17 ms·
The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out
- insickness 6y ago"From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man's weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain."
- gumby 6y agoHG Wells?
- WhompingWindows 6y ago"the tiniest creatures God in his wisdom put upon this earth" The writing is nice but flawed. Since War of the Worlds, we have advanced tremendously and no longer need intelligent design or creation myths to explain microorganisms. Reproducible, testable science demonstrates that in the primordial oceans, self-replicating molecules which were slightly better at self-replicating produced globules of matter capable of inheritance. Small mutations over millions of years led to the tiniest organisms, not "creatures", and most microorganisms don't even interact with higher life forms. It's only after epochs of time that complex mammals arose, breathing air, and these mammalian hosts then did provide the harbor for pathogens we know today.
- shadowofneptune 6y agoHG Wells would have been well aware of this, being an athiest of a kind we'd consider close to New Athiesm nowadays.
- Vrondi 6y agoYeah, you'd almost think he was writing in the voice of a fictional character or something bizarre like that.
- junon 6y agoOr that God was maybe a writing device instead of literally referring to God.
- brazzy 6y ago> athiest of a kind we'd consider close to New Athiesm twitch It's Atheism. "A-" as a negation like in apolitical, atypical, aseptic. And "theism" meaning "belief in god", same root as theology or theocracy.
- shadowofneptune 6y agoI do not understand what you mean here.
- hinkley 6y agoThere's a concept in domestication that it's not always clear in a symbiotic relationship as to which party is in 'control' of the relationship, especially when one party gets a huge boost in reproductive rates from the other. Did humans domesticate dogs, or did dogs domesticate humans? Viruses are specialized. They won't attack aliens. Bacteria might. It's the fungi in many respects that are the masters of this planet. If we manage to destroy ourselves so badly that we take out most multicellular organisms as well, it'll be the fungi that rebuild the ecology. It'll probably be the fungi that the aliens have to worry about too.
- dehrmann 6y ago> which party is in 'control' of the relationship Any one taking care of a cat knows this well.
- toast0 6y agoIt's the toxoplasmosis in control, right?
- Verdex 6y agoThis is one of the things that I like about the expanse series. When people first start moving out to alien ecosystems, they specifically go into how alien viruses etc are probably not going to be a problem. The metaphor they use is "mining" basically. Where they're not concerned that people will get infected, but they're concerned that some organism will find out that people are full of some resource that the organism can use. And in fact they bump into some sort of algae that lives in the atmosphere that really likes the saline mixture that makes up most of the liquid in our bodies.
- elliekelly 6y agoI’ve never heard of the Expanse series but your mining comment is both terrifying and intriguing! DuckDuckGo tells me it’s both a series of novels and a Syfy TV series - I’m curious which one (or perhaps both?) you’re referring to so I can add it to my read and/or watch list.
- etiam 6y agoMaybe this could be an explanation for the most unexpected dip in COVID-19 infection around January. Does data for rhinovirus infections get collected to such an extent that it would be possible to compare curves?
- danaliv 6y agoI thought the January dip was from the end of holiday travel.
- throwaway122378 6y agoThe dip was correlated to Trump leaving office.
- thehappypm 6y agoShort answer is nobody knows. The winter spike began around late October so you can't say it had much to do with holidays really -- maybe it's weather, made worse by holiday travel, made worse by students being back in school.
- dehrmann 6y agoFlu cases are way down, so by proxy, I'd assume colds are also down unless a lot more people got flu shots this season.
- oliv__ 6y agoFlu case numbers are way down. I wouldn't be so sure that flu cases are down
- grumpwagon 6y agoAll I can think of is the Simpsons gif of Mr Burns being alive because he has so many ailments they all cancel each other out. [0] https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/951930408261881856 https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/951930408261881856
- rrmm 6y agoAh, The three stooges syndrome, whoop whoop whoop whoop!
- Techbrunch 6y agoMr. Burns is Indestructible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8
- mrkramer 6y agoAnother reason I personally would not like to get vaccinated. Nature and evolution solve all problems sooner or later.
- hef19898 6y agoThe "later" part is the problem so.
- mrkramer 6y agoI mean it is natural selection if I'm weak I will die if I'm not I will pass my genes to my kids. That's how we evolved to the level of biological machine that human body is.
- hprotagonist 6y agoand now we’re evolved enough to have brains capable of giving us a competitive advantage against diseases! unless you think that brains somehow aren’t part of our biological machine.
- NicoJuicy 6y agoHow about IVF and that it becomes almost a necessity for all their children. Or the increased necessity of glasses at a young age. It's not the beneficiaries particular brain that gave the competitive edge ;)
- Omnitaus 6y agoThis is only an issue if everyone wants or needs kids. Glasses are similarly not a big deal. I feel like you could have used better examples to argue in favor of eugenics but at the end of the day it's still eugenics? People should have access to any and all medical advancements, better to address the problem than ignore it with selective breeding
- meowface 6y ago
- guscost 6y agoAll human coronavirus diseases, including COVID-19, are colds. Always have been. This one from 1890 might have been caused by OC43: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic
- dcolkitt 6y agoThis is a pretty interesting hypothesis. Maybe there’s nothing really special about SARS type coronaviruses besides their novelty. Is it possible that all coronaviruses, including the ones that cause a common cold, have a similar morbidity profile to COVID? Very minor infection in the young or those with previous exposure, extremely deadly in the old and naive. Except we all catch a bunch of colds in childhood, so nobody has to worry about a cold wiping out nursing homes.
