5 ms·

We actually need germs go to train and exercise our immune systems. Look up the hygiene hypothesis.

by mrfusion 4y ago

MengerSponge 4y ago
https://xkcd.com/2557/ https://xkcd.com/2557/
- samatman 4y ago
  Vaccination is available for a minuscule subset of infectious diseases. The immune system can't function against viruses it's never encountered, and the health of the immune system does, in fact, rely on exposure. No need to start licking doorknobs or whatever, but people who have isolated themselves in a comprehensive way from the common human biosphere should expect to get sick when they decide to rejoin humanity. This will get worse the longer it's put off. I'm nonjudgemental about the choices people are making to mitigate risk in their lives, but declining immune system health is a real risk of extended isolation which should be factored into the decision-making process.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    It's not as though having a cold makes you more likely to defeat the monkeypox. They are separate diseases with separate responses. So yes, I'm going to have a cold the next time I get exposed to someone with a cold, but I was going to do that anyways.
    - hammock 4y ago
      You may be interested to learn there is a lot of evidence that suggests prior coronavirus and even rhinovirus infections boost the immune system against SARS-CoV-2
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        That would have lead to an opposite number of deaths, though wouldn't it? If the idea is that isolation leads to us being able to be less able to fight COVID then the earliest results should have been the least dangerous. Now this is complicated by strains and vaccines, but as the initial year went on the death rate should have been increasing. I have no idea if this was the case or not, do you?
    - samatman 4y ago
      Most viruses which cause human illness aren't mediagenic breakthrough infections from a different species, they are ambient in the human biome with waves of greater or lesser infection. Vaccination and water purification have drastically reduced some of the worst of these, which is wonderful. Hundreds remain. Two things happen when someone is isolated from that ambient biome: they stop producing as many antibodies and t-cells, and they miss opportunities to develop immune response to new mutations as they arise. In the worst case someone can be hit with a variant of, say, influenza, with an already depressed immune system facing more immune-evading mutations than they would otherwise see in a novel strain. None of this is controversial.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        So the isolationist wouldn't have gotten sick from the first flu bu they would be sick by the second? That's still a total of one illness, or if the second is more immune evading, the non-isolated person exposed to both could be made sick by both, no? Is the assumption the isolationist will get more sick?
        samatman 4y ago
        There's an enormous amount of ceteris paribus in any such discussion. The isolated (isolationist has an implication of ideology which I don't care to impute) person can expect to get sicker for a given amount of exposure. Given a (spherical, frictionless) Person of Ordinary Health, they will have hundreds or thousands of distinct exposures in a year and get sick once or twice. I could ramble about my own exposure to influenza, its relation to extended stays in the tropics, and so on, but this discussion doesn't need to be carried on the strength of anecdote. The strategy should be to avoid severe outcomes. Long Influenza is a real thing and tends to follow severe infection, people who end up in the hospital with flu often have problems for years afterward, or the rest of their lives. Vaccination (ceteris paribus again!) is superior to infection and raises the odds of transcribing new mutations to the immune system without ever getting sick. But there isn't always a vaccine, influenza in particular is notoriously skilled at vaccine evasion, and the immune system has a sweet spot in terms of antibody and t cell concentration which is kept in homeostatis by exposure and only exposure. that's how vaccines work, it's controlled exposure, nothing more. Edit to add: so if you're someone who has isolated yourself from the rest of humanity's biome for a few years, I'm sure you had your reasons and I don't question them. It's probably not a lifetime's worth of strategy, and when it comes time to get back into it, be smart about it. Maybe don't go straight to New York and ride the subway for eight hours without a mask. You wouldn't go back to the gym after a year and try and squat what you were pushing then, it would snap your spine. Same thing with rebooting the immune system. Slow and steady, and realizing that a mild infection (could be covid, rhinvirus, influenza, for our purposes this doesn't matter) is inevitable and doesn't constitute moral failure.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    > This will get worse the longer it's put off. Citation needed. In what way is it worse?
- beiller 4y ago
  If only viruses were a simple catch the virus -> get the illness relationship. See Mononucleosis, chicken pox, and I'm sure there are many more examples. As much as I love XKCD this seems to gloss over a lot.
lima 4y ago
> exercise our immune systems This is a widely held but incorrect belief. The immune system does not work like a muscle - it doesn't atrophy when unused and it doesn't become stronger from repeated challenge. The immune hypothesis is about specific kinds of pathogens - parasites and bacterial microbiota[1] that humans co-evolved with and have specific defenses against (such as IgE antibodies). The exact mechanism(s) have yet to be determined but it's clear that lack of exposure during early childhood increases risk of autoimmunity. Other than that, getting exposed to a larger variety of pathogens - especially viruses - just means you get sick more frequently[2]. The frequency of exposure to modern human viruses are a relatively new occurrence and there's no evidence that it benefits health - quite to the contrary, viruses are implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases such as ME/CFS or MS. [1]: https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5267 https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5267 [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5320962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5320962/
twoWhlsGud 4y ago
Or better yet look up measles https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03324-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03324-7

We actually need germs go to train and exercise our immune systems. Look up the hygiene hypothesis.

