Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

quantamagazine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 115 posts

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#31

Post by jimwhite42 »

msie wrote: post #28
sfblah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said isn’t controversial. It’s definitely right. The issue with masks is one side started treating them like a talisman that makes infection impossible, which provoked the other side to say they do nothing. On a population level, masks are probably close to ineffective against a viral pathogen. You can read the relevant Cochrane review to see that. On an individual level they obviously do something, but you…

That Cochrane review is faulty and one of the co-authors (Tom Jefferson) "works for the Brownstone Institute, a Covid-19 misinformation group that is powered by dark money." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/27/dont-b...

As far as I can tell, the issue is people misrepresenting what the review says, not that the review is faulty.

The review concludes that we have evidence that masks are effective, but the set of papers reviewed cannot be used to conclude we know the level of effectiveness enough to make accurate judgements on tradeoffs in many of the kinds of situations where people were asked to wear masks in the pandemic. So we don't know enough yet.

I read a bunch of the criticisms of this paper and criticism of the anti-maskers misrepresentation of what it said, and none of the ones I found suggested that there were missed papers which provide the precision the review didn't find.

The Guardian article is a mixed bag in my opinion. It tries to get around the idea that we really need more research, it confuses a lot of things.

(BTW, I am not an anti masker, I wore a mask, I find people who whine about wearing them to be a bit pathetic most of the time.)

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#32

Post by rootusrootus »

sfblah wrote: post #16
Sakos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons why masks are so important and why they don't need to be 100% effective. Just reducing the amount of viral load could turn a serious infection into something you might barely notice. edit: Imagine this being controversial. I didn't realize there were Covid deniers and skeptics here, because what I've stated is completely within established science.

What you said isn’t controversial. It’s definitely right. The issue with masks is one side started treating them like a talisman that makes infection impossible, which provoked the other side to say they do nothing. On a population level, masks are probably close to ineffective against a viral pathogen. You can read the relevant Cochrane review to see that. On an individual level they obviously do something, but you…

> For a surgical mask it was essentially nil.

Is the surgeon wearing a mask to protect himself from me, or to protect me from him?

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#33

Post by gregwebs »

Great to see statistical thinking. There have been a lot of Covid shouting matches because people are trying to reduce things to binary. Masks don’t work! Actually, they work as advertised- only 95% effective at best (and a cloth mask may be 30%), not a binary protected or not. That’s effective at blocking particles. You are still guaranteed to get some virus particles. They are going to be in your respiratory tract trying to replicate, and maybe some are replicating-does that mean you are infected in a clinically meaningful way? Depends.

Researchers will try to measure if some intervention like that works reporting binary PCR positive or negative- but we should want to know what was the severity of the illness. PCR positive with minor illness can be a good outcome indicating that the intervention helped lower the innoculum.

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#34

Post by meowkit »

Sakos wrote: post #5
curiousObject wrote: post #2

> A tiny enough dose may even serve to remind our immune system of a pathogen’s existence, boosting our antibody response to keep us protected against it. This article should be required reading, whatever your views on Covid and other conditions. Although the attack method of the infection is significant, and the potential victim’s defenses are significant, the raw quantity of infectious agent and the exposure rate a…

This is one of the reasons why masks are so important and why they don't need to be 100% effective. Just reducing the amount of viral load could turn a serious infection into something you might barely notice. edit: Imagine this being controversial. I didn't realize there were Covid deniers and skeptics here, because what I've stated is completely within established science.

Established science is an oxymoron.

Science is an on going process, always open to being overturned.

To the point of masks - I agree with your statement here, but a regular mask (filtered masks should help to some extent) will not protect you from an infected person. An infected person with a mask will reduce the chance of spreading their viral load.

This detail is where I feel people are talking past eachother. Most of covid denial to me seems to be about a psychological reactance to being told to mask up when they are not sick.

