Here are some brief reactions to your comments.
>>I’m struggling to see any
connection between your stated thesis and the attached article.<<
This is probably (partially) my fault
since I used the circumlocution “a certain respiratory virus” in an attempt to
evade Facebook’s Draconian penchant for “filtering” or presuming to stand in
judgment of references to COVID-19.
I may restate my concern (personally,
I would have reservations about describing it as a “thesis”) more
straightforwardly, as follows.
I am concerned that, for some
people, particular COVID prophylactics (such as vaccines) may have worse
effects than COVID itself has, had, or would have.
Given that the linked-to article is
titled “AstraZeneca puts coronavirus vaccine trials on pause after patient had
a serious side effect,” I hope that its connection to my (precisified)
statement is now clear to you.
But, in case it still isn’t clear to
you, let me further say: In the AstraZeneca case, the contemplated vaccine has seemingly
triggered “a potentially unexplained illness” in one human-trial participant
and, for all we know, this “unexplained illness” could have worse
effects on the affected individual than COVID would have had.
>>(Potentially) lifelong organ
damage from COVID-19 has been documented from the outset of the pandemic,[…]<<
My (admittedly untutored) survey of the
relevant literature suggests the following to me.
(1.)
Although it appears
to be true that there have been reports of damage to the heart, kidneys, and
lungs of some COVID patients, …
(2.)
…the jury is still
out on the question of whether the relevant damage is “lifelong”; unless…
(3.)
…you count people
who suffered organ damage as part of an acute bout of COVID and then promptly died.
(In which cases, the pertinent damage would count as “lifelong” only insofar as
their lives concluded prematurely – in a matter of days or weeks, for example.)
(4.)
For most people,
risk factors for long-term (and not necessarily “lifelong”)
complications include advanced age and comorbidities such as cardiovascular
disease, diabetes, obesity, and so on. One Healthline article phrases “The Bottom
Line” like this: “COVID-19 can be a severe illness, especially in people over
60 years of age or those with chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular
issues.”
(5.)
For the marginal
cases in which younger people have died or experienced organ (e.g., lung) damage, it’s not clear (to me) whether the damage was due to COVID or
to medical interventions such as ventilation (which is also well documented to
cause organ damage, such as in cases of “Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury,” or
VILI.),
>>[…]whereas vaccine side-effects
tend to be auto-immune responses to a novel stimulus.<<
Here, it’s my turn to express some
puzzlement. You seem to be drawing a(n implicit) distinction between “organ
damage” and “auto-immune responses” in terms of duration.
When I Google “most common auto-immune
responses,” Google returns the following Healthline article: “Autoimmune
Diseases: Types, Symptoms, Causes, and More.”
The article lists fourteen of the “most common” auto-immune diseases.
In the order presented, the 14 are: Type
1 diabetes; Rheumatoid arthritis (RA); Psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis; Multiple
sclerosis (MS); Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); Inflammatory bowel disease
(IBD); Addison’s disease; Graves’ disease; // Sjögren’s syndrome; Hashimoto’s
thyroiditis; Myasthenia gravis; Autoimmune vasculitis; Pernicious anemia;
Celiac disease.
We can construct follow-up searches according
to the following schema, “is [whatever condition] a lifelong disease,” where
we substitute each disease name, in turn, for the bracketed variable. Doing so,
I got these top results – that is, Google’s 0-position result on the
search page (the so-called “snippets”).
-
“is type 1 diabetes
a lifelong disease”: “Type 1 diabetes is a lifelong (chronic) disease in which
there is a high level of sugar (glucose) in the blood.”
-
“is Rheumatois
arthritis a lifelong disease”: “RA is a lifelong condition,…”
-
“is Psoriatic
arthritis a lifelong disease”: “Psoriatic arthritis tends to be lifelong.”
-
“is Multiple
sclerosis a lifelong disease”: “Multiple sclerosis …[i]s a lifelong condition …”
-
“is Inflammatory
bowel disease a lifelong disease”: “IBD is a lifelong (chronic) condition.”
