It is normal to get sick once a year and, in fact, healthy because it helps train your immune system.

This is bullshit on many levels.

First, people tend to get sick more than once per year. There are already the flu and common cold and people often get both once per year.

Second, the “once per year” logic is also reminiscent of “seasonality” logic, logic that COVID doesn’t really follow. Generally speaking, the common cold, the flu, etc follow cycles where for a given country, there is a surge once per year. This does not apply to COVID, which has had at least two waves per year, often 3 or 4. You can get also COVID 2-3 times per year, as immunity for wanes on the order of 3-6 months (due to its fast evolution, something facilitated by high infection rates).

Third, the idea that getting sick is good for your immune system as an adult is a myth. Pure myth. It has zero scientific support. You should get vaccinations and take reasonable precautions, not aim for getting sick.

It is good for kids to be exposed to various things, including some that may be infectious, buy exactly which ones is pretty murky. When we are little, our immune systems are still figuring out the difference between “self” and “other”. If the immune system is inaccurate in this, you may develop an autoimmune disorder, where your immune system attacks “self” because it recognizes it as “other”. There is evidence that very young kids playing outside helps avoid this - and similarly, allergies - but it’s not a simple thing to disentangle. Either way, it does not apply to your situation.

Covid doesn’t cause an impact on your immue system either.

This is a lie. It is well-established that COVID infection causes immune deregulation, and particularly T cell exhaustion. There is more to it, but it effectively “ages” that part of your immune system. This is a very likely contributing factor in why there are so many infectious diseases currently on the uptick. The population, having, on average, been infected by COVID multiple times, has likely taken on a decent amount of immune system damage.

Sometimes you can be In a bit of a state of inflammation which happens in many viral infections.

The main danger of acute COVID infection is massive levels of inflammation mediated by what is known as a cytokine cascade (or storm). It’s not “a bit”, it’s enough to possibly kill you, and the amount more or less makes or breaks how you will fare during the acute phase. This is one of the things that vaccines help with, they help your immune system respond early and keep this modulated.

COVID is also unique in that it infects basically all of your organs and can stay there, causing increased inflammation for months to years. This is not what other viruses do, generally speaking.

And long covid is a topic in itself. It has never been quantified by any and all testing except subjective

A lie. There are many, many studies on Long COVID that quantify it and study it and its etiology.

Hete is a recent one that also describes immune dysregulagulation associated with it. It states that at least 10% of acute COVID infections result in Long COVID. Long COVID is persistent symptoms after acute COVID infection and appears to be, in reality, a continued infection by COVID that just isn’t going away and is instead hanging out in various organs, constantly challenging your immune system.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-023-01724-6

maybe he would be more receptive with super libbed up sources or something, i dunno what he would respect

I would not treat him as the primary audience. He is already arrogant enough to spread bullshit despite not understanding the basics of this topic that any medical professional should be expected to know. I would instead present an unassailable case to a wider audience that includes him but is not only him so that peer pressure does its thing and he feels he cannot continue pushing back without looking foolish. Focus on the disease itself and the science. Memorize the numbers. 10% develop long COVIF. Memorize the facts. Long COVIF is medical symptoms that persist after acute COVID infection and there is strong evidence that they come from a continued lower-level infection. T-cell dysregulation and exhaustion is even more common than long COVID. In addition, these numbers represent people’s experiences after having COVID and you can be reinfected every 3-6 months, so it’s not like only 10% of the population will be impacted. Every infection is rolling the dice. If they were fully independent (which they probably aren’t, it’s probably somewhere in between), then there is a 10% chance of developing long COVID over your lifetime if you are infected once, 19% if you get it twice, 27% if you get it thrice, 35% if you get it 4 times, etc. The equation to calculate this is 100% * (1 - (0.9^n)), where n is the number of infections. Without precautions, you will likely get COVID 1-3 times per year.

The main risk of doing this in a larger group is that you will need to understand this stuff pretty well, as otherwise he will probably try to appeal to his own authority and various correct-soundkng factoids like he already has. You’ll need papers ready to go and cite. You’ll have to ask him if he read papers from the Roan or Iwasaki labs. He definitely hasn’t lol. If you think he can really change his tune based on a personal conversation, this is better because it gives him a chance to save face. Buy I would be surprised given that he is already happy to spread bullshit like this.

healthy because it helps train your immune system

amazing that someone with a medical degree would think this. This is “immunity debt” and it’s bullshit. The immune system is not like a muscle that’s going to atrophy if you don’t use it every so often.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-medical-critical-thinking/claims-immunity-debt-children-owe-us-evidence

And long covid is a topic in itself. It has never been quantified by any and all testing except subjective

I really like this brief explainer on long covid. It’s sort of basic, but it’s real doctors and medical researchers from an academic institution talking about long covid.

Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist, is another good source on long covid.

Furthermore, there is more than enough robust, noteworthy scientific research on covid’s effect on the immune system and on long covid out there to justify being cautious about covid. These things are not fringe topics, despite official efforts to portray them that way. Even if he wants to hem and haw about the various unknowns still out there, to throw all caution to the wind is to ignore and wave away a huge chunk of scientific research and evidence. This is extremely reckless behavior for someone who has supposedly been involved with medicine, especially when your recommendations are not even that drastic. Mandatory masking for indoor events? That’s really not a big ask.

This is old data, clearly, but it is still relevant to the question at hand, as COVID hasn’t become less deadly. We just have a higher rate of vaccination now, compared to 2022.

Anyway, as you can see there are some instances of deaths even among the vaccinated (though many more among the unvaccinated). That, to me, refutes this bizarre claim that getting sick once per year is good for you. I’ve never seen any evidence corroborating that; that seems like a hypothesis that hasn’t been tested.

I personally would focus on the need for inclusion vs the exclusion that a maskless event would create. Perhaps looking at some of the statements released by events that required masking previously. Both Pro-Palestine and Pride as of recently.

Here’s a post the DC Dyke March made before their event:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C7rfCy_Ofsa/

You can try hitting them with a bunch of studies but I would leave that as a last resort so they don’t take it as a personal offense and make a big stink about.

If I have time this evening I’ll drop a bunch of links, but hopefully someone will beat me to it.

Edit: Here’s a bunch of links I posted last month. See if they work for ya.

https://hexbear.net/comment/5070962

It is normal to get sick once a year and, in fact, healthy because it helps train your immune system.

…and…

Covid doesn’t cause an impact on your immue system either.

Sooooo, it doesn’t have an effect, but if it did its good for you? Sounds like he’s just bullshitting you.

he has some kind of medical degree, and worked in long term care as a medical officer of some sort.

And when he pulls his rank on you, have him sign over personal liability for all medical expenses as a result of the event. He wants to play professional, he can take the rules that come with professionalism. Then make him in charge of collecting COVID liability wavers from every member in attendance for every single in-person event.

I’m serious, this is a liability issue for your organization and you should treat it as such. Likewise if he believes his own bullshit than all of this should be easy for him to do. I predict he will balk at such an invitation because he already knows his opinion is full of shit.

Just ran across this post of 4 studies that hit pretty hard.

https://xcancel.com/drseanmullen/status/1816141102031716724

This guy is an epidemiologist with a background in hospital infection control and emergency management. He just wrote an open letter to hospital administrations with a bunch of reasons they should bring back mask mandates and take covid seriously. You should be able to pull more than enough info from here or even just send the letter to the guy.

https://icemsg.org/2024/07/21/2024-week-28/