I am down with a nasty cold this week and have had to cancel my meetings both online and on-campus. Quite a change compared to last winter when I had absolutely no respiratory tract infections. 2019/20 winter was in turn very different to many winters before; I used to catch quite a lot of viral infections, including “fresher’s flu” almost every September.
There are other viruses around in addition to SARS-CoV-2. As we are starting to mix socially, we are more likely to catch them. Current vaccination only (and not perfectly) protects against the pandemic virus; there are currently no vaccines against the common cold – and we probably do not really need them.
Last year’s lockdown kept flu and other infections at bay, so our immunological system would by now have forgotten the protection against common cold viruses. This potentially makes us more susceptible to them.
Anyway, hope to be back in action in a couple of days, with all sorts of home remedies to help my immunological system. It would be interesting to know how much cross-immunity it is due to being infected with different coronaviruses; this could have implications for SARS-CoV-2 as we might be moving into the “endemic” stage.