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How many microbes does it take to make you sick?

quantamagazine.org

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

#81

Post by AnthonBerg »

sokoloff wrote: post #78
AnthonBerg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a mask absolutist. Close family is at risk of severe illness or death from COVID. We provide for a small child. We do not have much margin. I’d like to ask you to imagine the social repercussions of masking. It’s hard . I do not want to be weird. I do not want to be an outcast, practically speaking. I don’t want to wear a mask. I just don’t have any margin in the other direction. Also: What is it about a hos…

I think hospital workers experience with wearing masks (and the resulting "they have chosen a mask size and from experience have adjusted the mask to make it comfortable and effective") and the ability for the hospital to prohibit facial hair in their workers that's incompatible with effective mask use are key differences between hospital staff and Joe/Jane Public on the streets. In terms of being weird: there are en…

Well said. Thank you.

I think I can also pretty decisively say that hospital purchasing optimizations give face-fitting masks a bad rap. The FFP2 masks that hospital staff wear here are cheap and very uncomfortable. This bleeds into society as a negative view.

There’s also another aspect: The difference between a N95/FFP2/whatever mask as part of the industrial production of a verifiable sanitization chain in a hospital on one hand, and on the other as a piece of fabric that’s ludicrously effective at stripping infectious particles from the air.

There are many more edge cases in a hospital, and many more pathogens. In private life – mine at least – it’s only really COVID that matters. In that case a mask can be reused again and again and it’s OK to touch it, basically.

—

Re. being weird:

I don’t mind.

The weirdness hurts the family. There’s a big, big gap of dissonance between what we need to do and what public health authorities say. This includes flat out demonstrably wrong statements about transmission where I live. This dissonance makes the family weird, and it has caused severe social isolation of a mother with a young child.

I want to assure the reader that we don’t ask for much. We are very, very polite. We don’t demand anything, we are not difficult.

It’s purely the astounding dissonance. People don’t know what to do and just fade away.

It’s a very painful way to be weird. You feel it in your bones and your soul how unnatural it is.

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

#82

Post by stopping »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #73
stopping wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assessment is a non-sequitur to the article. Surgeons wear masks to protect the patient, because masks are very effective at trapping both droplets and aerosols that are emitted from the wearer. They are not designed to protect the user from lingering aerosols as masks are too loose to form a good seal, so most air breathed in simply enters from around the sides of the mask.

Surgical masks defined as the ones that gape at the sides are comparatively ineffective at stopping aerosolized particles. The idea that ballistic droplets are the primary means of infection is the old, old misunderstanding. If we compare the objective of preventing transmission of pathogens from surgeon to patient to the objective of covering nudity, surgical masks are as effective as shorts. Seeing as the objective…

There are many studies which show that surgical masks are quite good at stopping a majority of expelled particles, even those well within the aerosolized size regime:

Surgical masks reduce outward aerosol-sized particles by at least 74%: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7

Surgical masks reduce outward COVID viral transmission by 73%, and viral RNA by 58%: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.00637-20

Outward filtering efficiency above 50% is certainly worth it compared to the cost of a surgeon wearing a mask. It's arguably worth it even at much lower efficiencies.

If you read my comment, you'll notice I'm not disagreeing on the aerosol/droplet size boundary. I'm arguing against the apparent subtext of your comment, which seems to indicate that surgical masks aren't effective at protecting patients.

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

#83

Post by XorNot »

api wrote: post #69
dorfsmay wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not anti vaccine, no need to out words in my mouth. My understanding of vaccine is that they use deactivated viruses but not small doses. My question is about live viruses, and if we can get exposed to small doses enough that will trigger a immunization mechanism without triggering a full blown infection? Or does it work to boost an existing immunity only.

There are many different kinds of vaccines that work in slightly different ways. “Vaccine” is a class of treatments akin to “anesthetic” or “antibiotic.” Some are weakened live agent. Some are killed or neutralized agent. Some are just a protein or other piece of the pathogen. Some like mRNA vaccines are code from the pathogen that causes your body to generate and then sensitize against something. There are probably…

It's quite possible the biggest issue with the COVID vaccines we have is that intramuscular injection produces a blood-borne immune response but the method of infection is through the lungs, and you get much less response there.

It's why there's been a lot of interest in inhalable vaccines[1] although getting them to market has had a lot of delays.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/nasal-covid-vacci...

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

#84

Post by brewdad »

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.

For Covid, yes. If we look at the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst affected populations were those young adults with strong immune systems. They basically went into overdrive and the bodies attempts to fight the infection caused irreparable damage to the host.

