3 ms·
Can someone clarify the concept of "infectious dose"? My layman's understanding is that even one virion can potentially infect someone. It's just that the odd
by CoastalCoder 3y ago
Can someone clarify the concept of "infectious dose"?
My layman's understanding is that even one virion can potentially infect someone. It's just that the odds of infection generally increase with the number of virions. (Modulo many other factors like where the virions reside, immune response, etc.)
But the concept of "an infectious dose" sounds much more binary to me.
EDIT:s/viron/virion/g
- dekhn 3y agoI'm not speaking as an authortiative individual here, but likely it's defined probabilistically in that 50% of people given a dosage show signs of infection later. See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_infective_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_infective_dose
- at_a_remove 3y agoIt would be nice to find some charts of what that would be for various virii.
- rolph 3y agonot all virions are equal. the viral assembly process, and the RNA replication process is error prone. many copies, of the covid virion, are incapable of cell entry or reproductive infection, due to defects in manufacture.