Zero Illness Zero Living

I am immunocompromised. I need to be exposed to pathogens to maintain immune strength. Covid restrictions prevented my immune system from building strong natural immunity. Now I suffer greater illness re-entering normal social life.

I have a cleft palate. This provides greater opportunity for pathogens to infect the upper respiratory tract. Without a robust immune memory from previous exposure my immune response is weak enough to knock me out for a week or more. That has been my life for the past 2 weeks.

Lockdowns and a zero illness society is great until you need to live in the real world. Covid restrictions build immunity debt in each person by withholding the normal exposure they would have from otherwise normal social interaction, preventing immune memory forming.

We experienced this immunity debt in children with higher than expected respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as schools reopened.

In my case, simply going on vacation, visiting family, and doing vacationy things was enough to start a two month spiral which started out as a cough, then congestion, then ear infection, then flu-like fever, sweats, body ache, then cough, soar throat, and very low energy for another week.

I can only hope my immune system will now be stronger and maintain immune memory for some time so that I can enjoy winter activities.

This thread represents the other side of covid lockdowns, restrictions, and a zero illness obsessed society. Our immune systems need to be challenged regularly to maintain immune memory. Covid restrictions prevented that and we have and will reap its health destruction.

We must remember what living is. What we’re doing is not living at all, in the deepest, most existential sense.

Originally a Twitter thread

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