This is yet more evidence that living in overly sterile environments isn't good for overall health. We have a bad tendency to focus on specific narrow health goals while missing the big picture.
Hold on. Compared to the ancestral environment, we have:
* Much more sterile environments for fomites. We wash everything including our hands
* Much more sterile environments for water pathogens
* Much less sterile environments for respiratory viruses. We now have indoor sealed buildings that allow aerosols to build up. Ancestral humans would not have had this
It seems to me that we could plausibly use less sterility in terms of stuff we touch, but more sterility in terms of air.
Water seems fine as it is: you see some pretty bad results in places with water borne pathogens.
On what basis can you argue we evolved to have more respiratory pathogens than present, given the lack of indoor environments in the past?
When speaking of "ancient times" we should really define more precisely who do we talk about - there were a huge differences between say citizens of Ancient Rome and some tribesman culture of Amazonia in terms of exposure to the pathogens.
We nowadays live in more sterile conditions, but we also live in a way bigger communities than ever, with significantly more population mobility - which makes us on average potentially exposed to a much wider spectrum of different germs in one's lifetime than it was a case ever before. When modern ppl get in contact with isolated tribes, although they're living whole lives in totally non-sterile conditions, it's almost always the modern people who will make them sick, not the other way around.
> This is yet more evidence that living in overly sterile environments isn't good for overall health.
You could make that argument but here it appears it's not a lasting immune response but an ephemeral one which requires an active rhinovirus infection and antigen response to be protective.
It's also not definitive and the article mentions the possibility of cytokine storms.
If 'exposure to the common cold at some point in the past' led to improved immune response to Covid then this would be evidence to support your point.
What this article is saying is that exposure to the cold virus at exactly the right point in time helps the immune system fight Covid. That's a small window that isn't overly helped by general exposure. You could even imagine it would be made worse - if we're all exposed to the cold all the time we've developed more immunity and this mechanism might not happen.
Oddly, stating it this way feels like a reasonable explanation for why kids were so spared. During cold season, they are continuously exposed, it seems.
I'm still sceptical of any broad generalization here.
I'm not sure how this information improves the fight against COVID. Is the argument that everyone should be constantly sick with a cold instead? How many people have a cold at any one time, and what are the odds those same people would be infected with COVID? There's also no mention of whether that would give lasting COVID immunity, or if it would just swing around for when the person isn't actively sick. I don't know if the Mr Burns method of fighting COVID is a particularly great idea.
I’m surprised to see people disparaging natural immunity. This news about the rhinovirus is great. We should not turn our backs on any method of reaching herd immunity. There was previous news that one of the coronavirus cold strains also provided good immune response to sars-cov2. And of course cov2 itself has proven to produce a very effective antibody response such that those for whom it is less dangerous than flu might consider trying to get infected (don’t take my words as medical advice; talk to your doctor!). I’d consider bringing my young kids to a ‘pox party’ to help get things under control, given the latest evidence. The only reason I don’t still is social pressure, but the science is getting pretty clear that this virus is more like chicken pox than we thought, including it’s age dependent effect curve.
Especially now that we’re seeing that the effect of current vaccines is waining over 6-12 months, it’s time to start thinking more widely as the first people with the vaccine are coming back into risk. Animal reservoir data suggests this choice might be forced anyway - we can’t go vaccinating all the bats.
> I’m surprised to see people disparaging natural immunity. This news about the rhinovirus is great. We should not turn our backs on any method of reaching herd immunity.
Nobody’s disparaging natural immunity, they just rightly said “I’m not sure this helps much”.
And it really doesn’t seem to, because all this research says is “if you’re infected with a rhinovirus at the exact right moment immediately before catching COVID, there might be an immune benefit (or it might trigger a cytokine storm). Catch the rhinovirus before or after that point, and there’s no immune benefit whatsoever”
Given the extremely narrow window of opportunity, you’d have to, somehow, carry a rhinovirus with you and dose yourself just before you caught COVID. It’s wildly impractical, and I can’t imagine why or how you would think this “gets us closer to herd immunity”. What the research does not claim is “having caught a cold at any point is protective against COVID”
> And it really doesn’t seem to, because all this research says is “if you’re infected with a rhinovirus at the exact right moment immediately before catching COVID, there might be an immune benefit (or it might trigger a cytokine storm). Catch the rhinovirus before or after that point, and there’s no immune benefit whatsoever”
That isn't what this says. This research looks at one aspect of the immune response (interferons), and concludes there's a benefit to up-regulating interferon response early in SARS-CoV2 infection.
