COVID, RSV and the flu: A case of viral interference?
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
Sort of picky, but actually pretty fundamental to the subject. There are multiple interferons. With all sorts of complex behaviors. Even a basic description of this concept ought to make that clear.
And what's with the bright white box?
And what's with the bright white box?
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In addition to plain interference, viruses can interact - their replicative/packaging machinery can crossover within the cell, producing weird chimeras - not the scary "super mutant virus" type, but more similar to Brundlefly-Telepod fusion creature in The Fly.
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"A well-known example is that the flu makes people more susceptible to a secondary bacterial infection."
I'd never heard of this before, but it explains why I had a cold that wasn't getting better for weeks and then prescribed antibiotics helped. I might even go back to work next week.
I'd never heard of this before, but it explains why I had a cold that wasn't getting better for weeks and then prescribed antibiotics helped. I might even go back to work next week.
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I totally sympathise with you.
As a kid/teenager the colds I got were horrible - lasted two weeks, terrible green mucus-y hell. At uni my friends told me I was being pathetic and that colds weren't that bad. Then, in my early twenties, something changed - the colds I got were much shorter and less severe. And I came to realise that I wasn't just getting a cold - I was also getting a secondary bacterial infection. Not sure if my immunity improved, or my microbiome.
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Simpson's did it first.
Rats! @neffo beat me to it.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8
Rats! @neffo beat me to it.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Being cursed with a disease that has prevented me (so far so good) from contracting Covid... is good?
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Very Interesting. I can say after buying and reading “Immune” by Phillip Dettmer that articles like these are really fascinating.
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Ars' CMS seems to sometimes hiccup when reprinting Knowable articles. Note that the original has several SVG graphs and illustrations that are sadly absent here. The white ⍰ box is a missing SVG logo asset linked from the original, probably hot‑linked or something. No idea why some browsers render it as a big ugly full‑width box and some don't, but it must have inherited the text column width.
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This phenomenon may be good for, if the immune system holds out well, but very bad if you pretty much overcome the blocking virus, but at the cost of a temporary exhaustion of the immune system, allowing one of the blocked pathogens to superinfect an already weakened immune system. It makes me wonder how much frailty in the elderly (now a somewhat personal interest) is due to the slow decline of the immune system with time, so that instead of the 1 or 2 punch, as time goes by you are much more likely to get the one-two punch.
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I am skeptical of viral interference, at least in regards to COVID, influenzs, and RSV. If the interference lasts "days to weeks" then it's worthless anyways, and changes in influenza and RSV rates can be explained by masking and social distancing.
To the extent that one virus will temporarily crowd out others, I'd look more at the transmission vectors and how viral infections spread. This is especially true where COVID has well-known asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread as compared to influenza at least.
But what I'm hearing from hospitals strongly implies that viral interference isn't doing shit to prevent a tripledemic.
To the extent that one virus will temporarily crowd out others, I'd look more at the transmission vectors and how viral infections spread. This is especially true where COVID has well-known asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread as compared to influenza at least.
But what I'm hearing from hospitals strongly implies that viral interference isn't doing shit to prevent a tripledemic.
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It's worse, actually. As you grow older, it's not a one-two punch, influenza winds up being a haymaker all on its own, even before COVID. Influenza was already killing 30,000-60,000 Americans annually, primarily the elderly.
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Who knew! And I thought that the idea that when you are sick of the flu you can't get another illness was a maid tale.
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Every parent has to deal with children with repeated colds, picked up from classmates. The relative immunity of snotty-nosed children to COVID may be from viral interference.
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Well there is a broad spectum Flu vaccine in trials at the moment. It's mRNA but I guess we'll see what the trial says.
https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2022/november/penn-develops-mrna-flu-vaccine
Not that I'll be first in the queue.
Edit: should have said that it is showing promsie in animal models; human trials are being designed but appears to illicit strong immune response to 20 sub types of flu which were designed into the vaccine. There's for sure a bit of icky factor here, and I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to find out what an immune response feels like to 20 versions of flu - we shall see I guess.
https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2022/november/penn-develops-mrna-flu-vaccine
Not that I'll be first in the queue.
Edit: should have said that it is showing promsie in animal models; human trials are being designed but appears to illicit strong immune response to 20 sub types of flu which were designed into the vaccine. There's for sure a bit of icky factor here, and I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to find out what an immune response feels like to 20 versions of flu - we shall see I guess.
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Makes you wonder if we should be deliberately infecting ourselves with a mild cold in the event of a really nasty bug doing the rounds...
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I've been wondering the same thing. It's well known (whether it's true or not) that teachers and nurses get very sick in their first year in the job, and then become immune to almost everything.
Should we keep isolating and masking, risking our immune system weakening, or lick toilet seats and kiss runny nosed strangers to expose us to everything so we can become immune? /s - mostly.
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As many coaches wll know, even the best 'teams' will have interfering strategies among the players that wax and wane, strengths and vulnerabilities will yield outcomes that vary, even unpredictably.
What is clear is that our understanding of the 'process' remains full of holes.
This game of survival has rules that surpass any conceived by humans.
Maybe if we all move up to Mars or to the Moon, things will get better. /S
What is clear is that our understanding of the 'process' remains full of holes.
This game of survival has rules that surpass any conceived by humans.
Maybe if we all move up to Mars or to the Moon, things will get better. /S
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The immune system doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t get “used up”. If anything, it gets kicked into high gear. It’s not unusual for a bout of flu to also cause the immune system to finally take care of some other infection. Personally, I once had a wart that resisted all treatment, but sloughed off the first day I had the flu, never to return.
