6 ms·

If borne out this is pretty big. A huge amount of productivity is lost by parents taking care of sick kids or who get sick from their kids. Further it might eve

If borne out this is pretty big. A huge amount of productivity is lost by parents taking care of sick kids or who get sick from their kids. Further it might even lessen the overall spread of seasonal diseases.

readthenotes1 2y ago
If it reduces the strength of the child's immune system, this may rebound in horrible ways
- pjc50 2y ago
  There's no good evidence for "you need to get sick in order to have a healthy immune system", and it leads to dangerous nonsense like measles parties.
  - The28thDuck 2y ago
    Silly question: how does an immune system get “trained”? I imagine some of it is through familial transmission but getting sick seems to kick it into high gear.
    - loloquwowndueo 2y ago
      Vaccines. Vaccines teach your immune system to fight specific viruses.
      - _xiaz 2y ago
        This ignores the fact that the vast majority of airborne common-cold viruses are not covered by a vaccine
    - calmbonsai 2y ago
      Ideally, their own mother's milk.
    - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
      So this is an extremely simplified answer but essentially some pathogen gets into the body. If they find a cell first, they generally get to do their job and try to kill the cell and replicate. But if a macrophage (a type of white blood cell) finds them first betfore they've intruded upon a cell, the macrophage eats it and disassembles it into little tiny pieces. The macrophage then hands over some of the important pieces to undifferentiated T cells. Those T cells then "differentiate" into one of two forms. The first are "Helper T cells" which carry the "design" for antibodies (immunoglobulins, i.e. proteins that bind to pathogens directly. These then share those antibody designs with B-Cells. The other type are "Killer T cells" which carry the "design" for T-cell-receptors that can detect "sick" cells for this specific pathogen or defect. They go hunt after the specific cell and essentially cause them to explode with the power of hydrogen peroxide. Then the macrophages eat up the dead infected cell and all the pathogens inside it and start the process anew. Now those B-Cells get the "design" for antibodies from the helper T cells and differentiate into two types. The first is essentially a factory that mass produces the antibodies and dumps them into the body. Those antibody proteins then bind to the pathogens and the macrophages can then directly attack the pathogens (because they have a bunch of big flags/alarms on them). The other type of B-Cell that they can differentiate into are memory B-cells. These keep the designs stored inside them and keep detectors for the pathogen on their cell membrane. Then they "go to sleep" until their detectors are activated by the pathogen. They live out their lives and replicate as needed to continue their lineage. When a pathogen shows up, they bind to either the pathogen directly or to some of the proteins it produces and they turn their factories on at full speed and start mass producing antibodies to start the immune response as fast as possible locally before the pathogen can do damage. They get depleted in this effort of course but if things go okay, the following immune response should trigger the creation of more memory B cells. (and when they don't you get stuff like immune amnesia). There are also "memory T-cells" but how they come about and how exactly they work is fuzzy and not super well understood. It's similar to memory B-cells but it's way more complicated and a bit "magic". But yeah eventually then your body beats the infection and things go back to normal with the memory cells hanging out in the body. Now the important thing with intensity of infection is that a mild infection will generally guarantee your body learns a sane, moderate response but a major infection can send your body into a panic and put the immune system into overdrive. That can train a response that attacks the pathogen but also attacks a lot of other stuff in the process (auto-immune response). You can think of this kind of like an analog version of machine learning on proteins (the training input). A bad fit can end up mischaracterizing healthy cells and bodily structures as "pathogens" and cause long term issues or even just severe reactions when you get a reinfection. Now for getting "trained" from the parent, this happens during pregnancy by diffusion of a subset of the antibodies from the mother to the fetus (not all types can but many do). Those stick around for a good while and eventually the child gets minor exposure to various pathogens and those shared antibodies kickstart the child's immune response enough to build up its own memory. Hope this helps. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Primary_immune_response_1.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Primary_...
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    There’s a lot of evidence that exposure is required for immunity. That’s how immunity works, no?
    - thebruce87m 2y ago
      Maybe there is still exposure, but at a lower viral load?
    - noxer 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - Kirby64 2y ago
        In your hypothetical of it only costing a few dollars a year the economic savings just by not having children be sick even once would easily outweigh any downsides. Also, we already have this for many diseases. They’re proven and they work just fine. Nobody reasonable is advocating you avoid the flu shot just because “everyone now has the same immunities”.
        noxer 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - api 2y ago
      In the extreme there is evidence that no exposure to pathogens might weaken immunity, but that is not going to be a problem unless someone is living in a bubble or on a space station.
