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elbows
Well-Known Member
Before I even do any proper reading, I will share one personal thought on this. It may be some time before I discover whether this thought is backed up by any existing research, and it might be a subject for another thread and subforum by then, which I shall start if necessary.
I'm thinking that our ideas about what constitutes a super strong immune system probably need to get more complicated in order to appreciate asymptomatic disease. Lots of disease symptoms we experience are actually caused by our immune responses. So in my head the immune system that deals most suitably with an infection is not one that goes in super turbo charged with all guns blazing. Thats actually a sign of weakness and of failure. Rather, the one that is able to defeat the infection in a way thats best for the human concerned is the one that manages to do so in a laid back manner, without much fuss.
Dont get me wrong, that still means a strong immune system, its just that the word strong might be misleading when we imagine this stuff in action. Because obviously we have ample evidence of the bad stuff that happens to peoples whose immune systems are compromised, so I'm not trying to suggest something stupid. More that I would expect a bunch of asymptomatic stuff to be cases where the immune system, other aspects of that persons body, or other aspects of the particular virus thats got into them, has brushed it off without needing to resort to something that is noticed (as pain, temperature, swelling or whatever else) by the person involved. So yeah, balanced, prepared and capable more useful than being ready to Rambo.
Given that some of the worst cases of certain respiratory infections are often said to involve things like cytokine storms, this subject may even be somewhat on-topic. Cytokine storms being a dramatic example of various immune responses ending up cascading into something that overwhelms and upsets the balance of things, and the patients condition spirals downwards.
Also when considering how different people can react so differently to the same disease, we are probably not far along enough in our understanding of all the factors that go into making a person. For example since its now quite mainstream to consider the array of roles that gut flora have in human health, I find it incresingly hard to think about myself as a single organism, as opposed to something more akin to an ecosystem!
WWWeed
Bandwidth Bandit
Looks like it's potentially come from bats to snakes to humans.
www.businessinsider.com
Experts think bats are the source of the Wuhan coronavirus. At least 4 pandemics have originated in these animals.
Both the Wuhan coronavirus and the SARS virus likely jumped from bats to other animals, which then passed it to humans.
www.businessinsider.com
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elbows
Well-Known Member
I dont have a number in mind right now, I'll let you know if/when I do.
Certainly it is thought that surface material, quantity of virus deposited, temperature and humidity levels all have a big effect on this. Probably one of the factors in why some diseases are seasonal.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Experts think bats are the source of the Wuhan coronavirus. At least 4 pandemics have originated in these animals.
Both the Wuhan coronavirus and the SARS virus likely jumped from bats to other animals, which then passed it to humans.
Bats have long been implicated as coronavirus hosts. And an intermediate animal is often thought to be involved in the animal->human outbreaks in the past. But expert opinion did not seem kind towards the snake theory, I'm probably not going to get a chance to go back and check but I think they thought the methodology of the study that implicated snakes was flawed.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
First confirmed coronavirus case 'most likely' already in UK health chief warns
Director of health protection for Public Health England expects there are cases already in Britain, but said country is ready to cope.
inews.co.uk
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Coronsvirus (that being a whole family of viruses), I’d stick my neck out and say a small number of hours at most. Though in colder environments it may do better.
Total guess, I am not a virologist but know numbers for a couple of viruses etc.
Baronage-Phase
Well-Known Member
It was rte news that said drs said the student was ok. I thought that was weird.
Maybe they're trying to stop people panicking?
Rte news also claimed other students had gone to the college authorities because they were concerned.
Cid
Proper break this time
I suspect they just wanted to be relevant... 'We have someone related to current news story, we can do more personal interest stuff'. In all likelihood the student is fine, only a fraction of Wuhan's population was infected (as far as we know) before the lockdown. However it's obviously a sensible precaution for them to be at home until a reasonable period has passed/tests have been run.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Surely what would be weird would be a doctor saying the student was not ok, given their lack of symptoms.
That is usually a consideration when it comes to public health communication. A lot of the time its done without being in any way misleading. Dramatic examples of it being done in terrible ways can be found in human history for sure, but there is so much independent scrutiny via the net these days that some flavours of historical error would probably be hard to repeat in modern times.
There will still be times where I think a particular message is incomplete or misleading - a portion of me picking at things in the press including quotes from experts will be about this.
Completely covering up or delaying the release of particular data can still be an issue, and that can be hard to spot. Its not unusual to see certain establishment messages have a change in tone, before the public are actually treated to the data that lead to the change of message/policy/stance. Again in this modern era the timescales are all compressed, so we might only be talking about hours or a day. And sometimes it is actually valid to wait for extra confirmation of something before making it public, but people in government etc are still informed and may start to act on of preliminary findings in advance. I'd rather more open societies where we are all first class recipients of timely data, but it would have some interesting implications for things likepublic communication and panic prevention.
For example right now I have no way to detect or measure any lag between the figures China is publishing about confirmed cases, and the picture they have in private. There is bound to be some, and as has already come up in this thread, its also very easy to use various models to come up with all sorts of numbers and assumptions that get used in policy decision making in the absence of real data.
There will be some reasonable responses and concerns, and there will also be some very grim human behaviour as a result of the current fears. A lot of the human suffering wont come directly from the virus at all, but rather some of the responses to it.
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cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Well clearly they are, otherwise they would be in hospital, but it is not unreasonable for other students to be concerned.
What you need to do, is not to panic, you are probably in the safest part of Europe.
Baronage-Phase
Well-Known Member
Not panicking...
But I have bought face masks and I have rooted out my sister's swimming goggles.
Idaho
blah blah blah
Not sure sloth really generates many clicks.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I've only had time to hae a first initial stab at this tonight.