One might argue that the extra chance of reduced vectorization is worth mask mandates, but that simplistic purely “scientific” approach is its own problem. You have to argue people where they are at and convince them, not force the “right” view on them and then get upset they are “in denial” or skeptical.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#35

Post by vikramkr »

dilyevsky wrote: post #25
vikramkr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep that's called vaccination! No need to get a full blown infection it's how we eradicated smallpox

That’s not vaccination that’s inoculation which is how they originally prevented smallpox before they developed an actual vaccine

Its responsive to the parent question in that yes, we can have symptomless exposure to the infectious agent (or some part of it) and develop immunity. Maybe the distinction between using unweakened live pathogens and weakened or fragmented pathogens should have been emphasized but that didn't seem to the important part of the question

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#36

Post by wtallis »

rand0mx1 wrote: post #24
curiousObject wrote: post #2

> A tiny enough dose may even serve to remind our immune system of a pathogen’s existence, boosting our antibody response to keep us protected against it. This article should be required reading, whatever your views on Covid and other conditions. Although the attack method of the infection is significant, and the potential victim’s defenses are significant, the raw quantity of infectious agent and the exposure rate a…

It should be exposure time or do you mean something else with "exposure rate"

"Exposure time" usually implies you're spending some period of time in proximity to an effectively unlimited reservoir of the pathogen (eg. an infected person coughing frequently) and your exposure is at some level of concentration that depends on the type/route of exposure, so that the total amount of pathogen that ends up in your body to challenge your immune system is proportional to the duration of time you spend being continually exposed.

A phrase like "the raw quantity of infectious agent and the exposure rate" is calling attention to the fact that one brief intense exposure vs repeated small exposures over a long time span may have vastly different outcomes despite presenting your immune system with the same number of microbes to deal with.

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#37

Post by dbsights »

user_7832 wrote: post #17
swayvil wrote: post #4

There is also bodily vigor to consider. When you are strong you are resistant. When you are weak you are susceptible. The difference can be huge. It's a good argument for clean living, regular exercise etc.

Why is this downvoted? Hygiene and exercise is sound advice that any doctor'd agree with.

I think the portraits of the downvoters would fully explain this phenomenon

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#38

Post by epivosism »

pton_xd wrote: post #12
Sakos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons why masks are so important and why they don't need to be 100% effective. Just reducing the amount of viral load could turn a serious infection into something you might barely notice. edit: Imagine this being controversial. I didn't realize there were Covid deniers and skeptics here, because what I've stated is completely within established science.

> This is one of the reasons why masks are so important and why they don't need to be 100% effective. Just reducing the amount of viral load could turn a serious infection into something you might barely notice. It would be nice to have some numbers to back this up. Let's suppose the "viral load" to acquire a Covid infection is 18 particles, the same as norovirus detailed in the article. And let's say you're exposed…

All the factors you mention are scalar. You can wear 0,1,2,3 masks. You can be 1,2,3,10,20 feet away from the person for 0,1,5,10 minutes. I can come up with any number of such factors involving wind, lifetime of virus, the person's shedding rate, etc.

Given that, there will always be a border at which having an additional 50% coverage is useful. Where the actual line is, we don't know. But as long as protection is monotonic in the factors above, it's always valuable to have more protection, which implies even Trivial proof: Imagine someone with literally 10k masks all around them. You have to admit this is more safe than 1 mask. QED. You can call in meta factors like "in reality nothing matters" but you're arguing by consequences then, not actually disagreeing with the facts, just claiming they don't matter.

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#39

Post by mozman »

Sakos wrote: post #5
curiousObject wrote: post #2

> A tiny enough dose may even serve to remind our immune system of a pathogen’s existence, boosting our antibody response to keep us protected against it. This article should be required reading, whatever your views on Covid and other conditions. Although the attack method of the infection is significant, and the potential victim’s defenses are significant, the raw quantity of infectious agent and the exposure rate a…

This is one of the reasons why masks are so important and why they don't need to be 100% effective. Just reducing the amount of viral load could turn a serious infection into something you might barely notice. edit: Imagine this being controversial. I didn't realize there were Covid deniers and skeptics here, because what I've stated is completely within established science.

There shouldn’t be any requirements for masks. Want to wear one? Great. Should I have to? No.

Re: How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

#40

Post by PaulKeeble »

Last paragraphs are really important recommendations for how to end the pandemic.

"Masking, increased ventilation and distancing reduces the number of microbes you’re exposed to. Vaccination increases the infectious dose. "

We really need to move beyond vaccine only, its not working Covid is just too transmissible.

Post reply on HN