    - maxerickson 2y ago
      The other poster made a statement about the strength of the immune system. I don't think there's much evidence that exposure to virus A ends up contributing to a robust response to virus Z. There's some benefit if the infections are somewhat related, but not if they are dissimilar. So sure, exposure to a particular infection is likely to make your immune system more responsive to that infection, but it's probably not reasonable to say that it has gotten stronger. And then, measles in particular can actually damage existing immunity to other infections, making exposure to it quite a lot more dangerous than just the immediate infection. https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia
  - sitkack 2y ago
    I think measles parties are hold over from before the advent of the measles vaccine (early 1970s). Now that we have a vaccine for it, the vaccine is vastly superior for many reasons. https://www.phind.com/search?cache=va2btahy5d5gjx0ejd888ue5 https://www.phind.com/search?cache=va2btahy5d5gjx0ejd888ue5 https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/timeline https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/timeline
    - pjc50 2y ago
      Still a problem: https://inews.co.uk/news/measles-parties-risk-children-life-2873278 https://inews.co.uk/news/measles-parties-risk-children-life-... Vaccine misinformation has been a disaster.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The immune system isn't a muscle.
  - ipsum2 2y ago
    Memory B and T cells would disagree with you. This is the basic knowledge for how vaccines work.
    - jph00 2y ago
      They would not disagree with you after, say, a measles infections, which thoroughly destroys the immune system at many levels. It’s not a good idea to confuse the impacts of vaccines and infections. Vaccines are carefully developed specifically to help the immune system. Viruses evolve to hurt it.
- nemonemo 2y ago
  "sick days reduced by a third" does not seem to be a level of reduction that could induce a problematic rebound.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  What you've written is unproven, and I see two facets of confusion: First, there's a huge difference between "strong" immune responses and "good" immune responses. Triggering the adaptive immune system is dangerous, like unleashing Skynet robots against a zombie apocalypse. You don't nuke a city at the first police report of one person biting another. Your body has a ton of cascading safety interlocks to try to avoid triggering more than is absolutely necessary. Second, there's a difference between "we need dangerous exposure to actual pathogens" versus "we need calibration against a mileu of benign species we co-evolved with." There's no evidence our immune systems are somehow "weaker" than our ancestors', but they do seem to be miscalibrated and trigger-happy.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    There are immune system benefits to vaginal delivery which is primarily about the the transfer microbiota from the mother to the child. I am not disagreeing with anything you are saying, but often these are often conflated. https://www.phind.com/search?cache=f5pj4u7f9v0y8ri853qmaxg1 https://www.phind.com/search?cache=f5pj4u7f9v0y8ri853qmaxg1
    - thelastparadise 2y ago
      What is the primary source of the bacteria? Is it somehow the vagina/labia itself? It seems C-section would have about as much overall fluid exchange, if not more.
      - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
        I believe some of it is from the rectum, which you wouldn’t get from a c-section.
      - chongli 2y ago
        No, it's the vagina itself which is heavily colonized with bacteria (lactofermenting bacteria and friends). With a C-section you're removing the baby directly from the amniotic sac into the world.
  - 2y ago
- jph00 2y ago
  This is a common misunderstanding of the poorly-named “hygiene hypothesis”. For a fuller explanation of how immunologists think about this today, see this article: https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-08-13-crowds-vs-friends/ https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-08-13-crowds-vs-friends/ In short - viruses can actually harm your immune system and lead to long term problems. OTOH, we co-evolved with certain parasites that can help us. Airborne pathogens are not likely to be the helpful type we’ve co-evolved with — they’re much more likely to be the type we’ve only had to deal with since the creation of higher density living and rapid long distance travel. Therefore air filters are likely to help children’s health both short and long term.
  - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    To sort of complement what you are saying, the 'hygiene hypothesis' also ends up being a an excuse for not looking at other factors. (very similar to blaming genes alone for health issues)
  - wodenokoto 2y ago
    Completely off-topic, but why is that blog post hosted on Fast.ai's domain?
    - lbotos 2y ago
      from her about page: cofounder of fast.ai
- DrNosferatu 2y ago
  They might have a point. Only anecdotes, but I hear that kids born during Covid (and therefore confinement) get a lot sicker than other generations. Your experience?
