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Notes -
I think I disagree with the statement that various types of flu/colds do not generate any immunity: they simply fail to generate sufficient immunity to avoid symptomatic infection, which is why the new strains are able to circulate in the fairst place.
Now you can reasonably disagree that this cross-reactivity actually matters in terms of disease length/prognosis if you're still not immune enough to avoid getting ill, and I'm not sure whether it has been tested empirically. But it makes intuitive sense at least, and the principle seems to be accepted e.g. in this 2009 paper looking at swine flu immunity in the general population https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0911580106
Overall, seems like a hard thing to study. Would be interesting if someone did an East/West study on whether flu is actually worse in the East due to reduced exposure (noting that it might still be less prelevant on the net due to effective masking). I would fall back on the statement that either masks are effective and decrease your exposure to disease and therefore your immunity relative to the unmasked population, or ineffective and therefore pointless.
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