-
“is Systemic lupus
erythematosus a lifelong disease”: “Lupus …is lifelong and can become severe…”
-
“is Addison’s
disease a lifelong disease”: “…Addison’s is a life-long condition…”
-
“is Graves’ disease
a lifelong disease”: “Graves disease is an ongoing (chronic) condition that
needs lifelong treatment.”
-
“is Sjögren’s
syndrome a lifelong disease”: “Sjögren’s syndrome is generally a lifelong
disease.”
-
“is Hashimoto’s
thyroiditis a lifelong disease”: “Most patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
will require lifelong treatment…”
-
“is Myasthenia
gravis a lifelong disease”: “Myasthenia gravis is a lifelong health condition.”
-
“is Autoimmune vasculitis
a lifelong disease”: “There are many types of vasculitis, and most of them are
rare. Vasculitis might affect just one organ, or several. The condition can be
short term (acute) or long lasting (chronic).”
-
“is pernicious
anemia a lifelong disease”: “People who have pernicious anemia may need
lifelong treatment.”
-
“is celiac disease a
lifelong disease”: “Individuals with celiac disease cannot outgrow the disease
since it is a lifelong autoimmune disorder like diabetes and rheumatoid
arthritis.”
With the possible exceptions of
Autoimmune Vasculitis and Pernicious Anemia, which could be acute or
chronic, the other twelve of the “most common autoimmune diseases” are
manifestly lifelong conditions.
>>Are you saying that handwashing
and other general precautions to avoid a cold/flu/virus infection will cause a
coronavirus to react differently within an exposed body?<<
What I actually typed was: “Some people
who may otherwise have recovered from a certain respiratory virus without
lasting ill effects will possibly be stricken with lifelong debilities in a
misguided attempt (imo) to shield themselves from it.”
The final word, “it” was intended to
refer back the aforementioned circumlocution, “a certain respiratory virus.”
So, the first alteration I would make
to your paraphrase would be this.
Translated into your phraseology, what
I was talking about was (something like):
How “…handwashing and other general
precautions to avoid a [certain respiratory] infection [a.k.a., coronavirus]” relate
to how an exposed body” will “react” to coronavirus.
This emendation having been performed,
I would also take exception to the causal claim embedded in your paraphrase.
No, I don’t think that “general
precautions” taken by an individual “will cause a coronavirus [in an of
itself] to…” do anything whatever.
However, I think that something (again,
translated partially into your verbiage) in the vicinity is true, namely:
Some interventions (such as
vaccinations), designed to avoid a COVID infection, will cause exposed
bodies to react differently to COVID than those bodies would have
reacted without the intervention.
And, sometimes, “react differently”
will unfortunately mean than the intervention will make things worse.
>>Does HIV, herpes, etc react
differently because someone has avoided it until the moment they catch it?
Just a bit of a worry… “catch it” is not
a little vague.
Presumably, firstly, a person could be “exposed”
to a pathogen without that pathogen taking up residence (so to speak) within a
person’s body.
Secondly, a pathogen could take up
residence a person’s body and begin to replicate without that person ever
displaying symptoms – being asymptomatic, in other words.
Thirdly, even where the pathogen takes
up residence and replicates sufficiently to produce symptoms of clinical infection,
such a disease is usually said to evolve along a roughly five-stage trajectory.
-
The “incubation”
stage is that period after an organism is exposed to a pathogen during which
the pathogen is replicating.
-
Although the point
of demarcation is hazy, at some time, this incubation period gives away to a “prodromal”
stage in which some “low-level” symptoms may appear, but before “higher-level” symptoms
– perhaps those most characteristic of the disease in question – appear.
-
Once replication has
advanced far enough, presumably, the individual segues into the full-blown “illness”
stage, which (we’ll suppose) presents in such a way as one would typically read
about in a clinical, diagnostic manual.
-
If the afflicted
person doesn’t die, then the immune system eventually puts the pathogen into “decline.”
-
And, once the decline
has proceeded adequately, the person begins his or her period of recovery, or “convalescence.”
Given all of these niceties, it isn’t
at all clear to me what “catch it” means.
Does it designate exposure only? Or
exposure + incubation – whether or not the person remains asymptomatic? Or does
it only apply in cases where exposure evolves all the way to some symptomatic
stage – whether prodromal or full, clinical illness?
