#immunity

[lowkeylamar26]

[liberalsarecool]

Republican judges are not legal scholars.

They are Federalist Society hack$.

[rubixramblings]

Yeen Fact #334: Immune Yeen

Yeen Fact #334: "Spotted hyenas routinely survive pathogens that wipe out other large carnivores. Field studies show they shrug off rabies, canine distemper, and even anthrax outbreaks that decimate neighbouring lions and wild dogs. Researchers link this resilience to an unusually robust immune system that has highly responsive toll-like receptors and potent antibody profiles that neutralise deadly bacteria and viruses before they gain a foothold." This has been another fun Hyena Fact.

[unbfacts]

A Stanford Medicine study suggests humans do not age in a smooth straight line. It found two big “bursts” around ages 44 and 60, when about 81% of tracked molecules and microbes shifted, in ways linked to metabolism, heart health, immune function, and even how the body handles caffeine.

[pristineslug]

happy one year of charm by clairo!

[tzifron]

You Don't Have Immunity Debt

Pass it on.

You know how sometimes you catch someone in a lie, and so they tell an even bigger lie to try and cover up the first lie they told?

Well, that's happening right now.

Last winter, a handful of celebrity doctors went on mainstream news networks to assure us that Omicron was "mild." They carpet-bombed us with articles and tweets, doing their best to brainwash everyone.

They were wrong.

In the end, real science junked that idea. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that Omicron killed more people than previous variants, even when adjusting for other factors. Another study by doctors at Massachusetts General and Harvard Medical found that Omicron was just as deadly. In fact, "the risks of hospitalization and mortality were nearly identical." As it turns out, the entire idea of "mild" Omicron was based on an old, flawed idea known as the law of declining virulence, developed by a doctor who was studying tick-borne disease in cows. It was debunked decades ago.

Most epidemiologists know that viruses don't magically evolve to become milder. Virus evolution is random and chaotic.

In some cases, viruses evolve to become more deadly.

A handful of actual scientists tried to explain all this last winter, including disease experts at Johns Hopkins. A handful of other established experts spoke out against this myth. As a microbiologist at Penn State told Politifact, "You can’t just say it’s going to become nicer." They were largely ignored, because everyone already sort of believed the misinformation. If they knew it was based on a study about cows, they probably would've thought twice.

This year, the makers of "it's mild" are back.

They're selling "immunity debt."

We should be skeptical.

Schools and daycares are sending letters home to parents talking about this "immunity debt.” They’re saying that healthy children are getting sicker, even dying, because they weren't exposed to enough germs over the last two years. Newspapers and TV stations across the country are running with it, proposing it as a "possible reason" for this year's explosion in pediatric hospitalizations. Meanwhile, major medical organizations have sent a letter to President Biden urging him to declare an emergency over an “alarming surge of pediatric hospitalizations” due to a range of respiratory viruses, including Covid.

A lot of people are drinking the "immunity debt" kool-aid.

After all, Americans have believed for generations that getting sick is "good for you." We think our immune system behaves like a muscle. We worry that if we're not giving it a workout, we'll get weak.

It's a myth, just like the law of declining virulence.

Here's why.

[softvampirewhump]

A vampire burning themselves in the sun little by little thinking they can build an immunity.