4 ms·
True, but even a large number of droplets will not result in "a ton" of virus, if by "a ton" we mean "similar to what will result if you get sick". A sick pers
by rossdavidh 4y ago
True, but even a large number of droplets will not result in "a ton" of virus, if by "a ton" we mean "similar to what will result if you get sick". A sick person breathes out a lungful with every breath, so obviously a sick person contains far, far more copies of the virus than that.
Put it another way. If your immune system recognizes the virus already, it matters little whether you get one droplet or a thousand, it will beat it because it has a several-day head start in doing so.
If, on the other hand, your immune system does not already recognize it, then it will not begin to see the problem, and thus will not begin to react, until it has replicated up to a large amount, where "large" is some amount greater than either one droplet or one thousand will give you. So, the consequences of getting exposed to 1/2 or 1/10 of the number of copies of the virus, is basically nil, because an exponential rise will be needed in either case to get up to the level where your immune system notices a problem.
Either your immune system already recognizes the virus as a problem, or it doesn't. I neither case does the dose matter, so long as the dose is big enough to start the process. And that probably doesn't take much.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoThis isn't true. Even a robust immune system cannot prevent disease at large enough doses of virus because the immune system takes time to execute at any level of robustness. Similarly, a small enough dose will not necessarily cause disease, because the immune system can recognize the virus and eliminate it before it can replicate significantly. This is actually a time-based race: the speed of which the immune system can react vs the speed in which the virus can replicate in the body.