- guscost 6y agoI have been saying this for many years, and have been condescended to a lot (by friends, even) for saying it. We clearly don’t have the faintest understanding of the long-term dynamics of something like SARS, when all the conventional model parameters go to such extremes. And when the disease is evolving. And when people retreat inside and stop getting sun. And so on.
- timr 6y agoThere has been a lot of (IMHO unsupported) speculation that the almost complete eradication of influenza in 2020 was due to competitive inhibition from SARS-CoV2. However, data I've seen suggests that rhinovirus is still circulating at its usual rate [1]. If it's true that rhinovirus is such a potent inhibitor of SARS-CoV2, at the very least, the interplay between SARS-CoV2 and other respiratory viruses is non-trivial, and doesn't explain the complete suppression of influenza. Any simple hypothesis involving "competitive inhibition" is likely to be wrong. The fact that rhinovirus continues to circulate so widely should also make people at least question the dominant narrative concerning masks and respiratory viruses. But I digress... [1] https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivity/organism/main https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivi...
- WhompingWindows 6y agoYou haven't mentioned social behavioral change in your speculation about the decimated 2020-2021 flu season. I'd wager that has a very large part in why the flu hasn't spread: everyone is socially distanced, remote, masked, extra hygienic, and extra aware of illness.
- timr 6y agoI didn't mention it because it's not addressed by this article, which is specifically about competitive inhibition. That said, if you're going to claim that all of these things we have done have eliminated the flu, you should take at least a few moments to reflect on the fact that they have done ~nothing to rhinovirus.
- codeulike 6y agoFlu has an R0 of about 1.3, Rhinovirus has an R0 of around 2.7, and Covid is estimated to have an R0 of 2.7 or higher. So it makes sense that the measures we have taken have stopped the flu but not stopped covid or rhinovirus. Sources: https://www.qps.com/2020/10/05/covid-19-versus-the-seasonal-flu-facts-and-figures/ https://www.qps.com/2020/10/05/covid-19-versus-the-seasonal-... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468042718300071 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246804271... https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1891 https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1891
- klebe 6y agoadults average 2-4 colds per year; kids even more so (6-8) Think about all the natural immunity we squandered by locking everyone down.....not only did we miss out on herd immunity, but now it seems that even the common cold would've acted as a defense system experts are to be doubted. always. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold
- trhway 6y ago>all the natural immunity we squandered by locking everyone down especially when it comes to children. It has already been established that the too sanitized modern existence leads to increase of allergies/autoimmunes/etc. Now the lockdowns and masks (which judging by the numbers haven't so far helped much with Covid) denied to children the early immune system "cross-pollination" of kinder-gardens/schools/etc. , thus one can expect even more immune system related issues down the road. >experts are to be doubted. always different experts were saying different things (like those epidemiologists saying that blocking people from beach is meaningless to say the least - i mean it is obvious even for non-experts, yet politicians still did it in order to "Do Something"). The key here is the choice of an expert to listen to, the choice made by the politicians and the populace scared by them.
- totalZero 6y ago> It has already been established that the too sanitized modern existence leads to increase of allergies/autoimmunes/etc. This is called the Hygiene Hypothesis and it has not been established in the sense of having been empirically demonstrated and widely confirmed. It's still a theory with proponents and critics.
- klebe 6y agoHmm yes very good distinction to make. Certainly heard plenty of arguments on both sides and I'm pretty split. I think this is separate, though - we're talking about an individual illness (common cold) driving out another individual illness (covid-19). Not so much to do with general hygiene than it is to do with specific bio-interactions between viruses.
- grapecookie 6y agoWe've know this since last may.
- jimmaswell 6y agoThen why weren't we mass producing pills of cold viruses for people to take?
- Omnitaus 6y agoAfter the cold runs its course COVID can infect the cell again, it still hangs around until it gets the opening
- cdrini 6y agoThis seems unlikely to scale out of the lab. The experiment used a "replica of the lining of our airways, made out of the same types of cells, and infected it with Sars-CoV-2 and rhinovirus". Although rhinoviruses primarily target receptors found in the airway, Sars-Cov-2 targets the ACE2 receptor, which is found in just about every organ in your body. If the airway cells were "occupied" by rhinoviruses, then Sars-Cov-2 could just travel to the lungs and infect the cells there. Or to the cells of your olfactory system, and cause loss of smell. Or to your stomach. Although it is interesting that these viruses compete when targeting the same cells, using rhinoviruses to prevent Sars-Cov-2 seems very unlikely in the real world.
- TheBlight 6y agoAre you a doctor or biologist?