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If you have a "cold" that lasts more than a week, especially if you are producing yellow or green sputum go to your doctor or urgent care. In all likelihood you have a secondary bacterial infection. When you have a cold it does a couple of things that increase your risk of a bacterial invasion. Your immune system is weakened, and the mucus is like a petri dish with agar for the lovely little pathogens.
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I'm pretty certain that's not true. Maybe it doesn't get "used up" per se, but it certainly uses a lot of resources, which you don't have an infinite supply of. It can also be weakened and leave you susceptible to a secondary infection.
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It's not unknown for an infection to cure cancer, although it is mostly bacterial infections that have been observed to do this. It has been used as a cancer treatment in the form of Coley's toxins (and some ancient precursors).
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Or, and this may seem radical, but you could try using N95 masks, social distancing, and hand washing.
If we're ever in a position to deliberately infect ourselves with what we know is a mild cold virus, we could just as easily inject interferon (available in multiple types, including alpha interferons which are antiviral).
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medical.mit.edu says this isn't the way our immune system works: https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/05/all-social-distancing-weakening-our-immune-systems
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Tell that to every opportunistic infection, which are quiet common.
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Unfortunately, it is not infection which gradually uses up the immune system, but anno domini. As those telomeres shorten, stem cells get less prolific, and even the craftiest of immune systems begins to run out of steam. Or the ability to produce plentiful foot soldiers. Although it seems an extreme interpretation to me, some people are claiming that the high power relationship of cancers to age comes more from a slow fall off in efficacy of immune surveillance and repression than from accumulated mutations producing more, and more highly transformed, early tumor cells. And yes under certain circumstances persistent infection can deplete the immune system. Surface switching parasites like sleeping sickness rely on that. By the third or fourth immunogenic switch the immune system is much weakened.
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I would guess that the strength of the immune response would be proportional to the total volume of mRNA, not the number of viral strains it protects against. Anyone who actually knows something care to weigh in?
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Team Tardigrade
Ars Centurion
While the immune system doesn't get "used up" it does loose effectiveness as we age. T lymphocytes undergo several maturation processes in a gland in the mediastinum called the thymus. The thymus is a bizarre little gland in that it grows from childhood into adolescence - and then gradually shrinks (atrophies) for the rest of your life. As we age, the maturation and training of new T lymphocytes becomes problematic and eventually stops.
*edited for spelling since there's only one mediastinum per person. Unless you get really unlucky.
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Note for the curious:
No, none of trobbins's other posts show any evidence of intelligent life behind them, either.
No, none of trobbins's other posts show any evidence of intelligent life behind them, either.
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Team Tardigrade
Ars Centurion
Personally, I find that 3 masks are sufficient.
/s
Yes, different viruses affect different people differently. But as far as the reason some people get sick and some don't? It's complicated.
Virions are antigens, or antibody generating factors, that can mobilize antibodies. Thing is, each antigen can have multiple epitopes, or areas that can mobilize different populations of antibodies. One person's immune system might recognize one or two epitopes while person number two's immune system can recognize and mobilize twelve different populations of antibodies - all from the same virion antigen. Or their system might not recognize any of those epitopes. Some unlucky ones might not even be able to make antibodies to those epitopes at all if they don't have a naïve immunocompetent lymphocyte or three already hanging around in secondary lymphatic tissues. It's a bit of a crap shoot sometimes.
And then there's the idea that each different population may be at a different stage of response. Population A-F antibodies (arbitrarily named for epitope response) might be in a stacked secondary response with lots of B memory cells just waiting to kick ass, whereas populations G-L could be in the primary response and need a week to get their shit together.
We haven't even gotten to how antibodies actually do their thing, which depends on Ig class, binding affinity, titers, the state of your free macrophages, etc. And antibodies are only a small part of the overall immune system. There's several populations of leukocytes including PNKs, B and T lymphocytes (several subcategories each), and of course the entire passive side of the immune system of which interferon is part. /mild rant
Sure, it's complicated with literally hundreds if not thousands or interrelating variables. But complaining about wearing masks or vaccines is like bitching about wearing seat belts or having car insurance because it's literally too hard to figure out if you'll be in an accident on any given day. There's hundreds of factors involved there too, but most people don't throw their hands up and say that wearing seat belts is stupid or claim that wearing a belt is stupid because they knew a guy who died while wearing a seatbelt so obviously they don't matter.
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Regarding multiple masks, one N95 is enough for me although might make sense to wear several if they fit well enough. Seems 2 might offer 99.75% in theory not being an expert. I will keep on wearing mine as long as humanity is our own worst enemy not masking, not vaccinating, not boosting allowing COVID-19 to evolve.
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Annnd... now you have lost him/her. Now we are back to the "let's spit on each other" theory.
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The news reporting seems to indicate that there are about equal amounts of RSV, Flu, and Covid in the hospitals right now. So it is not like one of them knock out the others?
Still, very interesting if we can pick apart the causality for the reduction in flu and RSV in the past few years. It seems to be commonly accepted that this was mostly from reductions in human contact and some improved hygiene on average. Mostly from curiosity, not sure if viral interference can be used to guide policies.
Still, very interesting if we can pick apart the causality for the reduction in flu and RSV in the past few years. It seems to be commonly accepted that this was mostly from reductions in human contact and some improved hygiene on average. Mostly from curiosity, not sure if viral interference can be used to guide policies.
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