graihmachree
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User ID: 2226
graihmachree
10mo ago
I'm not sure I share your views on whether immune debt is an unsupported position in the broader scientific community, but suspect that appealing to consensus may be unproductive.
Maybe the difference arises in the type of pathogen being discussed. A brief taxonomy could be the below:
- Rabies- no benefit to natural exposure as exposure is lethal. Vaccination/avoidance only means of reducing this.
- Cholera etc- natural exposure should be avoided due to high risk. Avoidance of causative agent possible.
- Influenza- high but limited number of strains. Some strains (e.g. Spanish Flu) lethal. Prognosis depends on strain, previous exposure, general immune strength.
- Colds etc- lots of disease causing agents. Prognosis typically mild or subclinical depending on prior exposure and general immune strength.
I agree that you avoid (1) and (2) if possible.
For (3), it depends on the costs and consequences. Through the veil of ignorance, I personally think we opt for as high an exposure as possible to the extent this is typically mild. This can be via vaccinations or general exposure: to the extent that lower cost options such as vaccines are available, they should be taken, and the equation may change as technology moves ( for example a universal flu vaccine would negate the benefits of natural exposure).
For (4) I think you just take the mild cost.
So in this view, avoiding some pathogens is healthier, but for others it increases the effects of related pathogens so it is not healthier on the net.
graihmachree
10mo ago
On your comment on the differences in innate immunity in different human lineages, you're absolutely right and I was being imprecise in my wording. Mea culpa.
On the broader point, I think that you are potentially neglecting the common phenomenon of traveller's flu for the South to North traveller. People do get ill due to e.g. diffetences in circulating influenza strains. Agree that illness in the North to South traveller is more likely and severe due to the broader range and exposure to excitingly virulent pathogens.
You are of course right to say that the innate does a lot of the work, but for potential pathogens that can evade the initial response, then as you know a major factor in the severity of the illness (I.e length and how debiliating it is) is the existence of relevant B- or T- memory cells. My argument is that fewer relevant memory cells (etc) exist if you have experienced fewer relevant infections due to reduced exposure. Vaccines can close some but not all of the gap simply due to sheer range of potential pathogens.
Perhaps a relevant example would be a person from 1910 time travelling to 1925, at which point the Spanish Flu is still circulating. They would have a higher risk of dying from Spanish Flu than the average 1925 person because they do not have previous exposure to the strain itself, or to the various similar strains circulating post-1917 and generating relevant cross-reactions.
I think the only way masks work out for reducing severe illness long-term is if there is indeed a dose effect that results in exposure to the same pathogens but milder illness. If masks are so effective that one only gets ill vanishingly irregularly, then the risk of that occasional illness being severe are increased due to lack of relevant previous exposure. If masks are not effective at all such that one has a similar immune profile to the general population, then there is little point in wearing them.
graihmachree
10mo ago
I acknowledge that our understanding of the immune system remains pretty limited, but we are pretty certain that getting sick is bad for you
My understanding is not so much that getting sick is bad for you but rather that sickness occurs when your innate and specific immune systems are unable to stop/manage the replication of a given microorganism within the body without broader measures (fever, inflammation, production of mucus).
In terms of whether that is long-term bad, some sicknesses are indeed debilitating, and if one could achieve the same net outcome with less severe symptoms then it would clearly be preferable to do so. This is what happens with live accentuated vaccines in particular- a very mild illness (possibly subclinical) occurs that trains the specific immune system to recognise a feature of the attenuated pathogen common to the actual disease, resulting in reduced or eliminated illness when the actual disease is encountered.
I think the point is that this process occurs on a much broader scale on a daily basis as one travels through life. You are constantly exposed to microbes, and you can think of the body using mild or non- illness generating microbes of the same type as the training set for its response to novel (i.e. new to the body) pathogens. More data and more similar data= better response to a new pathogen.
The risk of actively trying to reduce illness by avoiding social contact and wearing a mask is that you are successful and your immune system "drifts" out of sync with the rest of the population. This is due to a reduced training set meaning that more pathogens are novel to the body.
If this occurs, then novel pathogens that would not harm the broader population due to previous exposures to them or related microbes still harm you because you have missed that exposure. The resulting illness will consequently be more severe because you have no cross-immunity, and so your immune system is effectively starting from scratch in its response.