I’m sure questions like these could be
multiplied.
But, leaving this concern aside, your
main question was about whether a virus (you name HIV and herpes) “react[s] differently” upon “catch[ing] it… because
someone ha[d theretofore] avoided it”.
To echo my previous remarks, I don’t think
there’s much of a reason to think that, for some random person (let’s call her Zhang
Xiu Ying), her avoidance of Pathogen x causally affects Pathogen x in and of
itself.
Let me give an illustration, using the
phrase in vitro.
Suppose that we have a specimen of
Pathogen x in vitro and that, as of 7:00pm central time 9/9/2020, Zhang
Xiu Ying “avoided” any exposure to x, whereupon she unfortunately
shatters the specimen’s container and exposes herself.
That Zhang Xiu Ying successfully avoided x up to the specified time plausibly had
no causal effect on x (in and of itself, in this case emphasized in virtue of
being in vitro) up to 7:00pm central 9/9/2020.
However, once Zhang Xiu Ying is
exposed, then whether she becomes an incubation chamber for x or manifests
symptoms of clinical illness will, equally plausibly, be
the result of a complex interaction.
Relevant factors might include any or
all the following (and probably more besides).
Factors about Pathogen x, like:
-
how x is absorbed
into a body,
-
how transmissible x
is,
-
how quickly x
incubates,
-
how much of x there
was for Zhang Xiu Ying to be exposed to,
-
how much of x generally
has to be present in order to affect incubation in an organism like the kind
that Zhang Xiu Ying is,
-
etc.
Factors about the exposure
circumstances, e.g.:
-
how much of x “got
on” or “got into” Zhang Xiu Ying,
-
the pathway or
exposure route that x traversed,
-
whether there were ancillary
factors that tended to amplify or defeat x’s ability to leverage the exposure
into an incubation in Zhang Xiu Ying, specifically
-
etc.
Factors about Zhang Xiu Ying
herself, such as:
-
how susceptible she is to a pathogen like x, and
– and this is my main point of emphasis –
-
how healthy Zhang Xiu Ying is, overall, including…
-
whether she has any comorbidities (like cardiovascular
disease, diabetes, obesity, etc.), and…
-
how – let me use the word… – robust her
immune system is,
-
etc.
Now… “how robust her immune system is”
is, I confess, difficult to specify.
But what I am most curious about is a
comparative like the following.
Call this, My Fundamental Question:
How robust is Zhang Xiu
Ying’s immune system (i.e., how robust is it now, as a matter of fact) compared
to and contrasted with how robust it would be
(i.e., counterfactually) were it not for some medical intervention or prophylaxis?
(Call the intervention or prophylaxis “y.”)
Let me conclude by providing one
thought experiment that, in my mind, makes it plausible that a question like My
Fundamental Question is worth asking.
Suppose that our intervention/prophylaxis,
y, is this:
Per impossibile, we place Zhang
Xiu Ying in a hermetically sealed “bubble” suit from birth.
Suppose further that at 7:00pm central 9/9/2020, Zhang Xiu
Ying simultaneously ruptures x’s petri dish and tears her suit, compromising
her longstanding hermetic seal (and undermining y).
Based on this far-fetched,
but still instructive, scenario, I think that the following statement is more
plausible than its negation:
Zhang Xiu Ying’s immunity is less robust given
her longstanding reliance upon y than it would have been had she lived her
life allowing her immune system to interact naturally with pathogens, without
y.
If this is the case, though (that the
above proposition is more plausible than its negation), then it tends to show
(I think) that there is some intervention, some y, such that a person’s
immunity is less given y than that person’s immunity would have been without y.
But, if this is the case, then
the obvious follow-up questions are: what sort of interventions are the ones
that folks have in mind to protect us from COVID: things like vaccinations and,
yes, handwashing? Are they immune-enhancing interventions, or are they
immune-diminishing ones?
I would argue – although, not here and
not now – that these sorts of intervention can probably go either way,
depending on how (and how often) they are carried out and other factors. And,
as a matter of fact, they are often immune diminishing.
To be continued, presumably…
Peace.
