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Notes -
I think we're all talking out of our ass here. Speaking of N=1, one of the posts above said they did an "A/B" test and determined that wearing a mask helped reduce their own incidence of getting sick. How many colds must they suffer to glean any useful information? Surely, hundreds or thousands at a minimum. How truly awful things must be for them.
That makes sense, but think about the consequences of that statement. There are thousands if not millions of different cold variants. A subway station can have hundreds of people crowded into a small area, many who are contagious. You would be nearly assured of getting sick every time you rode public transit. As this doesn't happen, it stands to reason that your immune system does protect you against some novel pathogens.
The unanswered question becomes: does your immune system become generally weaker when not exposed to pathogens? My lay person answer is yet, but with low confidence.
On another note, it's rather sad that we have to resort to this level of lay person reasoning because, with Covid, our public health apparatus has completely abdicated their responsibility to provide accurate and unbiased information. Even if an expert were to come here and refute me, I would be skeptical of their information until I knew more about them.
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