- Causality1 6y agoWhy is so much in this article contradictory? It opens by saying viruses allow or inhibit other viruses by way of differing methods of entering cells but only a few paragraphs later says the difference is entirely due to triggering an immune response. Further experiments showed rhinovirus was triggering an immune response inside the infected cells, which blocked the ability of Sars-CoV-2 to make copies of itself. What? What defenses do cells have after already being infected with viral RNA? "We could see surges in flu. We could see surges in other respiratory viruses and other respiratory pathogens," she said, Why? Why does covid mean we're going to see unusual winter surges in non-covid diseases?
- hfktk4nrn 6y agoCells have ways to detect non-self RNA and react to it, like stopping protein expression and releasing alarm chemicals to call in immune system cells. Viruses of course try to block these cell defenses. This is actually a big problem for mRNA vaccines, which are also foreign RNAs, and to overcome it for example Pfizer/Moderna use unnatural RNA bases, among other things, to bypass these detection mechanisms. It's not exactly clear how cells can distinguish self/non-self RNA, some markers are known, like different RNA cappings, different letter frequencies, some chemical modifications.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoI always wondered why religious pilgrimages and retreats where so common back in the history. The motivation is often some sort of healing. Sunshine, Mountain or Forest air is described in literature as things to seek when sick. Just curious if for example molds found in forest air, might play a similar function. Or perhaps being in close contact being exposed to bacteria from other people. Or if viruses can swap genetic code, is there some pathway through which our immune system can import antibodies or genetic information from other people we are in contact with through pheromones to boost its own defences. Perhaps its the drinking of water from new sources along the journey that has benefits. Why does fiji water taste so much better than other waters.
- hinkley 6y agoExposure to forests improves mood. Mood affects outcomes. It's a question of whether the exertion of going somewhere healthier is great enough to kill you (and if anyone attributes your death to the attempt, which I don't think we always did). Also post-industrial Europe and especially London had awful, awful air quality. I'll bet if you look at the 'seasons' for going to Bath, for instance, that they overlapped with the worst weather for creating smog in London.
- sktrdie 6y agoYeah but once you're better, covid is free to infect you.
- postalrat 6y agoThen just make sure you are infected with both.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 6y agoI wonder if we will find out, as time goes on and the studies are finished, that parents of school-age children were significantly less likely to come down with severe COVID.
- marsrover 6y agoIt's an interesting thought. It is true that the further one is from being around school-aged children (age wise), the more likely they are to die.
- swader999 6y agoThis seems to support easing the lockdown approach once vaccines are widely deployed.
- autokad 6y agoor even if the lockdown approach is good at all, given how well it has not worked.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoSo can various other strains of coronaviruses, a lot of which are much less harmful to us. In fact, smallpox was eradicated by using another species of the virus. The main reason smallpox was eradicated was because the vaccine itself was infectious. Unfortunately, that is terrible for business. So, extreme precaution is taken by pharmaceuticals to make sure that naturally occurring variants will never be a thing.
- calltrak 6y agohttps://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png https://picc.io/tq2sFHU.png
- dragonwriter 6y agoThere are many different viruses that cause the “common cold”, including various coronaviruses; this is specifically about some rhinoviruses.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kurthr 6y agoAdd me to the list of people who think this sort of reporting is dangerous to the public health. It's well known that a primed immune system (in non-immunocompromised individuals) will combat viral infections more readily. The innate immune system (as opposed to the adaptive genetically diverse B/T-Cell antibody system) is a Thing and this is why people were discussing giving standard vaccines (including Flu, BCG, and others) before there were COVID specific vaccines. Saying that the "common cold" (which isn't a single virus, but a set of conditions), can "boot out" COV2 is silly gibberish and completely unsupported by evidence. Furthermore infecting people with unknown "colds" could in fact infecting them with (or covering up) "pre-symptomatic" COVID. Sorry, but you need to bring the actual Bigfoot/Nessi in for people to believe outrageous claims at this point. Wearing "protective amulets" against them is more likely to cause problems that promote solutions.
- jdlyga 6y agoRhino Virus
- spinny 6y agowell guess we are all f'ed anyway ... many countries are reporting record low numbers for the common cold ... because covid. in many places the common cold is the new covid, it seems. and my fifi's got massively offended by the usage of the word "trump". my inner ninja karen is about to pull the facemask and do a reeeeeeeeeee mortal kombat finish move
- boldpandabear 6y agoThere is no virus that causes the common cold, so this is just more nonsense speculation. Do yourself and your lineage a favor and research Dr Hamer's Five Biological Laws. Saying virus particles are the cause of illnesss is like saying ashes are the cause of fire. Both are at the scene of the crime, and neither are at fault.
- twirlock 6y agoThere's this type of pathogen called a virus, and some kinds of viruses can cause a respiratory condition known as a cold.
- perilunar 6y agoThis reminded me of Julius Wagner-Jauregg using malaria-induced fever to cure syphilis, though the mechanism appears to be different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_malaria#Malariotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_malaria#Malariother...
- hda111 6y agoDoes this mean that masks and distance can be harmful because this also reduces rhinovirus spread?