- wiether 2y ago
  Dwight, is that you?

readthenotes1 2y ago

If it reduces the strength of the child's immune system, this may rebound in horrible ways

pjc50 2y ago
There's no good evidence for "you need to get sick in order to have a healthy immune system", and it leads to dangerous nonsense like measles parties.
- The28thDuck 2y ago
  Silly question: how does an immune system get “trained”? I imagine some of it is through familial transmission but getting sick seems to kick it into high gear.
  - loloquwowndueo 2y ago
    Vaccines. Vaccines teach your immune system to fight specific viruses.
    - _xiaz 2y ago
      This ignores the fact that the vast majority of airborne common-cold viruses are not covered by a vaccine
  - calmbonsai 2y ago
    Ideally, their own mother's milk.
  - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
    So this is an extremely simplified answer but essentially some pathogen gets into the body. If they find a cell first, they generally get to do their job and try to kill the cell and replicate. But if a macrophage (a type of white blood cell) finds them first betfore they've intruded upon a cell, the macrophage eats it and disassembles it into little tiny pieces. The macrophage then hands over some of the important pieces to undifferentiated T cells. Those T cells then "differentiate" into one of two forms. The first are "Helper T cells" which carry the "design" for antibodies (immunoglobulins, i.e. proteins that bind to pathogens directly. These then share those antibody designs with B-Cells. The other type are "Killer T cells" which carry the "design" for T-cell-receptors that can detect "sick" cells for this specific pathogen or defect. They go hunt after the specific cell and essentially cause them to explode with the power of hydrogen peroxide. Then the macrophages eat up the dead infected cell and all the pathogens inside it and start the process anew. Now those B-Cells get the "design" for antibodies from the helper T cells and differentiate into two types. The first is essentially a factory that mass produces the antibodies and dumps them into the body. Those antibody proteins then bind to the pathogens and the macrophages can then directly attack the pathogens (because they have a bunch of big flags/alarms on them). The other type of B-Cell that they can differentiate into are memory B-cells. These keep the designs stored inside them and keep detectors for the pathogen on their cell membrane. Then they "go to sleep" until their detectors are activated by the pathogen. They live out their lives and replicate as needed to continue their lineage. When a pathogen shows up, they bind to either the pathogen directly or to some of the proteins it produces and they turn their factories on at full speed and start mass producing antibodies to start the immune response as fast as possible locally before the pathogen can do damage. They get depleted in this effort of course but if things go okay, the following immune response should trigger the creation of more memory B cells. (and when they don't you get stuff like immune amnesia). There are also "memory T-cells" but how they come about and how exactly they work is fuzzy and not super well understood. It's similar to memory B-cells but it's way more complicated and a bit "magic". But yeah eventually then your body beats the infection and things go back to normal with the memory cells hanging out in the body. Now the important thing with intensity of infection is that a mild infection will generally guarantee your body learns a sane, moderate response but a major infection can send your body into a panic and put the immune system into overdrive. That can train a response that attacks the pathogen but also attacks a lot of other stuff in the process (auto-immune response). You can think of this kind of like an analog version of machine learning on proteins (the training input). A bad fit can end up mischaracterizing healthy cells and bodily structures as "pathogens" and cause long term issues or even just severe reactions when you get a reinfection. Now for getting "trained" from the parent, this happens during pregnancy by diffusion of a subset of the antibodies from the mother to the fetus (not all types can but many do). Those stick around for a good while and eventually the child gets minor exposure to various pathogens and those shared antibodies kickstart the child's immune response enough to build up its own memory. Hope this helps. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Primary_immune_response_1.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Primary_...
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  There’s a lot of evidence that exposure is required for immunity. That’s how immunity works, no?
  - thebruce87m 2y ago
    Maybe there is still exposure, but at a lower viral load?
  - noxer 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Kirby64 2y ago
      In your hypothetical of it only costing a few dollars a year the economic savings just by not having children be sick even once would easily outweigh any downsides. Also, we already have this for many diseases. They’re proven and they work just fine. Nobody reasonable is advocating you avoid the flu shot just because “everyone now has the same immunities”.
      - noxer 2y ago
        [flagged]
  - api 2y ago
    In the extreme there is evidence that no exposure to pathogens might weaken immunity, but that is not going to be a problem unless someone is living in a bubble or on a space station.
