On further reflection, I think I've also heard a similar-on-the-surface anti-sanitation argument that *doesn't* depend on each individual cold being worse, or even on the immune system per se being atrophied in any way. It goes more like "your ability to have only one cold every couple of years depends specifically on taking *above-average* precautions: if everyone took as many precautions as you, colds would evolve to be more contagious under the increased selective pressure, and before long we'd be back to the average person having four colds a year but now having to expend more effort to maintain that".
Which sounds a lot more plausible, and yet...I notice that if my ancestors had thought like that we'd probably still have cholera and tuberculosis and so on, so I strongly suspect that there's *something* wrong with this reasoning. It's possible that rhinovirus is just more adaptable than cholera: I know influenza is famously adaptable.
(...although I *also* feel like I must be missing something important about how tuberculosis ceased to be endemic in my area. Wikipedia seems to imply that my ancestors defeated an airborne disease with social distancing and a 60% effective vaccine?? ...does that mean COVID-19 *is* defeatable, or at least ~restrictable to the Third World like tuberculosis has been?)
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Which sounds a lot more plausible, and yet...I notice that if my ancestors had thought like that we'd probably still have cholera and tuberculosis and so on, so I strongly suspect that there's *something* wrong with this reasoning. It's possible that rhinovirus is just more adaptable than cholera: I know influenza is famously adaptable.
(...although I *also* feel like I must be missing something important about how tuberculosis ceased to be endemic in my area. Wikipedia seems to imply that my ancestors defeated an airborne disease with social distancing and a 60% effective vaccine?? ...does that mean COVID-19 *is* defeatable, or at least ~restrictable to the Third World like tuberculosis has been?)