Imagine if you will....
In normal times, we're exposed many times a year to the various nuisance-grade upper respiratory viruses, any of which can cause the syndrome we know as the common cold. Typically, we'll develop symptoms a time or two every year.
In normal times, children are routinely exposed to respiratory syncytial virus, catch it once at some random time early in life, and develop immunity.
Last year, there was a huge outbreak of RSV as children who, though a year of isolation, hadn't been exposed, were all exposed to it at the same time, causing a year's worth of cases to happen all at once.
Now, let's ponder. What would happen if a large test group of people were to be kept safe from the common cold for two years, while the smaller control group had something like the normal amount of exposure? Two years on, when the test group was again exposed, would they develop more severe symptoms due to their immune systems having partially forgotten about such viruses, to the new strains having two years' worth of drift instead of just one, or some combination?
So if you come down with some unusually nasty upper respiratory crud this year, you don't have any distinctive symptoms of the Coof, you test negative for SARS-CoV-2, and you hadn't even had a cold for two years... maybe it's DOUBLE SECRET OMEGACRON </reverb>, or maybe you and the common cold had grown apart and now need to make acquaintance again.
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