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• I don't think the Quarantine symbols and Kelvin with his Hazmat gear is related to the sickness, especially after the events of the Other Woman. It seems that Kelvin came after the purge, so they were instructed to always wear Hazmat gear when going out to keep protected from gas getting released from the Tempest.
• The Sickness is a result of continued interaction with the Numbers. It is a memetic disease, spreading through ideas, specifically affecting people based on how much they concentrate on the Numbers. The Numbers are a mathematical representation of entropy, a force in the Universe that leads all things to decay and die (in the case of the Valenzetti Equation, specifically the extinction of the human race). The more one associates with the Numbers, especially using them for personal gain, the more one attracts this entropy (bad luck, insanity). Rousseau claims that her crew tried to figure out what the Numbers meant, and then the Sickness came; whether she knows it or not, these two events are connected. This is the Sickness; it breeds insanity, the same insanity that caused Sam Toomey to kill himself, put Leonard in the mental hospital, and turned Rousseau's crew into raving lunatics, forcing her to kill them. Hurley was on the same track, but temporarily got away from the numbers, at least from his perspective, when he got to the island. When he realized the Numbers were on and in the hatch, he started to lose it again, eventually hallucinating Dave. Dharma created the vaccine to protect themselves from this as they were working with the numbers on a daily basis, trying to change the values of the Valenzetti equation. Ethan injected Aaron with the vaccine because Aaron, for some reason, attracts this entropy physically (explaining Richard Malkin's warning that bad things surround the child).
  • Ethan injected Claire with the vaccine to keep her from dying in the late stages of her pregnancy.
• The Sickness is a biological weapon developed by DHARMA in order to wipe out the Hostiles. They already had an antidote for it (CR 4-81516-23 42), but the Hostiles were able to steal it which prevented them from being wiped out. Rousseau and her research team arrived shortly after the Purge when the virus was still active, therefore Rousseau is the only person to possess the virus currently.
• DHARMA based its findings of a sickness on the end result of the Purge. They assumed that only a widespread "sickness" was capable of such an atrocity, and prepared for it as such.
• Charlie's actions in the episode "Fire + Water" could be the first signs of The Sickness.
• The sickness is what has made the Others the way they are.
  • Rousseau claims in "Solitary" that the Others were the "carriers" of the sickness.
    • The sickness was created by DHARMA.
• The sickness does not actually exist. This is being used as social experiment. The Others used it to convince Claire (unsuccessfully) and Rousseau to give up their babies. They also used it to persuade Desmond, etc to stay inside the Hatch and take the vaccine. Rousseau was further convinced to kill her team, believing they had The Sickness.
  • This is supported by the fact that Desmond witnessed Kelvin removing his HAZMAT suit outside of The Swan unaffected, suggesting that the sickness doesn't really exist, and the vaccine and quarantine doors are merely a part of the experiment and to convince the test subjects that the sickness is very real.
• The sickness is actually what caused the mysterious healing for Rose (cancer), Locke (spinal damage), and Jin (infertility). It was part of the Life Extension Project that got loose, and for some reason is now seen as undesirable by the Others. This theory would also serve to explain why none of the survivors have contracted malaria or other tropical ailments.
• The sickness is, in fact, the opposite of what it seems: it extends life, slows the aging process (or possibly stops it), gives protection from disease and heals wounds faster. The vaccine halts the effects of the sickness, so it is necessary to vaccinate the children, who otherwise may take decades (or longer) to reach adulthood.
  • Yet Ben, who has lived there all his life, developed a tumor?
  • Preventing aging wouldn't prevent 'growing up'. Aging is due to limitations of cells, growing up is due to development triggered by hormones.
• The sickness is the disease referred to in the Sri Lanka video by Mittelwerk, i.e., "They think they are infected by a virus carried by local macaques...", "We must make absolute certain we are hitting precise genetic targets...", "We need not take any more lives than is absolutely necessary. Yes?", and most importantly "...we have engineered into the virus."
• The Sickness does exist and has already begun to affect certain people causing hallucinations such as Jacks visions of his father, Kate's horse, Hurley's encounter with Dave and possibly Shannon's vision of Walt. The vaccine is taken by the Others to prevent such hallucinations. The Sickness could either be deliberately engineered by the Hanso foundation for some reason or a naturally occurring anomaly caused by the mysterious nature of the Island.
  • Sayid sees Walt at the same time as Shannon and Sawyer sees Kate's horse at the same time as Kate. It is unlikely that these were hallucinations.
• The Sickness is part of the Life Extension Project. The Vaccine is what keeps you alive however it speeds up any other diseases you may have e.g. Cancer.
• The sickness is contagious by touch and Ethan injected Aaron with it in order to potentially spread it around the castaways, wiping them out. It begins with a rash, then leads to slow hallucination.
• A broad theory regarding Ben, Alex, Rousseau and the sickness: There is only one "sickness" on the Island: infertility. Not the madness-inducing disease Rousseau describes. Rousseau is a cast-out Other whose entire backstory is supplied to her by Room 23, to keep her afraid and exiled. She is actually Alex's mother, but Ben is Alex's father. Otherwise, she has false memories. The Dharma Initiative was aware of the infertility problem on the Island, and CR_481516-23_42 is a prophylactic against it. It keeps both men and women from becoming sterile, and keeps babies alive in utero. This is why Claire had to be given CR_481516-23_42 by Ethan.
• The vaccine is actually a harmful agent. An inscription on the blast door map reads Aegrescit medendo, which translates to "The disease worsens with the treatment".
  • From what Mikhail Bakunin says, this inscription can also refer to the relationship between DHARMA and the Hostiles, wherein "disease" stands for the Hostiles and "treatment" for the Purge.
• The sickness is the despair in any human, in particular the "curse" that accompanies people who believe in the power of the "Numbers".
• The sickness is caused by a chemical or biological agent that DHARMA used against the Others during the Purge. This was active around the time of the Purge, but may no longer be active now.
• The sickness is the aging process and the vaccine slows the process.
• There is only sickness
• The sickness is a virus released by the DHARMA Initiative during the purge which results in the premature death of the mother during pregnancy.
• The sickness is one of the experiments created by the DHARMA Initiative with the hope of changing one of the factors in the Valenzetti equation. By eliminating 30% of the population, the environmental factor dealing with overpopulation would have to change.
• The sickness is why Ben doesn't allow anyone to leave the Island. People on the Island are essentially carriers of the sickness; infected, but kept alive due to the Island's healing properties. Once off the Island, they would get sick and die, potentially spreading the infection to the rest of the world.
• This last theory is disproven since we now know Richard Alpert and Ethan Rom recruited and then retrieved Juliet.
• The Sickness is the poison used to kill the Dharma Initiative during the Purge.
  • "Sickness" is the poison-gas released by Ben during the Purge. Ben then contacts DHARMA and informs, that on the island is virus, that kills most of the members. He shows photos of dead people in Barracks to DHARMA, as a proof. He recommended to stop sanding new employees and make quarantine on whole island. DHARMA ordered to use the vaccine and HAZMAT suits (but only Kelvin Inman follows this order, because he is only surviving DHARMA member).
• Naomi's ship does not land on the Island, in fear of a repeat of the sickness which affected the team they sent to the Island 16 years ago: Danielle's.
• Everyone on the island is infected with the sickness but none of them know it because the island protects them from it somehow. Once they leave the island, the sickness slowly kills them. This could help explain Jack's depression, drug addiction, and thoughts of suicide since leaving the island. He knows that if he had not made the decision to contact Naomi's rescue ship, nobody would have died from the sickness, and he blames himself for any deaths that occurred from it.

