Thread by @FurnessColin

A word on the idiocy known as "immunity debt". How did such a nonsensical idea take hold?

Simple. The obvious mental model for our immune system is a muscle: use it or lose it. Muscles atrophy when we don't use them. The same mental model works for our memories & skills.

1/19

So it shouldn't be surprising that a satisfying narrative emerges, using this same mental model, while simultaneously vilifying lock-downs and masks, which nobody liked anyway.

But here's the thing. The immune system isn't anything like a muscle. It's a photo collection.

2/19

Photo collections don't fade just because we don't look at them. They sit until they're needed.

Our immune system uses its "photo collection" to recognize pathogens we have encountered before.

And new mugshots get made whenever a new intruder is identified.

3/19

Eventually as we age, those photos do get wrinkly, like the rest of our bodies, and don't work as well. But they don't fade in kids.

So what's happening with child hospitalizations for non-COVID illness?

Well, pretend you're a virus, and let's call you ... COVID ...

4/19

Your job is to invade, infect, and transmit. Vaccination has made your job harder because your intended victims already have your photo and their immune response is ready.

So you mutate to change your appearance. The more you mutate, the less you look like your mugshot.

5/19

But that's not the only possible strategy: you can also trash the photo collection itself, so your intended victims won't recognize you.

In 2015, it was discovered that Measles does this. It literally erases immune memory. It fades those photos. How was that discovered?

6/19

It was discovered through epidemiological data: people who recovered from Measles tended to THEN get all kinds of diseases they shouldn't get. Nobody suspected Measles was erasing immunity, until we had these data that couldn't be explained away.

7/19

What do we have today? A ton of unexplained child illness in the first cold/flu season since we let COVID rip. Hmm.

We have known since 2020 that COVID harms interferon production, a protein that your cells release to call the immune system for help when they are attacked.

8/19

We have also known for quite some time that when COVID explodes one of your cells, it can trick your immune system into attacking debris that belongs to you, rather than it. That's autoimmune disease.

9/19

In some people, that triggers a LOT of inflammation, which then causes immune system exhaustion. What happens when your immune system gets exhausted from attacking your own body? You stop producing enough T-cells and antibodies to deal with COVID.

10/19

Emerging immunological research is beyond my pay grade, frankly. I struggle to parse these studies for meaning, and immunologists are very conservative about drawing clinical conclusions from their work.

11/19

But I feel certain we will continue to learn the mechanisms by which COVID hobbles the immune system.

It will take some time, this is incredibly complicated science. Maybe a few years. I just don't think we should continue to deny this until then.

12/19

So let's circle back to the sudden rise in child hospitalizations for non-COVID illness. This can't be explained by "immunity debt" nor the tooth fairy, because neither exist.

But it **CAN** be explained by immunity robbery, which we know DOES exist.

13/19

It's true that a couple of years of masking and social distancing means that there is a larger number of infants and toddlers getting RSV and flu for the first time, and it can hit them hard.

If that's all this is, it will soon settle down and the crisis will disappear.

14/19

It will settle down because those infections are happening right now en masse.

However, if COVID is causing immunity harm, and COVID continues to reinfect, then we will see a steady state, or an increase in severely ill children.

15/19

I'd be thrilled to have this all wrong, tbh. Because if I'm right, we may soon start to see child deaths that would be preventable if we had the healthcare capacity to treat them. That's horrible beyond words.

16/19

Now comes the unpleasant part of the thread. COVID is evolving to be more successful in evading our immune responses because we aren't masking or improving indoor air quality.

17/19

That evolution has caused weakening vaccine effectiveness, weakening drug treatment effectiveness, and it may well also include an improvement in COVID's immune suppression capacity. Darwin would say that's almost certainly what is happening, and I'm betting on Darwin.

18/19

People are literally training COVID if they share indoor air without a mask while ignoring child hospitalization, and using "immunity debt" as strong justification for both.

COVID trainers are a majority of the people with whom I interact. I sure wish that would change.

19/19