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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

> In a typical year, “we might get exposed to a small bit of virus and your body fights it off”, says John Tregoning, an immunologist at Imperial College London. But “that kind of asymptomatic boosting maybe hasn't happened in the last few years”.

It seems like the problem is the opposite. No one has immunity to anything. So the longer you put it off the worst it will get.

That's on a population level. On a per-person level, there is no such thing as immunity debt, as the article says about halfway down. If the people around you are more likely to carry viruses, it's more important to protect yourself.

> there is no such thing as immunity debt

No? If I have lived in a bubble for 2 years and come out, what happens when I'm exposed to 20 new things?

If you were in a bubble for 2 years, you'd skip a couple of flu seasons. When you get out, you're not going to get 2-3 flus.

Okay, sure. But even if getting a cold is just a bandaid that you rip off once, wouldn't you rather rip it off ahead of the big cold season every year?

Populations consist of… people.

There's a difference between lots of people getting a disease vs individuals being more susceptible.

> there is no such thing as immunity debt

this makes absolutely no sense at any level

I mean none of this is ever going to go away, right? We'll always have diseases...right?

So is wearing a mask, and staying apart from people actually a sustainable way of living, long term? We are now in the long term, we did that for a long time, and to be honest, I don't think the general population could go back to it.

It helped, we weren't getting sick, but people were for sure getting depressed and life was very hard for many many people, which trade off is worth it?

I think it made sense for the time, we had a new virus, things were questionable on long term effects (still are), etc...I think the next thing is to now figure out how to better live with these diseases, reduce spread when infected and care for each other.

These are just things that swirl through my mind on the topic. It's complex and nuanced, what is right is definitely not clear (to me).

Haven’t we suffered enough? There will always be risks in life.

Typo notwithstanding, this is literally in the article's headline.

> COVID-19 restrictions mean we are more susceptible these viruses.

So how does continuing the thing that arguably made colds/flus impact worse make sense?

Article headlines don't always line up with the contents.

> Some people have taken it to mean that a lack of exposure to pathogens such as RSV and influenza has irrevocably damaged the immune system, an idea that Matthew Miller, an immunologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, calls “nonsense”.

The nonsense is that it's 'irrevocable', not that the lack of exposure leads to a debt. It's consistent with the headline.

Very few restrictions left: https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/i...

They're responding to OP's advice which advises for more self-restrictions.

You need to read this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile_(book)

> Wear a mask. Stay apart.

Until when?

The end of cold/flu season.

So forever?

Why didn’t we do this in 2019 or 1970 or 1813?

We didn’t know the advances that East Asian urban culture had made in public sanitation practices.

What TFA is saying is that attempting to avoid the colds and flus makes them worse. It's better to get them than not to. Is that right, wrong? Maybe you could share your thoughts on that.

Alternatively, continued wearing of masks and observing basic hygiene - it's absurd we're politicizing WASHING YOUR HANDS or NOT GOING TO WORK WHILE BEING SYMPTOMATICALLY SICK - can also drive pathogens out of existence.

The anti-covid measures likely led to the extinction of at least one strain of human influenza [1], it is likely that this feat could be repeated. There is no need at all for the massive economic impact that flu and other transmittable diseases have - back in 2017/18 for example, the flu caused a noticeable slowdown in economic growth in Germany [2], and we all see just how badly COVID is still fucking up economies worldwide.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/covid-may-have-pushe...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/deutschland-konjunktur-einka...

There’s no driving pathogens out of existence. Forget about that.

There is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...

I literally posted an example where that worked in recent times, not to mention the historic examples of smallpox and polio (although the latter sadly still remains at like 99% due to anti-vaccine misinformation in the few areas that still have polio).

Vaccines work.

I think with the comment was saying is that we cannot eradicate a flu/covid disease by handwashing and masking. China has shown us you can control it with ruthless rules. And a more effective vaccine could do it, but there’s little precedent for a 100% effective respiratory vax.

Not COVID, because it is so highly infectious, but there is evidence that a strain of flu was eradicated because of COVID measures[1].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/covid-may-have-pushe...

The same CDC Director who just disappeared for 3 weeks with a minor infection and has said nothing about their symptoms afterwards? Handwashing isn't going to do much of anything for a clearly airborne virus with ridiculously high transmission, wear a N95 mask at least, ideally a P100 that will reduce the odds of catching things substantially.

Cite on the P100? I don't see how A: Oil resistance plays into it B: N95s are already 99.9%+ efficient at airborne covid particle sizes - certainly good enough that fit will be the primary factor. C: N(R)100s generally have higher breathing resistance.. that isn't ideal.

The main thing is that p100s tend to be elastomeric respirators, and those have a substantially better fit than traditional n95 respirators. I’m not going to go digging for the study right now (should be easy to find) but even heathcare workers who had previously fit tested with an n95 only had a bit over 50% chance to get a good seal in a realistic scenario, and it was far worse for people who had not fit tested. Every person who used the elastomeric respirators got a good seal.

Most people don’t do at home fit testing, and even if they do they aren’t testing in a real world situation where they are wearing the respirator for a long time, turning their heads, etc. Elastomerics are just enormously better in these situations.

A pre-covid randomized clinical trial that looked at whether N95s provided any meaningful additional protection against another aerosol-borne virus (flu) to healthcare workers working in outpatient settings found no benefit:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214

Question: Is the use of N95 respirators or medical masks more effective in preventing influenza infection among outpatient health care personnel in close contact with patients with suspected respiratory illness?

Findings: In this pragmatic, cluster randomized clinical trial involving 2862 health care personnel, there was no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza among health care personnel with the use of N95 respirators (8.2%) vs medical masks (7.2%).

Meaning: As worn by health care personnel in this trial, use of N95 respirators, compared with medical masks, in the outpatient setting resulted in no significant difference in the rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

One person's cough may emit 10k aerosol particles. Another person's cough may emit 300k. Normal breathing also creates aerosol particles. And they can remain airborne for hours. Only one virion needs to make it through to initiate an infection. And nobody is wearing eye protection anyway and you can get infected with the flu or covid or any one of a wide range of other pathogens via the mucus membranes around your eyes.

I know that it seems as though masking ought to help reduce covid infections (and respirators definitely greatly reduce exposure to, for example, harmful dust particles for home renovators and industrial workers), but it doesn't. Yes, I know many experts and officials persist in claiming otherwise. They are wrong and either ill-informed or lying.

It's also a surface-borne virus, and so a mask alone is perhaps not that effective. This is why nurses and doctors wear not just masks, but gloves, eye protection, and gowns when treating active COVID patients.

However, wearing such biohazard-level protection isn't really plausible for daily use, and outdoors, transmission is negligible, so it probably makes little sense for people out for a walk to mask up. Maintaining good hand hygiene practices (i.e. wash hands immediately upon entering the home, and certainly before food preparation, don't touch your face with your hands, etc.) is probably more effective.

> It's also a surface-borne virus

This was a very early belief that turned out to be false.

That works until you eventually get something, which unless you are completely isolated you probably will and based on the article the longer you escape the worse it will be because you are immunologically naive.

You don't have to be completely isolated to reduce your exposure and risk of exposure. Getting sick only once this winter is going to be netter for your health than getting everything going around all the time.

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