• Kate didn't seem to be affected by this theoretical sickness like Jack was, though.

• The sickness is nothing more than a ploy by Ben after his genocide on the island. After he purged the island he altered Dharma officials of the situation saying a sickness caused a large number of deaths on the island, and not to send anyone else to the island. The Dharma officials did not want to end the recruitment and was under the belief that enough people where living to survive it, a vaccine was sent to them (This is why food drops still occur. Ben will not any one leave as it is believed anyone on the island is sick and if Dharama finds out he lied he will be killed. Radzinsky was probably unharmed in the swan station as Ben's delivery never reached the swan, and he was altered to stay there and given the biohazard suite. He assumed what Ben tricked everyone into believing and thus spread the word to Kalvin when he appeared. This is why ben kept the arrow operational as it was a way for the officials to check in on the island and he needed to keep up the hoax.
• The purge was the result of a intended release of the sickness but was somehow accidentally (or not) contracted by Danielle's team in a smaller dose resulting in their different reaction to it.
• Smokey is the "sickness" since there were so few on Danielle's team, Smokey's apparitions affected a greater number of them, making them appear to go insane from seeing things. Being that there are more Losties than Danielle's team, the "sickness" isn't really noticeable since it's only happening to a select few.
  • The vaccine is to prevent the Monster from scanning you.
  • But Danielle was aware of the Monster, seemingly as something separate from the sickness (she refers to it in season one as a security system).
• As other theories have said, the Monster may have the ability to take the form of other things. Therefore, the "sickness" could be the Monster attempting to posses someone.
  • Which makes sense since (if the monster/possession theory is true) the monster usually only possesses the dead With the exception of Walt which could be because he is "special" and connected to the island and (maybe) the monster itself.
• Danielle jumped to the conclusion that there was a sickness because her team began having hallucinations about dead people shortly after the visit to the Black Rock. She assumed they went mad when they really hadn't. The quarantine references on the hatch doors were Dharma's way of keeping people from leaving their stations.
  • This seems the most logical. We have to assume that our Losties aren't the first ones to have the experience that they have had. If Lost had taken place in the late 80's we would have seen the events from Danielle's ship. Someone like Danielle, who relies more on fact then faith would easily assume that her team would be getting 'sick' because of the islands powers. They probably had their own daddy issues, black horses, boars, and back story that appeared on the island after they crashed. If Danielle hadn't been privy to these types of things because of how she is trained, why not believe that her team became 'sick.' We know that characters on Lost have been put in SRMH for being sick, such as seeing things that aren't there. There is no sickness, it's just the way that Danielle observed it.--Bolton 18:30, 18 February 2008 (PST)
• The sickness is the loss of free will.
• In the season three episode Everyman for Himself, Ben quotes to Sawyer from Of Mice and Men about how loneliness can make a man sick. Perhaps this points to the sickness as a mental state rather than a traditional infection.
• There is no sickness, it was a way to protect Dharma employees, and keep them inside their stations, and to keep other people out making them think the people inside were sick