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    The other poster made a statement about the strength of the immune system. I don't think there's much evidence that exposure to virus A ends up contributing to a robust response to virus Z. There's some benefit if the infections are somewhat related, but not if they are dissimilar. So sure, exposure to a particular infection is likely to make your immune system more responsive to that infection, but it's probably not reasonable to say that it has gotten stronger. And then, measles in particular can actually damage existing immunity to other infections, making exposure to it quite a lot more dangerous than just the immediate infection. https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia
- sitkack 2y ago
  I think measles parties are hold over from before the advent of the measles vaccine (early 1970s). Now that we have a vaccine for it, the vaccine is vastly superior for many reasons. https://www.phind.com/search?cache=va2btahy5d5gjx0ejd888ue5 https://www.phind.com/search?cache=va2btahy5d5gjx0ejd888ue5 https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/timeline https://historyofvaccines.org/history/measles/timeline
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Still a problem: https://inews.co.uk/news/measles-parties-risk-children-life-2873278 https://inews.co.uk/news/measles-parties-risk-children-life-... Vaccine misinformation has been a disaster.
bluGill 2y ago
The immune system isn't a muscle.
- ipsum2 2y ago
  Memory B and T cells would disagree with you. This is the basic knowledge for how vaccines work.
  - jph00 2y ago
    They would not disagree with you after, say, a measles infections, which thoroughly destroys the immune system at many levels. It’s not a good idea to confuse the impacts of vaccines and infections. Vaccines are carefully developed specifically to help the immune system. Viruses evolve to hurt it.
nemonemo 2y ago
"sick days reduced by a third" does not seem to be a level of reduction that could induce a problematic rebound.
Terr_ 2y ago
What you've written is unproven, and I see two facets of confusion: First, there's a huge difference between "strong" immune responses and "good" immune responses. Triggering the adaptive immune system is dangerous, like unleashing Skynet robots against a zombie apocalypse. You don't nuke a city at the first police report of one person biting another. Your body has a ton of cascading safety interlocks to try to avoid triggering more than is absolutely necessary. Second, there's a difference between "we need dangerous exposure to actual pathogens" versus "we need calibration against a mileu of benign species we co-evolved with." There's no evidence our immune systems are somehow "weaker" than our ancestors', but they do seem to be miscalibrated and trigger-happy.
- sitkack 2y ago
  There are immune system benefits to vaginal delivery which is primarily about the the transfer microbiota from the mother to the child. I am not disagreeing with anything you are saying, but often these are often conflated. https://www.phind.com/search?cache=f5pj4u7f9v0y8ri853qmaxg1 https://www.phind.com/search?cache=f5pj4u7f9v0y8ri853qmaxg1
  - thelastparadise 2y ago
    What is the primary source of the bacteria? Is it somehow the vagina/labia itself? It seems C-section would have about as much overall fluid exchange, if not more.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      I believe some of it is from the rectum, which you wouldn’t get from a c-section.
    - chongli 2y ago
      No, it's the vagina itself which is heavily colonized with bacteria (lactofermenting bacteria and friends). With a C-section you're removing the baby directly from the amniotic sac into the world.
- 2y ago
jph00 2y ago
This is a common misunderstanding of the poorly-named “hygiene hypothesis”. For a fuller explanation of how immunologists think about this today, see this article: https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-08-13-crowds-vs-friends/ https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-08-13-crowds-vs-friends/ In short - viruses can actually harm your immune system and lead to long term problems. OTOH, we co-evolved with certain parasites that can help us. Airborne pathogens are not likely to be the helpful type we’ve co-evolved with — they’re much more likely to be the type we’ve only had to deal with since the creation of higher density living and rapid long distance travel. Therefore air filters are likely to help children’s health both short and long term.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  To sort of complement what you are saying, the 'hygiene hypothesis' also ends up being a an excuse for not looking at other factors. (very similar to blaming genes alone for health issues)
- wodenokoto 2y ago
  Completely off-topic, but why is that blog post hosted on Fast.ai's domain?
  - lbotos 2y ago
    from her about page: cofounder of fast.ai
DrNosferatu 2y ago
They might have a point. Only anecdotes, but I hear that kids born during Covid (and therefore confinement) get a lot sicker than other generations. Your experience?
wiether 2y ago
Dwight, is that you?