Anyone who says covid doesn't effect the immune system is a liar. All viruses take a toll on the immune system to some degree, and we can measure it after covid and it can be quite severe. Similar things happen after a flu. For a while after you will be more prone to opportunistic infections, like from bacteria and fungus and other viruses. Except most people only get the flu every several years, while covid can infect you several times a year due to being a coronavirus, being airborne and incredibly contagious, and mutating so quickly due to infecting so many hosts. Of course it's making us sicker.

What they mean is "it's not HIV", but it's also been shown, like other viruses, to persist in parts of people's bodies, and while it's not the same, long covid is effecting a lot of people in a similar way across the world. The pro-infection people are betting that covid was only dangerous because it was new to humanity, when signs are there that's it's still plenty dangerous even after previous exposure and vaccines.

“Dawn Bowdish, Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunity at McMaster University, says they see immune changes following COVID infections in her lab. But she cautions against singling COVID out as uniquely disruptive.

“In our own work do we see that ‘COVID changes your immune system?’ Yes. But so does absolutely every other thing you’ve ever been exposed to,” she said. “Infections are never good for you.”

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“Virtually every viral respiratory infection has this period where the immune responses needed to deal with the virus leave you compromised to bacterial infections,” she added.

Samira Jeimy, program director of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at Western University, says COVID’s disruptive effects on the immune system are probably driving recent illness surges.

“Other viruses cause immune dysregulation,” Jeimy said. “I don’t know why we’re in such denial that COVID can do it as well.”

“There’s still a pervasive belief that all of this is because of an ‘immunity [debt],’ which is hard to believe,” she said..

Raywat Deonandan, a University of Ottawa epidemiologist, said he is also “quite open” to the immunity theft hypothesis.

“We’re seeing rises in respiratory infections of all kinds,” he said. “And there’s probably something behind that.”