You might object that the whole point is to avoid any airborne pathogen through masking and thus no risk of illness actually arises. However, a) you still have some social contact and thus disease vector and b) the countermeasures are only risk reduction not elimination. As your immune system drifts, then the range of potential pathogens increases as you lose cross-immunity. You therefore have the a lower absolute risk of being exposed to a given microbe, but the relative risk in the event of exposure is greater.
At the most extreme, uncontacted tribes have immune systems highly adapted to their limited social circle and environment: and no immunity against common circulating pathogens that generally cause mild illness such as influenza. This is not due to intrinsic immune differences between them and the rest of humanity, but rather a consequence of limited exposure.
Hope that explains why one might not wish to "mask up". I've not got into whether masks result in lower initial pathogen counts (and if so whether this is practically advantageous) or the broader effectiveness or social desirability of masks.
graihmachree
1yr ago
You've said you're doing a Master's, so I presume you've just started term. It might be helpful to join 2-3 societies (including both something you've got experience in and something you've not done before). Although the sense of alienation will likely be there in the short term, in the medium term your shared interests should mean that you gradually bond- if you put in some effort and go to socials etc.
Another angle- look for people who are at a more similar stage in life to you or have a similar outlook. I think there's a bit of an illusion that everyone at that age is into similar activities- primarily drinking, clubbing, and posting on social media. There will however be a significant minority not into these things that are by nature more difficult to find. Often they converge in "nerdy" societies or optional additional classes - the difficulty being the attendant frequency in such societies of those whom you wouldn't want to be friends with in the first place. Another option is looking for your "graduate"-type student union, where there is a higher proportion of people who are older and therefore more likely to be relatable.
On the future- not much to say really! If you like money, I wouldn't knock an office job too much: regardless of degree or experience to date, you could do a law conversion course or go into accountancy or consultancy, all of which are established and potentially well-paying career paths which can be intellectually interesting on the day to day. I don't know what either of your degrees are in, so there may be further options. It's probably worth exploring what you want from a job, in terms of pay/hours/conditions/intellectual stimulation (possibly with your uni's careers advisors) and going from there.
Having said that, there's no real requirement to start work immediately after graduating. Indeed, a number of my peers were out of work for a year or so and then landed good jobs when they started actually applying. You could acquire capital over (say) 3 months and then either travel abroad or look for opportunities in your country for bed-and-board volunteering opportunities. These would have the virtue of not being office jobs (so you can see if you like it) and also immersing you in socialising with people who are not your kin. Hostels and small-scale farms spring to mind as typical opportunities of this kind.
I've gone on too long, so key takeaways: life does not end at 25; lots of people are only just entering their careers/ finding partners at 30+; push yourself to spend more time with other people and less time browsing and it will gradually become easier.
graihmachree
1yr ago
I think (without initially opining on whether or not it's true that unborn babies recognise their mother's voice) that the evidence demanded sets too high a bar. It's not necessary for the child to remember their mother's voice at a later age for it to have an impact on their development, as Catsnakes is implying. It just needs to have an impact on their early life and then the effects can snowball from there.
For example, if the baby post-birth is less likely to settle when held by its not-mother (versus a hypothetical alternative where it was held by its mother) because it didn't recognise the not-mother's voice, this in turn goes on to impact how it relates to the not-mother at later ages, and so on into its broader relationships with other humans. Early development is important, and personality emerges at an early age, with newborns being different from birth.
To the object-level point: unborn babies respond differently to recordings of their mother's voice versus a stranger's- implying recognition. There's no reason why this recognition would cease post-birth. Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12741744/
I think I disagree with the statement that various types of flu/colds do not generate any immunity: they simply fail to generate sufficient immunity to avoid symptomatic infection, which is why the new strains are able to circulate in the fairst place.
Now you can reasonably disagree that this cross-reactivity actually matters in terms of disease length/prognosis if you're still not immune enough to avoid getting ill, and I'm not sure whether it has been tested empirically. But it makes intuitive sense at least, and the principle seems to be accepted e.g. in this 2009 paper looking at swine flu immunity in the general population https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0911580106
Overall, seems like a hard thing to study. Would be interesting if someone did an East/West study on whether flu is actually worse in the East due to reduced exposure (noting that it might still be less prelevant on the net due to effective masking). I would fall back on the statement that either masks are effective and decrease your exposure to disease and therefore your immunity relative to the unmasked population, or ineffective and therefore pointless.
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