You cannot leap to the conclusion that "there's no benefit whatsoever" in other situations. The research didn't look at other questions.
This doesn't seem like a treatment for covid yet, and no actual medicine is involved even though interferon is mentioned.
More like modern recognition of a natural interactive effect between micro-organisms which might have even predated humanity itself.
>“There are hidden interactions between viruses that we don’t quite understand, and these findings are a piece of the puzzle we are just now looking at,” Foxman said.
This could be a very promising area of study and a major step toward understanding not just covid.
Maybe even things like phage therapy where certain viruses attack and kill bacteria.
Plus when you think about it Staph is a deadly bacteria which can sometimes get out-of-control, but there are variants of it too and supposedly a major percentage of the population carries it at all times without apparent ill effect.
What if that Staph is one that fights back against a virus and gives some protection against covid itself? May be far-fetched but one thing's for sure, the collection of the additional data would be nearly frictionless. Especially compared to lots of other data struggles.
You have to figure that micro-organisms have been fighting against each other for a while now, and could very well have had millions of years to refine their tactics before mammals even came along.
If for no other reason than sheer boredom.
Plus things that have survived have been at somewhat of a stalemate for at least a few millennia, penicillin was a natural bacteriotoxin that had been produced by a type of mold the whole time, just waiting to be discovered.
> I’m surprised to see people disparaging natural immunity. This news about the rhinovirus is great. We should not turn our backs on any method of reaching herd immunity.
I'm not disparaging, I'm asking if it actually grants any. Does the body actually learn to fight COVID if it's just throw up defenses for the Cold?
> I’d consider bringing my young kids to a ‘pox party’ to help get things under control, given the latest evidence.
Pox parties only worked because the parents and grandparents were already immune. Instead you're creating your own little super-spreader event that will move through whoever they come in contact with. People wouldn't have done Pox parties if they thought they were going to kill grandma with them. Also, please keep in mind that, like chicken pox, while many children will be OK, some don't, so much so that children's hospitals currently need help[1].
> Pox parties only worked because the parents and grandparents were already immune. Instead you're creating your own little super-spreader event that will move through whoever they come in contact with
I'm not suggesting we do it willy nilly. This summer could have been a great opportunity to organize camps with immune adults overseeing such events.
412 people under 18 in the US died from COVID, whereas non-covid pnumonia is 924 (both in spite of measures to control respiratory viruses). It's pretty clear that the benefit of such parties on older people would outweigh the cost to the kids, especially when you factor in the exploding teen suicide rate attributable in part to the lockdowns affecting social lives.[1]
"The findings in this report are subject to at least nine limitations. First, these data are not nationally representative. Second, facility participation varies within and across states; however, data were only analyzed from facilities that reported consistently over the study period, thus minimizing the impact of reporting fluctuations on resultant trends. Third, differences in availability, coding practices, and reporting of chief complaints and discharge diagnoses from facilities might influence results returned by the syndrome definition. Fourth, distinguishing initial visits from follow-up visits for the same event was not possible, so the number of ED visits for suspected suicide attempts might be lower than presented. Fifth, NSSP race and ethnicity data were not available at the national level for this analysis at the time it was conducted, so analyses of differences among racial/ethnic groups was not possible. Sixth, these data likely underrepresent the true prevalence of suspected suicide attempts because persons with less severe injuries might be less likely to seek emergency care during the pandemic when many persons avoided medical settings to reduce the risk for contracting COVID-19. Seventh, the suspected suicide attempt syndrome definition excludes some, but not all, visits for nonsuicidal self-harm. Eighth, the sharp decline in all ED visits during the pandemic likely affected the number and proportion of visits for suspected suicide attempts (6). Finally, this analysis was not designed to determine whether a causal link existed between these trends and the COVID-19 pandemic."
