Aerosol particle emission increases exponentially above moderate exercise
pnas.org
pnas.org
The number of virions in these particles was not measured. So I think we have an upper bound of cubic growth, and since the air velocity also increased linearly, information about particle size given air velocity would also be helpful. I imagine that particle size at least goes down with air velocity, so I think more realistically, the increase in number of airborne virions increases somewhere between linearly and quadraticly.
>While aerosol particle emission is a major contributor to that risk, it is not the only one, as infection risk also depends on the concentration of the pathogen in the exhaled aerosol particles. So, ideally, others and we would have measured aerosol particle emission and the SARS-CoV-2 titer in aerosol condensates of infected, COVID-19 patients. However, we were unable to perform such an experiment safely.
Kind of a bad study, in my opinion. It is not impossible to get in vitro estimates for these quantities and include them in your analysis.
The number of virions in these particles was not measured. So I think we have an upper bound of cubic growth,"
I wonder if it increases the overall virus expelled. If it does, maybe vigorous exercise could reduce the disease impact if done early in the infection. Like with people who exercise strenuously on a regular basis and do so during the asymptomatic portion.
I got an MSA Advantage 900, which filters exhalation too. It's a lot sweatier, and if you aren't trying to comply with now-expired mask mandates, you could get a valved model. I haven't been professionally fit tested, but it passes the self-fit test. I wouldn't trust it in a TB ward, but to the gym or an airplane? It's great.
If you have the influence, try to get your gym to set up UV air sanizizers and Corsi-Rosenthal boxes.
If you're going to wear a mask, you should wear an effective one. Elastomeric>n95==FFP3>kf94==FFP2>kn95>>surgical>>cloth>>>gaiter
And if you have a beard, the masks that fit more tightly will still retain 75%+ of their effectiveness.
A Smith machine is essentially a universal, versatile isolation machine. A single Smith machine can do the job of a suite of selectorized iso machines in a far smaller overall footprint. It's the equivalent of the barbell and power rack, but for isolation exercises instead of basic compound exercises.
Edit: To clarify. All the research I have read points to no increase in risk to catch covid at training facilities so I assume it serves a different purpose.
Altitude adaptation can happen passively, so it's technically better to train low and recover high. You want your training to be limited by your physiology, not by oxygen availability.
We are no longer at the start of the pandemic. We now have vaccines and the medical establishment has developed the tools and the experience to treat people so society goes back to "normal". I don't find that very surprising?
We had a glorious two months with vaccines and no meaningful variants last year, and in that time I didn't wear a mask. Since then, several variants with substantial immune escape have evolved.
I'm not worried about dying, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start taking meaningless risks. I'm not going to start licking handrails in the subway. I'm going to wear my seatbelt. I'll dine indoors at restaurants, but again--I'm looking at my integrated risk.
If people readily got COVID at my gym something tells me at least 1/4 would be dead the way they pack themselves in there without masks. I am shocked to be honest. Even myself with an N95 mask that try to keep my distance would have probably caught it also.
Also, most people aren't isolating and taking home grocery delivery except for when they go, unmasked, to the gym. It would be hard to measure in the best of times, and our extremely high community spread levels make it pretty much impossible to quantify the risk posed by going to the gym specifically.
1) Ensures that any surface or airborne pathogen generated the evening prior is likely dead.
2) Less people creating respiratory borne aerosols.
3) Intensity of exercise is probably lower, thereby spreading less aerosols, given most people do not have peak performance early morning.
4) Someone who is sick or is recovering from illness is unlikely to get to the gym early.
5) Perhaps skip the gym during peak flu and cold season.
For decades I would get sick 3 to 4 times a year but now I haven't been sick in 28 months (personal best by 2x) since becoming a pandemic hermit. I wonder how many of my colds/flu's were contracted at the gym and have hesitated returning but miss this part of my life.
