4 ms·

It sounds gross. But: i) if we all drove cars, the result would also be bad ii) I wonder if there are benefits from this (stronger herd immunity)

by noja 4y ago

starkd 4y ago
You might also wonder how this applies to supposed good bacteria, and the transfer if bacteria across people. Much like the gut microbiome, social situations might be essential. After all, people have been gathering in close quarters for a variety of reasons for millenia.
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  Whilst in wondering mood, think about behaviour modifying organisms who want and alter host social behaviour so that they spread more. E.g. toxoplasmosis There's been some research done on whether the flu is an STD making people more...sociable. Perhaps asymptomatic COVID infections encourage people to mingle more? Or maybe other actual STDs do? The existing science is weak, troublesome (it's very hard to research ethically) and few but I love the idea of it.
  - genewitch 4y ago
    I cannot remember if it was covid or influenza (h5n1?) where in the initial 3 days after infection it "makes" one feel like they want to be more social - more social energy or something - so that when the contagiousness increases right before the bedridden part more people get infected. Apologies, since i read a lot of studies and only remember to save a few, and even so i have no way to catalog/tag/review the studies i have read. I just know i read it in the last 2 years so it could have been SARS-NCoV-2 or flu.
graeme 4y ago
Herd immunity through infection has never worked. It's incoherent even as a concept: to prevent infections, get infected? There are a few diseases better to get as a kid than as an adult, but we mostly have vaccines for those now. And respiratory viruses aren't included in the category of those we need exposure to for immune system development. >In 2003 Graham Rook proposed the "old friends hypothesis" which has been described as a more rational explanation for the link between microbial exposure and inflammatory disorders.[20] The hypothesis states that the vital microbial exposures are not colds, influenza, measles and other common childhood infections which have evolved relatively recently over the last 10,000 years, but rather the microbes already present during mammalian and human evolution, that could persist in small hunter-gatherer groups as microbiota, tolerated latent infections, or carrier states. He proposed that coevolution with these species has resulted in their gaining a role in immune system development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
- ars 4y ago
  > It's incoherent even as a concept: to prevent infections, get infected? What's confusing? Get infected once, avoid tens of infections. If your immune system "forgets" the immunity after 6 months (which is the case for COVID), then every 4 months get exposed, you won't get actively sick since you still have some immunity, and you'll keep your immunity high.
  - seadan83 4y ago
    Being exposed every 4 months is not quite herd immunity. Herd immunity is essentially: because some 95% of people are immune to smallpox, if there is an outbreak, it will not find any new hosts and would die out. That is very different from "get a booster (or re-infected) every X months to keep immune levels high". In other words, the rapid decay of individual immunity causes for there to be a loss in herd immunity (or herd immunity never achieved at all due to decay in immunity). From a contra-positive point of view, if there were herd immunity, then you would not be able to get re-infected every 4 months because there would be no carriers of the virus to infect you. I think the bottom line is that 'herd immunity' is only a concept if immunity is durable and long lasting. Otherwise that herd immunity decays too quickly and you wind up in a cycle where everyone gets infected, the infection levels drops off, that immunity wears off, rinse-wash repeat. Anecdotally, I was on a train recently and was talking to my neighbors where an elderly woman said casually that the 3rd time being infected she was in the hospital for only 7 days that time. The implication being that this part of the population could land in the hospital repeatedly every 4-6 months. I would wager that someone who is 65 to around 70 years old will survive covid related pneumonia only so many times before they don't. I think this speaks to how Covid is pretty vicious. And all that is to say that 'natural' herd immunity is not our ticket out of this problem (just based on the math). There may be no good tickets out of this short of everyone vaccinating every 6 months and also reducing transmission rates (eg: early detection and quarantining/masking to avoid infecting others, and reducing your own risk of infection via distancing/masking).
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > What's confusing? Get infected once, avoid tens of infections. If your immune system "forgets" the immunity after 6 months (which is the case for COVID), then every 4 months get exposed, you won't get actively sick since you still have some immunity Another problem with this concept (at least for things like COVID) is that every time the virus is passed on it has a chance to mutate into something your immune system is unprepared for. Maybe you catch it and don't feel sick, or are only briefly/mildly sick, but you can still play host to it long enough for it to mutate and get passed to someone else. The more it moves from host to host the better it gets at surviving and defeating immune systems. Entire populations passing a virus back and forth at a high rate for long periods of time seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

