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That sounds like an exaggeration. There are only on the order of 10^13 cells in the entire human body.
by landryraccoon 7y ago
That sounds like an exaggeration. There are only on the order of 10^13 cells in the entire human body.
- Enginerrrd 7y agoYeah, ok... but not much of an exaggeration. To use HIV as an example, every infected T cell releases ~50,000 virions when it bursts. So that's ~10^4 times the number of infected cells. So during an infection only 10^9 of your 10^13 cells would need to be infected to get up into the 10^13 range. That's obviously a TINY fraction at 10^9/10^13 = 10^-4. So saying there's trillions of viruses in your body during a major infection like COVID is hardly an exaggeration. 10^15 may or may not be though, in fairness. Compare that to the amount of virus you'd be exposed to in the air though in a COVID ward and its just totally negligible. Unless you're getting injected with virions, it's just not relevant to the progression of your infection when you're already a week into it. I'd be shocked if you could daily environmental viral loads above 10^6. So fine I'll revise it to 6-9 orders of magnitude. The point stands though, it's just not relevant to your immune system compared to the virus it has to deal with from your own cells.