Many Americans have spent 2 years in comparatively more antiseptic conditions than before. So immune systems can lose some of their sensitivity to, some of their recognition of, common germs. Many have spent so much time avoiding all germs (because covid preventative measures affected other germs too) that our immune systems are desensitized to many common ones.
Covid vaxs boosted our immune systems for...wait for it...covid
but we avoided exposure to others with the other safety measures.
Normal contact will restore normal recognition again. But...we'll still get sick too, if we're predisposed. Like before.
Yes. its complicated.
Covid vaccines have nothing to do with noroviruses or other "stomach bugs". Covid vaccines can not prevent gastroenteritis. Covid vaccines help fight covid virus effects which might include fever, muscle aches and stomach muscle pain but they won't provide immunity to gastroenteritis or influenza or other viruses or fungal or bacterial contamination in food or allergic reactions (intolerance) or reactions to toxic chemicals {pesticide for example) in food.
Unfortnately If you eat out you will eventually get gastroenteritis. The amount of people who touch, breath, sneeze on your food makes that inevitable.
The point is you are right as wel . Not having been exposed to a lot of shit once we go outside we are again. So we are not used to it. It might be we have no immunities built up to certain things and/or a mix of psychological reactions we are not used to that come with the symptoms of stomach upset when they come again which are real and some call pain threshold-we can bring in virusesto our home or bodies by breathing in other people's sneezes or breath, or touching and then transporting through our dirty hands and clothes or what is on our hair and skin from having gone back out to the sources of these viruses of fungi or bacteria. (remember bacteria and fungus are different then viruses so you can take medications for them that can give you "immunity" but only for a certain time period never permanently, with viruses as well, vaccines fade in time in terms of helping you deal with the symptoms of the virus)
I wonder sometimes though. Some people naturally eat shit and never get sick, others get real sick. It may be sometimes some of us do have better resistance to viruses (certain natural immunities to specific viruses they developed) but sometimes its simply the difference in how each one of us is in terms of how we maintain certain bacteria in our stomach.
Studies have shown people living in underdeveloped overcrowded "slums" with toxic sewage in the water all around them have children who swim in this shit and are able to resist say e coli bacteria-whereas you and I exposed to what they are could even die. Then again the no.1 reason children die is gastroenteritis-they can't fight off the virus or bacteria or fungal infection that is in their stomach and causes them to dehydrate.
Cleanliness, including access to clean water is the key to prevention. Clean water we take that for granted in the first world.
www.nbcnews.com