Post-"The Constant" theories

• The Sickness isn't a physiological illness at all, but is the collection of symptoms associated with time-transported consciousness as experienced by Desmond, Brandon, and Minkowski. The crew of Danielle's science ship all failed to find their constants--with Danielle excepted--and so they all succumbed to the effects of the time-transported consciousness shortly after shipwrecking on the Island.
  • This is strongly suggested by the 21/03/08 podcast.
  • This might account for Danielle's general spaceiness. She never really overcame the effects of time-transported consciousness.
  • Danielle's music box was her constant. This would explain her obsession with the song "La Mer" in her notes.
    • Not everyone experiences the time travel and the need for a constant. e.g. Sayid, the other Freighties.
    • She was on the island for 16 years, it took Minkowski a couple of hours (if not, days) to find his constant.
      • Minkowski didn't find his constant, he aneurysm'd, remember? It was Desmond who found his constant
  • Portions of DHARMA and the "science crew" Rousseau belonged to would probably have had exposure to EM fields (as diagnosed by Faraday), being scientists. This led them to be susceptible to the "sickness".
  • The vaccine that Minkowski was injected with is the same vaccine that was in The Swan and Kelvin and Desmond injected themselves.
  • Faraday suggested that exposure to radiation or electromagnetism was an element in creating the "side effects." Danielle, however, was pregnant when her crew shipwrecked and would have presumably avoided exposure to radiation.
• The 'sickness' that we have seen so far in Desmond, Minkowski and Faraday is in fact only 'stage one' of the condition. I believe that one of the consequences of the dislocation of the consciousness and the body is that the consciousness continues to exist after the body has died. I believe that after physical death, the consciousness of an individual affected by the 'sickness' continues to ricochet backwards and forwards through time, perhaps for the rest of eternity. This is 'stage two'. Furthermore, I believe that the Whispers are the disembodied voices of those people who have experienced the side-effects associated with arrival on the island and subsequently passed away in body alone. That is why the Whisper transcripts don't seem to make any sense: what we are hearing are the disembodied voices of long-dead people who are doomed to re-live fragmentary moments of their lives time and time again. These people are, presumably, utterly disorientated and truly 'lost'. Indeed, it is quite possible that at least some of the Whispers we have heard so far are the voices of Rousseau's dead crewmates. It was, after all, Rousseau who told us about the Whispers in the first place.
• The freighter crew and Danielle's ship both approached by water; perhaps the sickness is the first line of sea defense. The only defense is a constant or the vaccine. Desmond wasn't affected because he had too short of an exposure before administered the vaccine by Inman. Danielle was affected, and Alex was taken from her for Alex's own protection. The Island gradually healed the worst of the sickness. The Oceanics and Henry Gale were not affected because they arrived by air or a faster speeds.

Characters Who Have Succumbed to "Sickness"

All possible victims of the Sickness:

• Minkowski - following time-transported consciousness
• Desmond - again due to time-transported consciousness although he recovered when he found his constant
• David - Libby's husband
• Hurley - Previously in a mental hospital but also in a in a mental hospital in the future as revealed in his flashforward in The Beginning of the End
• The other five members of the Science expedition - Danielle Rousseau did not suffer from the sickness (related to her pregnancy?) but the other members of the expedition did