> Healthy people spend roughly 15-25 days each year—about 5% of their lives—sick with respiratory infections like the common cold and influenza

This seems completely unbelievable to me. Totally outside of my personal, professional, and family experience.

No kids eh?

My oldest starting preschool was one of the worst times in my life. We were sick from august to december, then january to may. Dreadful.

It got better. My youngest is 3 now and is ahead of where my oldest was due to having 2 older siblings importing illnesses for several years, and this year we finally were mostly not sick all school year. Which is to say, we were probably closer to the 15 days "materially sick" mark. I say materially sick to mean, definitely sick, though perhaps not taken out of school (due to not technically being outside of the health exclusion policy, and sometimes I only realize they were "materially" sick after they got home instead of just "passably sick given kids will basically have a lingering cough from august to may).

This sounds roughly normal for what I came to expect back when I worked in an office with many people who had school-age kids. I had a colleague who wryly referred to his kids as "my little plague carriers".

When I stopped working in an office, I almost completely stopped getting sick.

Unbelievable in which direction?

I've had years in which most people in my immediate surroundings were sick for weeks or months (likely exacerbated by mold, school, and travel). Also years in which I never really got sick at all.

Getting sick that often is pretty debilitating.

This feels about right to me. Living with kids and commuting via public transport (in a country where face masks are not common) might break 5%.

Are you reading “sick” as so ill that you can’t carry out your normal routine? I think they mean any symptoms.

I guess it depends a lot on what they count as sick. I definitely don't spend 3 weeks a year in bed, but if you add up all the random sore throats, congestion, coughs that linger for a week and "not really sick but clearly fighting something" days, it may be less crazy than it sounds

Yeah, that number is probably too low by a factor of two or so.

No its correct, having 2 kids and rate of sickness went through the roof, same for my wife.

We also had 10+ covids to indicate how much it changes, mostly imported by kids from creche (we hit the 'right' timing with them and covid waves). What do you expect when they shared pacifiers and put fingers in mouths all the time. Or suddenly sneezing gunk all over my face when holding them.

Before kids, I was usually sick 1x a year for few days, or had 1 proper flu week and that was it, my wife even less. No it didn't visibly improve our immunity, had covid last autumn and it felt almost like for the first time, sans loss of smell and taste.

For my family of 5 w/ school age children I would say that is a pretty reasonable estimate, maybe even a bit low for us. There are levels of “sick” though and I would say for us most respiratory illnesses are very mild and are a minor annoyance. Where it becomes more menacing is when we have sick kids and sick parents at the same time.

I would love to move to whatever planet you're living on. To me the estimate seems low.

Healthy lifestyle and food have a huge part. I date teachers a lot, and I've taken several people from constantly sick to almost never sick for 1+ year by just changing food and not going out to bars. I know this sounds like a random flippant comment, but I've done it enough times and consistently enough that I have no doubt personally.