How come evolution seems to work faster in this manner?

Microbes are as opportunistic as any other organisms with some of them infecting skin like Staphylococcus aureus, others infecting organisms' very defense systems, like HIV.

During the winter my wife is constantly sick. It seems she gets repeated infections of cold and flu viruses and usually exhibits most of the classic symptoms. I think I got sick once this past winter, and my symptoms amounted to an elevated temperature and fatigue for a day. We regularly exchange bodily fluids.

Thank you very much, InfraB.

I'm still puzzled. And I have a further question. Is one gender, in the sense of susceptibility to disease "weaker" than the other?

What I'm still puzzled about is this. Does a life threatening event, ... better, I think, do potential species extinction events push organisms faster towards evolving a fix?

Is the preoccupation with cleanliness, disinfecting hand sprays at the doors of many publicly accessible buildings, "urging" organisms to evolve to defeat these processes and by relying on these, are we reducing our own internal abilities to fight off these potentially infecting organisms?

'skin' was only there as a guard, not as a "killer", or at least I think it was.