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Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

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Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#61

Post by faitswulff »

nradov wrote: post #57
faitswulff wrote: post #4

There's a difference between being exposed to dirt and being exposed to viral diseases, though. Playing outside in the leaves will likely trigger healthy immune responses. Contracting COVID-19 may lead to long term health issues.

It's not just dirt. Traditionally people lived in close proximity to a variety of domestic animals. Most viruses originated in animals and then crossed to humans. So our immune systems evolved to cope with that exposure.

I personally doubt we need zoonotic diseases to calibrate a healthy immune response. I also believe the close association of people and animals was more salient to European populations than elsewhere, and furthermore we didn’t evolve in an environment where you could expose or be exposed to thousands of people on a regular basis. So I’m not sure I’m convinced by an anthropological argument here.

And IIRC, the hygiene hypothesis mostly has to do with autoimmune diseases and our immune systems not learning how to differentiate between serious threats and harmless exposure.

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#62

Post by curtis3389 »

9985479945_ wrote: post #44
bequanna wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Contracting COVID-19 may lead to long term health issues. Uh-huh. And what percentage of people who contract have "long term health issues"? This is just more scaremongering based on self-reporting and anecdotes.

This comment is dangerous and problematic. Your ISP is hopefully monitoring this disinformation

Perhaps this comment is dangerous and problematic.

The idea that your ISP should be monitoring the semantic content of their customers is disturbing, and you imply that they should do something about content that, what?, they don't like? That they think is illegal? That the government tells them to report on?

This is constantly recurring debate on HN. What is the appropriate level of censorship? Who should be censoring? By what criteria is something censorable?

I emphatically disagree with the notion that ISPs should do the censoring. They should be neutral carriers of data.

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#63

Post by loveistheanswer »

faitswulff wrote: post #36
clairity wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you supposed herd immunity develops without low level exposure to viruses and organisms (which is what's in the dirt)? it's quite likely we've prolonged the pandemic by excessively curtailing exposure, which in turn dampens in vivo immune response necessary for natural herd immunity in the population. the 1918 flu, which killed 10-20% of the infected, was worthy of that kind of avoidance response, not this vir…

Have you heard of any coronavirus variants coming out of South Korea, China, or New Zealand? No. That’s because they don’t have uncontrolled spread there, which leads to mutations due to the virus’s exposure to heterogenous immunity in the population. So uncontrolled spread doesn’t necessarily shorten the duration of the pandemic. All of which is actually incidental to the point I was making, that the hygiene hypothe…

>Have you heard of any coronavirus variants coming out of South Korea, China, or New Zealand? No. That’s because they don’t have uncontrolled spread there, which leads to mutations due to the virus’s exposure to heterogenous immunity in the population.

That's one hypothesis.

Don't particular populations already have a degree of natural herd immunity to viruses which are commonly found in their proximity, compared to populations on the other side of the world who do not?

Like how Europeans brought their diseases, which they had built up immunity against, to the Americas which then decimated the indigenous populations.

Could we hypothesize that many Asians have a stronger natural immunity to covid19?

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#64

Post by spookthesunset »

me_me_me wrote: post #50
giantg2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The moment we beat the covid..." I hope you're right, but I feel like that's overly optimistic.

With working vaccines its the matter of when not if. What makes you think otherwise?

When the average 36 year old American overestimates their chance of dying from covid by 1000x and any comment that goes against the “be scared” narrative.... when I get called “dangerous” for posting public data from state covid dashboards because my post shows this isn’t that bad, relatively speaking.... a lot of people are gonna have some serious long term mental trauma.

It seriously feels like people want to this to be the worst thing ever.

Source is this fascinating dataset: http://covid19pulse.usc.edu/

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#65

Post by IvyMike »

wmeredith wrote: post #7
faitswulff wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Wet markets" are just farmers' markets.

Eh, there aren’t live animals available for slaughter on the spot at any of the hundreds of farmer’s market I’ve been to in the US Midwest.

Haven't seen this at farmers markets. But on the other hand I just bought two live lobsters at Vons.

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#66

Post by jshevek »

addicted wrote: post #39
clairity wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you supposed herd immunity develops without low level exposure to viruses and organisms (which is what's in the dirt)? it's quite likely we've prolonged the pandemic by excessively curtailing exposure, which in turn dampens in vivo immune response necessary for natural herd immunity in the population. the 1918 flu, which killed 10-20% of the infected, was worthy of that kind of avoidance response, not this vir…

This is such utter nonsense. In countries which did allow the pandemic to spread healthcare systems were quickly overloaded and people died in droves, not just from the pandemic but also from not being able to receive care for other healthcare issues.

The first sentence adds nothing of value to your response.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#67

Post by faitswulff »

clairity wrote: post #58
faitswulff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of any coronavirus variants coming out of South Korea, China, or New Zealand? No. That’s because they don’t have uncontrolled spread there, which leads to mutations due to the virus’s exposure to heterogenous immunity in the population. So uncontrolled spread doesn’t necessarily shorten the duration of the pandemic. All of which is actually incidental to the point I was making, that the hygiene hypothe…

mutations happen not as a response to effective defenses as implied by 'heterogenous immunity', but because the replication process is chaotic, introducing a range of defects and accidental benefits. it's a random process as likely to prolong as it is to shorten the duration, so has no persuasive power in your direction. as for your second point, we're exposed to coronaviruses of all sorts already (viruses that have…

Immunity plus uncontrolled spread necessarily exposes the virus to selective pressures to mutate resistance to those immunities.

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#68

Post by 6DM »

me_me_me wrote: post #50
giantg2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The moment we beat the covid..." I hope you're right, but I feel like that's overly optimistic.

With working vaccines its the matter of when not if. What makes you think otherwise?

Unfortunately people have to actually take those vaccines, there's a high percentage of people saying no and/or waiting to see how things play out.

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#69

Post by sterlind »

me_me_me wrote: post #50
giantg2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The moment we beat the covid..." I hope you're right, but I feel like that's overly optimistic.

With working vaccines its the matter of when not if. What makes you think otherwise?

if new variants escape inoculation by the vaccine, and keep coming about faster than new vaccines can be produced and administered.

Re: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts

#70

Post by spookthesunset »

faitswulff wrote: post #4

There's a difference between being exposed to dirt and being exposed to viral diseases, though. Playing outside in the leaves will likely trigger healthy immune responses. Contracting COVID-19 may lead to long term health issues.

Any respiratory virus can cause long term health issues in some people. Covid is absolutely not unique in that regard.
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