We didn’t have so much as a sniffle in our house for 2+ years. Masking, distancing, and not going to restaurants—we just did not get sick. Even after the kids went back to school—we had them in a school with heavy-duty air filters in every room and high masking compliance, at the time.

Now we’re sick constantly, it seems. It’s so much worse than before. I think our immune systems are doing some catching up.

[edit] for the timing, we started getting sick a bunch right around the time masking dropped off to near-zero everywhere around us.

It totally makes sense though right? While we had zero tolerance, our immune systems didn't get any work out, and vaccines can only take you so far and doesn't cover many nasty RSVs anyways. Now we are back, and our immune systems are simply not in shape.

I’ve also heard that because of lockdown only the stronger variants of different viruses made it. So we’re dealing with them now. But I haven’t heard of any study about it yet.