It sounds gross. But: i) if we all drove cars, the result would also be bad ii) I wonder if there are benefits from this (stronger herd immunity)

by noja 4y ago

It sounds gross. But: i) if we all drove cars, the result would also be bad ii) I wonder if there are benefits from this (stronger herd immunity)

starkd 4y ago

You might also wonder how this applies to supposed good bacteria, and the transfer if bacteria across people. Much like the gut microbiome, social situations might be essential. After all, people have been gathering in close quarters for a variety of reasons for millenia.

thinkingemote 4y ago
Whilst in wondering mood, think about behaviour modifying organisms who want and alter host social behaviour so that they spread more. E.g. toxoplasmosis There's been some research done on whether the flu is an STD making people more...sociable. Perhaps asymptomatic COVID infections encourage people to mingle more? Or maybe other actual STDs do? The existing science is weak, troublesome (it's very hard to research ethically) and few but I love the idea of it.
- genewitch 4y ago
  I cannot remember if it was covid or influenza (h5n1?) where in the initial 3 days after infection it "makes" one feel like they want to be more social - more social energy or something - so that when the contagiousness increases right before the bedridden part more people get infected. Apologies, since i read a lot of studies and only remember to save a few, and even so i have no way to catalog/tag/review the studies i have read. I just know i read it in the last 2 years so it could have been SARS-NCoV-2 or flu.

graeme 4y ago

Herd immunity through infection has never worked. It's incoherent even as a concept: to prevent infections, get infected? There are a few diseases better to get as a kid than as an adult, but we mostly have vaccines for those now. And respiratory viruses aren't included in the category of those we need exposure to for immune system development. >In 2003 Graham Rook proposed the "old friends hypothesis" which has been described as a more rational explanation for the link between microbial exposure and inflammatory disorders.[20] The hypothesis states that the vital microbial exposures are not colds, influenza, measles and other common childhood infections which have evolved relatively recently over the last 10,000 years, but rather the microbes already present during mammalian and human evolution, that could persist in small hunter-gatherer groups as microbiota, tolerated latent infections, or carrier states. He proposed that coevolution with these species has resulted in their gaining a role in immune system development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

ars 4y ago
> It's incoherent even as a concept: to prevent infections, get infected? What's confusing? Get infected once, avoid tens of infections. If your immune system "forgets" the immunity after 6 months (which is the case for COVID), then every 4 months get exposed, you won't get actively sick since you still have some immunity, and you'll keep your immunity high.
- seadan83 4y ago
  Being exposed every 4 months is not quite herd immunity. Herd immunity is essentially: because some 95% of people are immune to smallpox, if there is an outbreak, it will not find any new hosts and would die out. That is very different from "get a booster (or re-infected) every X months to keep immune levels high". In other words, the rapid decay of individual immunity causes for there to be a loss in herd immunity (or herd immunity never achieved at all due to decay in immunity). From a contra-positive point of view, if there were herd immunity, then you would not be able to get re-infected every 4 months because there would be no carriers of the virus to infect you. I think the bottom line is that 'herd immunity' is only a concept if immunity is durable and long lasting. Otherwise that herd immunity decays too quickly and you wind up in a cycle where everyone gets infected, the infection levels drops off, that immunity wears off, rinse-wash repeat. Anecdotally, I was on a train recently and was talking to my neighbors where an elderly woman said casually that the 3rd time being infected she was in the hospital for only 7 days that time. The implication being that this part of the population could land in the hospital repeatedly every 4-6 months. I would wager that someone who is 65 to around 70 years old will survive covid related pneumonia only so many times before they don't. I think this speaks to how Covid is pretty vicious. And all that is to say that 'natural' herd immunity is not our ticket out of this problem (just based on the math). There may be no good tickets out of this short of everyone vaccinating every 6 months and also reducing transmission rates (eg: early detection and quarantining/masking to avoid infecting others, and reducing your own risk of infection via distancing/masking).
- autoexec 4y ago
  > What's confusing? Get infected once, avoid tens of infections. If your immune system "forgets" the immunity after 6 months (which is the case for COVID), then every 4 months get exposed, you won't get actively sick since you still have some immunity Another problem with this concept (at least for things like COVID) is that every time the virus is passed on it has a chance to mutate into something your immune system is unprepared for. Maybe you catch it and don't feel sick, or are only briefly/mildly sick, but you can still play host to it long enough for it to mutate and get passed to someone else. The more it moves from host to host the better it gets at surviving and defeating immune systems. Entire populations passing a virus back and forth at a high rate for long periods of time seems like a disaster waiting to happen.