Regardless, I hear what you’re saying, but that didn’t sound like what GP meant when they said they missed their gym life.
If you're healthy moderate exposure to pathogens can definitely boost your own immune system response. The impact of hosting those pathogens is one of the talking points COVID brought up that I think will be around for a long time.
Someone somewhere just said "Challenge accepted!"
Part of it may be due to economic changes, people less likely to forgo their specialty workout/activity/hobby but would skip their routine cardio sessions, people who splurged on their own home equipment, or those who tried cardio outside in 2020 and stuck to it.
I wonder if we'll see another bump in gym bankruptcies or closures, after the initial one from the pandemic.
https://datacranker.com/cycling-power-to-weight-ratio-calcul...
Is the end result going to be a change in transmission vector for diseases? what other evolutionary adaptations are happening amongst common human pathogens?
Look up the hygiene hypothesis.
The immune system can't function against viruses it's never encountered, and the health of the immune system does, in fact, rely on exposure.
No need to start licking doorknobs or whatever, but people who have isolated themselves in a comprehensive way from the common human biosphere should expect to get sick when they decide to rejoin humanity. This will get worse the longer it's put off.
I'm nonjudgemental about the choices people are making to mitigate risk in their lives, but declining immune system health is a real risk of extended isolation which should be factored into the decision-making process.
Two things happen when someone is isolated from that ambient biome: they stop producing as many antibodies and t-cells, and they miss opportunities to develop immune response to new mutations as they arise.
In the worst case someone can be hit with a variant of, say, influenza, with an already depressed immune system facing more immune-evading mutations than they would otherwise see in a novel strain.
None of this is controversial.
The isolated (isolationist has an implication of ideology which I don't care to impute) person can expect to get sicker for a given amount of exposure. Given a (spherical, frictionless) Person of Ordinary Health, they will have hundreds or thousands of distinct exposures in a year and get sick once or twice.
I could ramble about my own exposure to influenza, its relation to extended stays in the tropics, and so on, but this discussion doesn't need to be carried on the strength of anecdote.
The strategy should be to avoid severe outcomes. Long Influenza is a real thing and tends to follow severe infection, people who end up in the hospital with flu often have problems for years afterward, or the rest of their lives.
Vaccination (ceteris paribus again!) is superior to infection and raises the odds of transcribing new mutations to the immune system without ever getting sick. But there isn't always a vaccine, influenza in particular is notoriously skilled at vaccine evasion, and the immune system has a sweet spot in terms of antibody and t cell concentration which is kept in homeostatis by exposure and only exposure. that's how vaccines work, it's controlled exposure, nothing more.
Edit to add: so if you're someone who has isolated yourself from the rest of humanity's biome for a few years, I'm sure you had your reasons and I don't question them. It's probably not a lifetime's worth of strategy, and when it comes time to get back into it, be smart about it.
Maybe don't go straight to New York and ride the subway for eight hours without a mask. You wouldn't go back to the gym after a year and try and squat what you were pushing then, it would snap your spine. Same thing with rebooting the immune system. Slow and steady, and realizing that a mild infection (could be covid, rhinvirus, influenza, for our purposes this doesn't matter) is inevitable and doesn't constitute moral failure.
Citation needed. In what way is it worse?
This is a widely held but incorrect belief. The immune system does not work like a muscle - it doesn't atrophy when unused and it doesn't become stronger from repeated challenge.
The immune hypothesis is about specific kinds of pathogens - parasites and bacterial microbiota[1] that humans co-evolved with and have specific defenses against (such as IgE antibodies). The exact mechanism(s) have yet to be determined but it's clear that lack of exposure during early childhood increases risk of autoimmunity.
Other than that, getting exposed to a larger variety of pathogens - especially viruses - just means you get sick more frequently[2].
The frequency of exposure to modern human viruses are a relatively new occurrence and there's no evidence that it benefits health - quite to the contrary, viruses are implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases such as ME/CFS or MS.