As the thymus shrinks with age, there are fewer T cells coming out of it. But the body can still maintain a stable number of T cells for most of life with the self-renew from the existing peripheral T cells, or T cells found outside of the thymus. Therefore the production is not fully stopped.
The importance of the thymus is that it produces naive T cells which can get activated by different specific antigens, expanding and becoming corresponding memory T cells. As it shrinks, the range of antigens the body can identify and deal with also shrinks. In other words, while the raw power of the T cell function is not seriously weakened, it has more difficulties in adapting to different threats. Loss of the thymus in early life can lead to a severely incapable immune system.
spam fails_task lang_mismatch pii not_appropriate hate_speech sexual_content quality toxicity humor helpfulness creativity violence