MengerSponge 4y ago

https://xkcd.com/2557/ https://xkcd.com/2557/

samatman 4y ago
Vaccination is available for a minuscule subset of infectious diseases. The immune system can't function against viruses it's never encountered, and the health of the immune system does, in fact, rely on exposure. No need to start licking doorknobs or whatever, but people who have isolated themselves in a comprehensive way from the common human biosphere should expect to get sick when they decide to rejoin humanity. This will get worse the longer it's put off. I'm nonjudgemental about the choices people are making to mitigate risk in their lives, but declining immune system health is a real risk of extended isolation which should be factored into the decision-making process.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  It's not as though having a cold makes you more likely to defeat the monkeypox. They are separate diseases with separate responses. So yes, I'm going to have a cold the next time I get exposed to someone with a cold, but I was going to do that anyways.
  - hammock 4y ago
    You may be interested to learn there is a lot of evidence that suggests prior coronavirus and even rhinovirus infections boost the immune system against SARS-CoV-2
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      That would have lead to an opposite number of deaths, though wouldn't it? If the idea is that isolation leads to us being able to be less able to fight COVID then the earliest results should have been the least dangerous. Now this is complicated by strains and vaccines, but as the initial year went on the death rate should have been increasing. I have no idea if this was the case or not, do you?
  - samatman 4y ago
    Most viruses which cause human illness aren't mediagenic breakthrough infections from a different species, they are ambient in the human biome with waves of greater or lesser infection. Vaccination and water purification have drastically reduced some of the worst of these, which is wonderful. Hundreds remain. Two things happen when someone is isolated from that ambient biome: they stop producing as many antibodies and t-cells, and they miss opportunities to develop immune response to new mutations as they arise. In the worst case someone can be hit with a variant of, say, influenza, with an already depressed immune system facing more immune-evading mutations than they would otherwise see in a novel strain. None of this is controversial.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      So the isolationist wouldn't have gotten sick from the first flu bu they would be sick by the second? That's still a total of one illness, or if the second is more immune evading, the non-isolated person exposed to both could be made sick by both, no? Is the assumption the isolationist will get more sick?
      - samatman 4y ago
        There's an enormous amount of ceteris paribus in any such discussion. The isolated (isolationist has an implication of ideology which I don't care to impute) person can expect to get sicker for a given amount of exposure. Given a (spherical, frictionless) Person of Ordinary Health, they will have hundreds or thousands of distinct exposures in a year and get sick once or twice. I could ramble about my own exposure to influenza, its relation to extended stays in the tropics, and so on, but this discussion doesn't need to be carried on the strength of anecdote. The strategy should be to avoid severe outcomes. Long Influenza is a real thing and tends to follow severe infection, people who end up in the hospital with flu often have problems for years afterward, or the rest of their lives. Vaccination (ceteris paribus again!) is superior to infection and raises the odds of transcribing new mutations to the immune system without ever getting sick. But there isn't always a vaccine, influenza in particular is notoriously skilled at vaccine evasion, and the immune system has a sweet spot in terms of antibody and t cell concentration which is kept in homeostatis by exposure and only exposure. that's how vaccines work, it's controlled exposure, nothing more. Edit to add: so if you're someone who has isolated yourself from the rest of humanity's biome for a few years, I'm sure you had your reasons and I don't question them. It's probably not a lifetime's worth of strategy, and when it comes time to get back into it, be smart about it. Maybe don't go straight to New York and ride the subway for eight hours without a mask. You wouldn't go back to the gym after a year and try and squat what you were pushing then, it would snap your spine. Same thing with rebooting the immune system. Slow and steady, and realizing that a mild infection (could be covid, rhinvirus, influenza, for our purposes this doesn't matter) is inevitable and doesn't constitute moral failure.
- kadoban 4y ago
  > This will get worse the longer it's put off. Citation needed. In what way is it worse?
beiller 4y ago
If only viruses were a simple catch the virus -> get the illness relationship. See Mononucleosis, chicken pox, and I'm sure there are many more examples. As much as I love XKCD this seems to gloss over a lot.

lima 4y ago

> exercise our immune systems This is a widely held but incorrect belief. The immune system does not work like a muscle - it doesn't atrophy when unused and it doesn't become stronger from repeated challenge. The immune hypothesis is about specific kinds of pathogens - parasites and bacterial microbiota[1] that humans co-evolved with and have specific defenses against (such as IgE antibodies). The exact mechanism(s) have yet to be determined but it's clear that lack of exposure during early childhood increases risk of autoimmunity. Other than that, getting exposed to a larger variety of pathogens - especially viruses - just means you get sick more frequently[2]. The frequency of exposure to modern human viruses are a relatively new occurrence and there's no evidence that it benefits health - quite to the contrary, viruses are implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases such as ME/CFS or MS. [1]: https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5267 https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5267 [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5320962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5320962/

twoWhlsGud 4y ago

Or better yet look up measles https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03324-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03324-7