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

#85

Post by XorNot »

zby wrote: post #61

If 400 microbes that contact your body makes you sick - then what if one virus gets into a cell and produces 400 copies? It is certainly possible: "For example, SIV, a cousin and model for the HIV virus, is released from infected T cells with a burst size of ≈50,000 (BNID 102377) whereas cyanobacterial viruses have characteristic burst sizes of ≈40-80" http://book.bionumbers.org/how-many-virions-result-from-a-si... S…

No this is all statistics again: probability that a viral particles survives in the body, probability that it successfully enters the cell (this is all chemical kinetics so it's not 100%), probability the cell survives long enough to replicate the virus, probability of an immune response picking up the lyzed cell immediately and then repeat for the daughter copies.

An analogous process would be human fertilization: it technically only takes 1 sperm to fertilize an egg, but it's millions in order to make the probability of it happening meaningfully high enough.

Of course some viruses are stupidly good at this: it's estimated 5 norovirus particles will trigger a full blown infection.

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

#87

Post by sfblah »

jeffbee wrote: post #80
sfblah wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a fine line between a policy being intended to harm and just being stupid. Regardless of the rationale, I was just trying to demonstrate how such policies were in fact weaponized. You can do some reading about the Bay Area and debates over whether government policies are in bad faith. I think it’s at least arguable that some are in fact in bad faith (meaning, no one really thinks they’ll serve any public purp…

Nothing was "weaponized" by this order, which 100% of people ignored.

I wish what you were saying were true, but it just isn't. I'm a fairly serious runner -- 40-60 miles per week typically. The amount of nonsense I experienced during that year might surprise you. Dozens of different times I was yelled at on trails, in the street, etc. because I was "too close". I was threatened with violence multiple times. This was all in the context of trying as hard as I could in all cases to stay as far from people as possible -- 10 feet minimum -- and to pass them as expeditiously as I could. I avoided narrow trails in parks completely, etc. People went insane, and it was absolutely due to this policy.

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

#88

Post by AnthonBerg »

stopping wrote: post #82
AnthonBerg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgical masks defined as the ones that gape at the sides are comparatively ineffective at stopping aerosolized particles. The idea that ballistic droplets are the primary means of infection is the old, old misunderstanding. If we compare the objective of preventing transmission of pathogens from surgeon to patient to the objective of covering nudity, surgical masks are as effective as shorts. Seeing as the objective…

There are many studies which show that surgical masks are quite good at stopping a majority of expelled particles, even those well within the aerosolized size regime: Surgical masks reduce outward aerosol-sized particles by at least 74%: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7 Surgical masks reduce outward COVID viral transmission by 73%, and viral RNA by 58%: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.0…

Well said, thank you. Sincerely!

I’d like to reiterate my analogy of the shorts :)

Not least due to the subtle knock-on effects: surgical masks cast a fog on public awareness of face-fitting masks, which are superior in all respects (including comfort, which – case in point – came as a surprise when I tried one).

—

The effectiveness of face-fitting masks is so much greater that I honestly regard the use of surgical masks as morally indefensible.

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

#89

Post by sfblah »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #81
sokoloff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think hospital workers experience with wearing masks (and the resulting "they have chosen a mask size and from experience have adjusted the mask to make it comfortable and effective") and the ability for the hospital to prohibit facial hair in their workers that's incompatible with effective mask use are key differences between hospital staff and Joe/Jane Public on the streets. In terms of being weird: there are en…

Well said. Thank you. I think I can also pretty decisively say that hospital purchasing optimizations give face-fitting masks a bad rap. The FFP2 masks that hospital staff wear here are cheap and very uncomfortable. This bleeds into society as a negative view. There’s also another aspect: The difference between a N95/FFP2/whatever mask as part of the industrial production of a verifiable sanitization chain in a hospi…

Occam's razor here is that your interest in masks is a mental illness, and not because someone in your family is so immunocompromised or whatever that the mask is standing between that person and certain death. Is it possible that the latter is the case? Maybe. But in my view almost all cases of people stubbornly wearing masks are just psychiatric in nature.

I know my comment will just make you angry, because "you're different". But, maybe someone else will see it and consider their psychological state on this topic.

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

#90

Post by sfblah »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #74
sfblah wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage readers to read the “Main results” section of the review for themselves. It takes under 5 minutes. Don’t trust a commenter on any online forum on this topic (myself included), as it’s completely politicized.

Also read the studies themselves. And the criticism of the Cochrane-method review. And the studies not cited. As well as the studies on the mechanics of transmission.

I think people can rely on the authors to put the main results in the "Main results" section. What they can't rely on is potential nutters in Internet forums.
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