I don't think it does anything to help in the fight against COVID, but it does highlight potential unanticipated adverse effects of COVID mitigation measures -- e.g., what's going to be the impact on the immune systems of kids that end up being "socially-distanced" for N years?
From what the first 5 weeks of my son returning to school in person, very little. Even with required masks the common cold is still making its way through his classroom. We know this because each kid basically is out for a day to get tested for COVID than comes back. So instead of ten kids getting sick all at once, it's progressing through one or two at a time.
Our current measures are blunting the spread of germs but by no means have we managed to hit a 'sterile' environment where there is no spread.
> what's going to be the impact on the immune systems of kids that end up being "socially-distanced" for N years?
Do you have kids? They're ... pretty good at getting germs, masks/social distancing or not. When they get exposed to a pathogen is largely luck anyway.
Nobody's in a sterile environment here. These kids are touching/licking stuff, picking noses, rubbing eyes, you name it.
I would further add that not only do we often have a tendency to focus on specific narrow health goals while missing the big picture, but it sometimes seems we are doing things (though perhaps in some cases unwittingly without the benefit of hindsight) at the expense of broader, long-term health goals as well.
Maybe this is really just our human nature and hubris ultimately doing us in. We focus on trying to resolve short-term, acute situations where the cost-benefit calculations are perhaps more tangible and easier to measure and understand, but as a result we ultimately fail to properly consider the possible longer-term costs of our actions, even if those may turn out to be more damaging (by some measure) in the long term. In the pursuit of an ephemeral benefit today, the negative and possibly persistent effects of our actions get massively discounted, with the burdens of cleaning up after our actions ultimately placed on our descendants. If solving some problem today causes some problems down the road, then we seem so sure today that somebody else will manage to figure it out then, ad infinitum. The ratchet can only tighten things so far before something breaks.
Problem is of course that it's not always possible to know long term effects when you make a decision on some more immediate benefit. So it's not like you're even making an informed trade-off.
As an example, I'd wager that the rise in childhood asthma/allergies is related to something that was thought to be (and maybe actually is) beneficial for children's health in the short term.
When I was a kid, there were a few people I knew of who had chronic issues with asthma and allergies but it seemed pretty unusual. Today, it seems like half the kids on my kids sport teams have inhalers or epi-pens or both.
I heard a few months ago that UK infant ICU was in a dangerous spot because babies had caught all the bugs. Someone born in March 2020 would hardly have been outside until they were 1, so would be getting their first exposure to respiratory illnesses late. Babies usually get a slow, trickling exposure. By getting exposed to so many minor illnesses at once, their immune systems overloaded and they ended up in ICU with 4 or 5 things at once.
No firm data, my mother is high up in UK health policy so I heard from her.
The best thing for your child is for them to socialise as much as possible with other kids. That means they will get sick. In normal times, 2-3% of babies end up in hospital with respiratory infections at some point. Obviously in the short run it sucks, but long run it's healthy.
As in, outside of the social bubble. Usually pre-school kids still have fairly active 'social calendars', with nursery, parent/child meetups, being dragged to family events. COVID stopped these, which stopped transmission.
In some places in the world you literally cannot go outside. We've been stuck inside for 4 weeks right now in Da Nang, Vietnam. We can go to the balcony, but that doesn't count, of course.
This is a symptom of the reductionist trend in much of modern medicine which focuses primarily on treating specific conditions with individual small-molecule drugs. That's not a bad approach necessarily; it makes the experiments easy and has produced excellent results in many areas. But it seems to be running out of steam with most of the low-hanging fruit already picked. Return on drug development costs is trending lower.
In order to make major new advances we'll need to go back and develop a better theoretical understanding of how all the moving pieces fit together through basic research.
nursing homes are filled with people knocking on death's door. They have degraded cardiac and lung function, aged immune systems, most are on lots of medications. All respiratory (i.e. easily transmissible) diseases hit nursing homes hard.
Correct. Other "common cold" coronaviruses have a high fatality rate in nursing homes. Realistically there's not much we can do to protect nursing home patients from highly infectious respiratory viruses. Cutting them off from human contact in sterile bubbles inflicts terrible psychological harm.
