But it’s not some level of “severity”. There are different ways it can present, but it’s not a disease, so there isn’t a progression through the body, or an infection that expands, or any other normal measure of the “severity” of a disease. It’s not something attacking the body and it’s not a progressive genetic disease like muscular dystrophy or something. It’s just a different way of existing. Those differences can cause conflict with people who don’t have those differences. There can be not learning the same way as other people, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn, just that our schools aren’t set up to teach them. There can be difficulty in motor control or difficult emulating certain speech patterns, but again, not because of something attacking the person either another organism or the immune system or something, they just can’t do those things the same way as the majority of people do them.

And yes, since it’s a spectrum disorder, it can manifest in many different ways, but the idea of “high-” or “low-” “functioning” is not valid either and why that’s been removed from medical texts. That was a holdover from Asperger’s research to determine which children to keep and which to murder depending on if they could do the slave labor that the Nazi’s wanted then to do.

The current classifications are based on how much support a person would need to appear normal in society. Not if they will or won’t survive like with a disease. Only, can they learn and work on capitalism like a neurotypical person and if not, how much money will it take to either help them work or hide them away somewhere.