Contact with viral pathogens happens on a fairly regular basis and although it does not always lead to sickness, the exposure helps shore the immune system against the threat should the bugs be encountered again.
Comment: You can put this in the bag of things everyone already knew and which should have been taken into account but weren't.
Over the past 14 months or so, protracted restrictions on mixing and travel, alongside mask-wearing and social distancing, have not only reduced the risk of Covid but other respiratory bugs such as the flu - cases of which were basically nonexistent last winter, according to surveillance data largely encompassing England compiled by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP).
However, virologists are concerned about RSV, a virus that can cause serious lung infections requiring hospital admission, and sometimes even death, in children under the age of one - and for which there are no approved vaccines.
"Flu worries me, but there is a vaccine - and so the most vulnerable will still have access to the vaccines," said Dr Catherine Moore, consultant clinical scientist for Public Health Wales. She warned that RSV currently has no vaccine. "Whereas what Covid has done has caused a big issue in our adult ICUs, we may see conversely problems in our paediatric hospitalisations and intensive care," she said.
Pre-Covid, most children encountered most seasonal viruses before they turned 18 months old. But the biggest influx in paediatric hospital wards each winter are babies under the age of one who have for the first time been infected with RSV - because their lungs are not well developed, their bodies struggle to fight off the infection, explained Moore.
Scientists are worried that if life begins to go back to pre-Covid normality, respiratory viruses that typically circulate every winter will return alongside the coronavirus.
Moore said she was particularly worried about the risk of RSV in young children. "We've got two cohorts now of children who've never met the virus, so they are susceptible, but there's two years' worth of them!"
Before the pandemic, data suggested more than 30,000 babies and children under five were admitted to hospital every year in the UK because of RSV. Assuming "normality" resumes later this year, "we are preparing for a significant impact in paediatrics", said Moore.
According to the RCGP, a few cases of RSV were detected last month, which is atypical given the virus normally circulates in the winter in the UK.
"Late May RSV is very unusual," said Deenan Pillay, a professor of virology at University College London and a member of the Independent Sage group. It may be a reflection of more immunological susceptibility, the fact that some Covid restrictions have been relaxed, or indeed a change in the seasonal behaviour of the virus in response to the persistent collective effort to address Covid, he said.
But there are many unknowns and it is hard to predict exactly what will happen in the winter with RSV and other pathogens, said William Irving, a professor of virology from the University of Nottingham. "We didn't see flu last winter so if it comes back this coming winter, it may be particularly nasty."
However, there is a flu vaccine that could stave off a considerable chunk of disease, the scientists said, acknowledging that they are hoping the experience of Covid will enhance the uptake of the flu vaccine.
"I would think that it would be a good idea to maybe combine a flu vaccine with a booster dose of the [Covid] vaccine," said Irving. Efforts to develop a Covid-flu combination vaccine are already under way.
Reader Comments
Yesterday at lunch out in town, I watched a child (maybe 1 year old, still crawling) crawl ALL OVER up and down a sidewalk terrace (a sidewalk where dogs regularly pee, and people walk frequently) for maybe 20 minutes (with parents supervising) And all I could think was, WOW, that kid must have SOME IMMUNE SYSTEM Second thought was that the kid probably needs 3 full baths to clean off all that dirt, lol, but immunity conferred nonetheless
On geophagy (eating dirt): [Link]
I wondered if it'd be useful for mortar which I never used for a campsite, and I want to make a new one.
I've eaten some dirt on occasion. Once I downed a couple mouthfuls of basically sand from the riverside. I didn't experience any ill effects except having to rinse and gargle.
Disclaimer: not medical advice, of course.
They did see the flu though, they just called it covid.
I'm interested in the origin/etymology if you don't mind explaining.
Thanks anyway.
Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology: Fulvic acids in Fiuggi mineral water and their role in degrading kidney stones....[Link]
Good with Angostura, maybe may as well add vanilla extract.
You get a sense of various capillaries opening up that perhaps hadn't been capillary-ing as well as they might.
It's very different from Pellegrino water and some of those magnesium heavy Polish mineral waters, which are also great, but great for different reasons.
Only problem is, Tennant's language is so exacting and specific to his own schtick that it's very difficult to watch one of his lectures without nodding off halfway through.
They also serve as a reminder that you live in a kaleido-world in which the bio-electric human people don't know what the water memory people know. The ozone people don't know what the paleo people know. The iodine people don't know what the light/water/magnetism people know. The keto people don't know what the raw carnivore people know, and several times vice versa, "holistic" being the elusive butterfly that it is..
I've only got back on that Fiuggi water thing recently, but it's really interesting how my sense of smell and sense of taste have come out in full bloom in a very short time. That certainly wasn't advertised on the tin.
I've also been ozonating it and vortexing it, I almost forgot to add.
Cheesy CNN piece about Fiuggi water....[Link]
I have a beer acquiring mission (no mask the other day, setting a precedent in Zehrs) then I'll want to research more about what you've mentioned.
[Link]
Well have YOU ever been this far down? [Link] (The commentary of the interviewer talking to the poor SOB in the gutter under the drain cover/grid, (either chasing a cat or 'following instructions) is hilarious and the filmer was being dead serious!) (FWIW, I have not yet achieved where that poor SOB is in that video.)
RC
What a Gollum cave buddy found for himself. I haven't been quite that low. I always thought of "living in the gutter" as an expression. I have however slept in all sorts of places that most people not in the third world would probably find appalling. For a while I was sleeping in a little street sewage drainage cave at the edge of a river (as just the one side had a pipe exit and the other was clean and dry until, it turns out, when I'm not there and it rains - RIP sleeping bag - though it wasn't a bad spot in dry weather). I could go on about moldy mattresses in abandoned houses, a parking garage stairwell reeking of urine, crashing right on the ground, even for a bit in snow because I was so drugged out/drunk etc. but the cave is probably my closest approximation to being an urban legend lagoon creature.
I do have stories of sleeping in drainage pipes, but NOT out of necessity.
I think it takes some crazy part of something
oror whatever in someone . . . I don't know, but I feel that we do, if you know what I mean. (And you far more than me.)RC
Nothing to see or worry about here, its because of their weak immune system.
Pffft, yeah course it is.