When you’re sick*, your entire body becomes inflamed, even your nervous system, and that fucks everything up. Further, if you are more sensitive and have sensory needs (almost certainly do), you’re being overwhelmed by unwanted sensations (body aches, heightened sense of smell, headaches, runny nose, coughs) and are unlikely to have the energy to stim to help regulate.

Best course is to try to minimize all the unwanted sensations and check out mentally until your immune system does its thing. AKA, get some rest.

I wouldn’t put much hope in current medical science with this question, they still have no idea what the heck COVID does, mechanically speaking, just that it fucks shit up in a way that may lead to respiratory failure. And that’s with all the money in the world. No one is doing deep dives into how someone that’s neurodivergent feels differently bad when they are sick. Heck, they don’t really deal with anyone’s symptoms while they are sick, it’s just basic painkillers and barely better than placebo cough syrup. The only mental vital they even take is pain, which ND people either answer very low to (resulting in being told to go away), or very high to (resulting in being told you are exaggerating, drug seeking, and to go away). Maybe if they could measure the level of stimulation and figure out a safe baseline, and at what point we start becoming traumatically overstimulated, then medicated for that, I’d have a bit more faith in the system. Since they can’t even measure pain, maybe at least ask us how stimulated we feel instead of our pain levels. Anything over a 7 should be treated with something that helps us cool off. But what the fuck do I know.