3 ms·

> Give it a few years without exposure > we have to keep our immunity active to stay healthy, and this happens by getting sick times to times Is going to the

> Give it a few years without exposure > we have to keep our immunity active to stay healthy, and this happens by getting sick times to times Is going to the grocery store, out to dinner, having friends/family over not enough exposure? Genuinely curious about the science if you need to be around kids (directly or indirectly via co-workers) to build or maintain a "strong immune system". If anything I'd expect the lack of activity to cause your immune system to be hyper-aware and you'd get less sick. Trade-off is allergies and autoimmune disease.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
>If anything I'd expect the lack of activity to cause your immune system to be hyper-aware and you'd get less sick That's not really how it works afaik. The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows. If you spend 3 years outside society and you come back, your system will be 3 years behind on disease evolution. When you finally do get exposed, you'll have a much stronger immune response because it's an unknown threat. Compare this to a immune system that has also never seen the latest variant, but has seen the one before -- it'll be much more effective at recognizing and fighting the threat early, and the person might not even notice they were exposed.
- ericmay 4y ago
  > The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows. Is that true? I'm not sure. Another question is what does it mean to be "known". I'd get a cold or a flu every year. At what point has the virus mutated sufficiently so that I don't have an effective immune response? This is also a great point to get vaccines. Best of both worlds.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    >At what point has the virus mutated sufficiently so that I don't have an effective immune response? I don't think anybody really knows, this is an active area of research. What is known is that, the more similar a virus is to something you already had, the more likely your immune system is to be able to respond quickly enough that you don't show any symptoms and don't even realize you were exposed. And if you do show symptoms, it'll be more likely that they will be much milder than for somebody who wasn't exposed previously to something similar.
tuyiown 4y ago
I mention the kid only because it was the the main change to sickness exposure. I suspect public transport and office work would have been enough. Given what we could read about covid, exposure is a combination of length and probability of sharing air with sick people. Public transport is a short exposure with many people, evening with friend, long exposure, but less people. Kid: well for all the sickness they have bad immunity for, and the long length of exposure, you have good chances ti get something that you never had or have no immunity for anymore. My experience is that I now use public transport every day and I have two kids, I get sick time to times, but much less than a few years ago.

TremendousJudge 4y ago

>If anything I'd expect the lack of activity to cause your immune system to be hyper-aware and you'd get less sick That's not really how it works afaik. The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows. If you spend 3 years outside society and you come back, your system will be 3 years behind on disease evolution. When you finally do get exposed, you'll have a much stronger immune response because it's an unknown threat. Compare this to a immune system that has also never seen the latest variant, but has seen the one before -- it'll be much more effective at recognizing and fighting the threat early, and the person might not even notice they were exposed.

ericmay 4y ago
> The immune system can only respond quickly and effectively to the things it knows. Is that true? I'm not sure. Another question is what does it mean to be "known". I'd get a cold or a flu every year. At what point has the virus mutated sufficiently so that I don't have an effective immune response? This is also a great point to get vaccines. Best of both worlds.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  >At what point has the virus mutated sufficiently so that I don't have an effective immune response? I don't think anybody really knows, this is an active area of research. What is known is that, the more similar a virus is to something you already had, the more likely your immune system is to be able to respond quickly enough that you don't show any symptoms and don't even realize you were exposed. And if you do show symptoms, it'll be more likely that they will be much milder than for somebody who wasn't exposed previously to something similar.

tuyiown 4y ago

I mention the kid only because it was the the main change to sickness exposure. I suspect public transport and office work would have been enough. Given what we could read about covid, exposure is a combination of length and probability of sharing air with sick people. Public transport is a short exposure with many people, evening with friend, long exposure, but less people. Kid: well for all the sickness they have bad immunity for, and the long length of exposure, you have good chances ti get something that you never had or have no immunity for anymore. My experience is that I now use public transport every day and I have two kids, I get sick time to times, but much less than a few years ago.