3 ms·

> And if unlucky, you can greatly affect the number of times you get infected through precautions. not to mention that even if you do get sick it's a continuum

> And if unlucky, you can greatly affect the number of times you get infected through precautions. not to mention that even if you do get sick it's a continuum of sickness. you can get a little sick by getting a little bit of the virus and having an immune system that can handle that with ease. you can have the same immune system but spent too much time with your SO that got covid and was giving you a huge viral load of it that your immune system couldn't handle. masking up when out using an n95 is a layer that lets a little bit in if you are around someone sick. people seem to think "oh it's a crapshoot if i get bad covid or not" no it's a confluence of reasons that you could get sicker than you would have otherwise. masking, off hours shopping, delivery, working from home, not going to really crowded places. that's all stuff you can do even if you don't plan on getting updated vaccines which you should.

abracadaniel 4y ago
This is something that I never thought about before, and is unfortunately glossed over too often. We’re exposed to things all the time, but only get sick when the exposure is large enough to sufficiently overwhelm our innate immune system. The degree to which it is overwhelmed correlates strongly the the severity of the subsequent illness. Reducing exposure time, or exposure volume via air dilution or filtration can make a massive difference.
nradov 4y ago
There is no reliable data to support your claim of a continuum of sickness based on the inoculum dose. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab903 https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab903
- graeme 4y ago
  I’m not sure the study’s conclusion follows from its data. We lack data on humans because we can’t study infectious dose directly. But they cite multiple animals studies with worse symptoms following higher doses I didn’t spot this notable macaque study in their review, which found fever occurred only at higher infectious doses https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009865 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
- weaksauce 4y ago
  you certainly must be kidding right? there might be a dearth of data on that because of the nature of ethics/how hard that is to test but if you are aware of the basic human immune system response to pathogens you would know that it's a few equations of things at a basic level. virus particles are not smart... they infect cells and make more virus particles they don't have a mechanism that says ok slow down we infected enough to make the host sick... they just infect non-infected cells that are available to infect. for a thought experiment even if you took the replication aspect out of it the more virus cells in your body infecting more cells in your body it would make you sicker. counting in the fact that every infected cell will create more virus particles and a stronger first dose of virus particles that creates those factories would make you sicker all other things equal. at a basic level you have some differential equations going: the B cells make the antibodies that kill the free virus particles. the T cells kill infected cells and inform the B cells to make specific antibodies. just because this data is hard to obtain from empirical means doesn't mean that the basics of biology are that divergent from reality.

abracadaniel 4y ago

This is something that I never thought about before, and is unfortunately glossed over too often. We’re exposed to things all the time, but only get sick when the exposure is large enough to sufficiently overwhelm our innate immune system. The degree to which it is overwhelmed correlates strongly the the severity of the subsequent illness. Reducing exposure time, or exposure volume via air dilution or filtration can make a massive difference.

nradov 4y ago

There is no reliable data to support your claim of a continuum of sickness based on the inoculum dose. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab903 https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab903

graeme 4y ago
I’m not sure the study’s conclusion follows from its data. We lack data on humans because we can’t study infectious dose directly. But they cite multiple animals studies with worse symptoms following higher doses I didn’t spot this notable macaque study in their review, which found fever occurred only at higher infectious doses https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009865 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
weaksauce 4y ago
you certainly must be kidding right? there might be a dearth of data on that because of the nature of ethics/how hard that is to test but if you are aware of the basic human immune system response to pathogens you would know that it's a few equations of things at a basic level. virus particles are not smart... they infect cells and make more virus particles they don't have a mechanism that says ok slow down we infected enough to make the host sick... they just infect non-infected cells that are available to infect. for a thought experiment even if you took the replication aspect out of it the more virus cells in your body infecting more cells in your body it would make you sicker. counting in the fact that every infected cell will create more virus particles and a stronger first dose of virus particles that creates those factories would make you sicker all other things equal. at a basic level you have some differential equations going: the B cells make the antibodies that kill the free virus particles. the T cells kill infected cells and inform the B cells to make specific antibodies. just because this data is hard to obtain from empirical means doesn't mean that the basics of biology are that divergent from reality.