I'm using a technique where I find a report that has an obvious interest in reaching certain conclusions, and then I treat their findings as a suitably biased worst-case possibility.
In this case, a research report looking at coronavirus survival on a bunch of different surface materials. One where "This research was supported by the Copper Development Association, New York, and the International Copper Association, New York." so we would expect them to want to show that coronavirus could hang around for quite some time on various surfaces, but would have a much harder time on a copper surface. And yeah, thats what they found.
Anyway, point being that they summarised their findings as it having the potential to survive on surfaces for 'several days'.
As you can probably tell I am not bothering to give a proper overview of this report, and am far from describing it as the perfect answer to your question. I just chose it because it was the second one I found on the overall subject, and I dont have time to look for or read others today. But here it is anyway: Human Coronavirus 229E Remains Infectious on Common Touch Surface Materials
Note that they were using a different coronavirus. Hopefully this point will mostly go without saying when it comes to any other historical reports I dig up, since the current coronavirus is so new to us, plus all the scary coronavirus types (SARS,MERS) are subject to strict biosafety controls that reduces the scope for certain experiments and the amount of study in general.
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Idaho
blah blah blah
Vaseline inside your nose? That's recommended on airlines for people with weakened immune systems.Not panicking...
But I have bought face masks and I have rooted out my sister's swimming goggles.
Cid
Proper break this time
Asymptomatic cases don't (necessarily) brush things off though... They simply become an environment where - for whatever reason - the pathogen and host are able to exist in something like a symbiotic relationship for a certain period of time. And, as you know, that can be very effective in terms of the transmission of the pathogen... The disease is still there, still spreading, just less so within the host. Looking at the figures for asymptomatic flu, which are far, far higher than I ever expected (somewhere from 50-80% depending on what you count as asymptomatic/who's asking) asymptomatic infections are perhaps more the norm than not. Fascinating area, not a rabbit hole I have time to go down though. And that's before thinking about the evolutionary and sociological side.
Tangent: I wonder whether it's some specific tick that causes a normal incubation/inactive period to be extended. You have to wonder whether typhoid Mary ever caught colds, or developed other illnesses (well, she died of pneumonia, but at 69 following a stroke and years of isolation), i.e whether it was something very specific to the way her body and the typhoid bacillus interacted, or something to do with her immune response to all diseases.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I have a 'strong immune system' and it has good and bad points. Some infections I can shrug of more quickly than others, and I seem anecdotally to get fewer illnesses than the average person. Sometimes though my body makes a mountain out of a molehill and an ordinary cold will knock me on my arse for an extended period of time because my immune system hasn't got the memo that the bad stuff has gone and it can chill the fuck out now. Also live vaccines completely fuck me up, because my body doesn't know what 'attenuated' means. I'm now on medical advice not to have any more of them.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Sounds daft to me. The mucus in your nose is constantly trapping stuff and dropping it down the back of your throat into the handy acid pit below. Shove vaseline up there and the cillia that shift the mucus won't work, so you'll just be keeping any nasties hanging around in a vulnerable part of your anatomy for longer.
Baronage-Phase
Well-Known Member
Never heard of that.
I doubt it would be enough protection for an immunocompromised patient. Considering that even when I go to the gp now they put me in isolation in a little storage room away from other patients. They haven't handed me a tub of vaseline......yet...
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
She basically had a superpower - and a pretty good one at that. Being effectively immune to pathogens (at least typhoid) - while killing people around you is an unfortunate side-effect - not a bad ability to have overall. Given she was incarcerated for quite a while if she did suffer other illness they might be documented somewhere.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
I think that your immune system has a genetic component. If your ancestors survived The Plague, its probably more likely that you would as well.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah 'brush things off' was supposed to be a loose term covering stuff I'm not educated enough to talk in detail about at the moment, but it implied stuff which hampered its looseness. So thanks for expanding on those possibilities.
I'm glad we at least reached the point some years ago of understanding the probably scale of asymptomatic flu infections. I dont know as much has been done about the implications of this yet, partly because a bunch of the implications make certain pro-active containment measures seem a good deal less purposeful. So I wont be surprised if that rabbit hole is under-explored in general, it can be demoralising. Some would rather fight the tip of the iceberg that is actually visible, and let that bit form the overwhelming majority of their perceptions of disease. Those doing modelling work should at least see the opportunitiy in exploring the otherwise invisible.
By the way, the technique used in that asymptomatic flu study you linked to is the same sort of thing I was on about in terms of how health authorities can get data on the mild cases of this new coronavirus that wont present themselves or be discovered through contact tracing. The serological testing, looking for antibodies in a sample of the general population after the fact.
I dont know if there is much consensus about things like what proportion of flu transmission is caused by asymptomatic or very mild cases. Its on my list to investigate, though obviously I'd prefer if I could learn of such things as they pertain to a coronavirus rather than flu, given the current situation.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
There is also a blood group component apparently. O makes you more suspectible to cholera it seems, and other groups to other diseases. I'm O - thankfully cholera isn't really a risk here.
is it twelve monkeys time yet?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
It has a very large genetic component, but I’m not sure it works like that.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Some clues: Scientists get a handle on what made Typhoid Mary’s infectious microbes tick
I'll go back on topic now!
elbows
Well-Known Member
A wobbly start on the clear and consistent advice front:
(a minor part of Britons in Wuhan will be offered help to leave, Hancock tells MPs )
(a minor part of Britons in Wuhan will be offered help to leave, Hancock tells MPs )
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
Cool - I'm going to tell my employer I've been to Wuhan over the weekend and need several weeks off.
