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Comment by ciconia | Hacker News Reader

I find the obsession with having a sterile environment ridiculous. Our bodies themselves are teeming with microbes and viruses, actually our bodies contain more of them than our own human cells. They play an important role in our digestive system, as well as our metabolism and also keeping our immune system on its guard.

What needs to be done is not to eliminate those actors, but rather to make our bodies resilient to potentiel pathogens.

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From a cost-benefit perspective, it feels like most of the things we did to get sterile environments paid off with massive, dramatic drops in mortality and morbidity at every age group and the costs have been a bit of regulatory burden for business and maybe increases in childhood allergies which are likely to be nonfatal and low morbidity? That's a pretty good tradeoff. Even if you think obesity is a phenomenon entirely caused by gut biome and not food, it's still going to be a huge economic positive.

> What needs to be done is not to eliminate those actors, but rather to make our bodies resilient to potentiel pathogens.

If we expose ourselves to these pathogens and wait a few thousand years we might naturally evolve to be resilient.

…otherwise I have no idea what you’re proposing here. You can’t just decide to be resilient. Pathogens kill people. They don’t die because they lacked willpower.

How to make ourselves more resilient to disease:

- Less air pollution. - Less water pollution. - Pesticide-free food. - Less sugar consumption. - Physically active lifestyle. - Less stressful life.

For viruses sure, but other things like air filters make sense. Nothing good comes from breathing combustion engine exhaust or gas stove combustion byproducts.

If you live anywhere near a coal mine or power plant you are also getting a good dose of radioactive dust although I’m not sure a hepa filter is good enough there.

Well now I'm curious. Do you feel the same way about malaria, which kills half a million people a year?

That we shouldn't attempt to remove malaria from our home environment with things like mosquito nets, but rather "make our bodies resilient"?

And... how exactly are we supposed to be making our bodies "resilient" against COVID and the flu and malaria? Seems like you've left out that crucially important detail.

To be clear, the microbiome in our gut has nothing to do with continued exposure to lethal airborne viruses. Sterilizing against one thing doesn't sterilize against everything.

> make our bodies resilient to potentiel pathogens

How? Magic?

Immune system? Some might call it magic.

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