases is higher when amortized over the years we had very low incidences, we are just seeing more disease total in a short period of time as restrictions are lifted.