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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

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.

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.