[HN Gopher] What if we tolerated diseases?
___________________________________________________________________
What if we tolerated diseases?
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 52 points
Date : 2023-05-12 08:52 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| mvdl wrote:
| "And vaccines work because they teach immune systems to recognize
| -- and so more effectively resist -- pathogens before the actual
| bug is encountered." Is a bold claim that has yet to be proven
| empirically.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| What proof do you require? The first vaccines for smallpox were
| literally teaching the immune system to fight it by using the
| less dangerous but very similar cowpox. If you were infected
| with cowpox you were much less likely to be sick with smallpox.
| What are you taking exception to there, and if you are taking
| exception, please describe in detail what proof you'd require.
| jrussino wrote:
| > a bold claim
|
| Isn't that just the definition of a vaccine?
|
| "A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active
| acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant
| disease." ... "The agent stimulates the body's immune system to
| recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further
| recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with
| that agent that it may encounter in the future."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine
| nkrisc wrote:
| When I read articles like this, I can't help but think that the
| author takes it for granted that humans are destined to exist.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| If I read your comment right, I fully agree.
|
| We take it for granted, we believe that we have the right to
| exist. At every turn we're trying to defeat death and illness.
| Trying to defeat nature's (and the planet's) mechanisms of a
| form of population control.
|
| Then on the other hand, we sort of complain about
| overpopulation.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I don't _want_ to see people die, but on
| the other hand I fully understand that we _must_ die. Me _must_
| get ill.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >I don't want to see people die, but on the other hand I
| fully understand that we must die
|
| Those are not mutually compatible
|
| Well, unless you take some esoteric interpretation where one
| can be absolved from the immediate implications of what they
| think are the most desirable states for the universe
|
| If one considers it necessary for people to die, one _wants_
| people to die. It 's part of the whole considering death
| necessary
| aflag wrote:
| Some people don't want to go to work. Yet, they do because
| they feel it's necessary.
| ragingrobot wrote:
| You are right of course, it was just a poorly worded (of
| which I could find no better) attempt at saying "listen,
| I'm not a heartless d**, either."
| teekert wrote:
| Maybe we aren't, but the deeply ingrained believe that we are
| may certainly be useful. I hate lies or partial truths, but if
| the full truth is incomprehensible by our intellects, the best
| we can do is live with and by models and mantra's that are
| helpful in making the now a nice place to be.
|
| Not that we should even give up the search for more truth, at
| least, that's one of my mantras.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| What do you mean?
|
| Looks to me like you are reacting to the title instead of the
| article
|
| I expected the standard anti-medicine fare from the title, but
| got neat biological investigation/hacking instead. That was an
| interesting read
| darkwater wrote:
| We are not destined, we just want to exist, just like every
| other animal (well, maybe there are some exceptions).
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| BulgarianIdiot wrote:
| We've already reached a point where medicine, in some cases, is
| doing more damage than good. Plastic surgery is clear example of
| this.
|
| Followed by surgery like gastric bypass which is largely
| ineffective long-term, but of course they don't track it long
| term. People return to old habits, and the body tries to adapt,
| but now with newly crippled digestive system.
|
| "Everything in moderation" is something we've not learned yet, as
| a culture.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is elective plastic surgery for fashion reasons and there
| is reconstruction after trauma or to correct birth defects, you
| should probably not toss the two into the same bin.
| DanHulton wrote:
| There is also elective plastic surgery to help address body
| dysmorphia. And even "fashion reasons" aren't as frivolous as
| some would think. A lot of people will judge you based on
| "fashion reasons," and being able to address that can
| potentially measurably improve you life. There are plenty of
| studies that have shown that people perceived as "more
| beautiful" are more respected and have an easier life. The
| inverse is also true, and being able to address that is
| powerful.
| xwdv wrote:
| Plastic surgery is not a clear example, tell that to a burn
| victim or cleft lip child or anyone with a deviated septum.
| culopatin wrote:
| If we call plastic surgery medicine then are piercings
| medicine? I'd argue that plastic surgery relies on medicine,
| but it's not fixing any illnesses.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Plastic surgery is clear example of this.
|
| Lots of plastic surgery is done to restore features. I think
| that practice does far more good than harm.
| enkid wrote:
| Plastic surgery is one of those things you are much more
| likely to notice if it's done poorly then well. This,
| ironically, makes people think most plastic surgery is "bad"
| when really most plastic ic surgery that you notice is bad.
| nik_s wrote:
| While I agree with the general sentiment of your message, there
| are quite a few meta-analyses on pubmed on the long-term safety
| and efficacy of gastric bypass surgery. They mostly show that
| while some patients do end up back obese, the majority do
| improve on many markers of health (weight, diabetes, ...).
|
| Here's an example of a study if you're interested [1]!
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29340676/
| sylware wrote:
| We would be batmen.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| There's absolutely viruses that we tolerate currently and take
| basically no effort to fight, because in the vast, vast majority
| of the population they're benign. I had an organ transplant a
| couple of years ago, and as part of that I now have to do monthly
| blood screening for some of these benign diseases (CMV and BK)
| since they aren't as benign for someone on strong
| immunosuppressants.
|
| Maybe this is a selfish thought, but moving towards tolerating
| diseases objectively increases risk for people like me who can't
| tolerate diseases to the same extent as others, and others
| tolerating them more increases the odds that I'll catch them, so
| this isn't a medical advancement I'm particularly excited about.
| fovc wrote:
| CMV is also strongly associated with pregnancy complications
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| A lot of these benign viruses are turning up in diseases we go
| on to develop later in life, they might not be benign they just
| don't kill us right away.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yes, supposedly quote-on-quote benign not actually proven in
| fact.
| gameshot911 wrote:
| FYI just in case you didn't know, it's "quote unquote",
| signifying the starting and ending quotation marks.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Since HN has a large number of English language learners
| in the reader-base I figure this spelling is less likely
| to induce confusion.
| hanoz wrote:
| How would it be less likely to induce confusion? What is
| it even supposed to mean in that form? I had no idea what
| you were talking about until someone explained your
| error.
| msrenee wrote:
| If we're splitting hares, I feel like it's more likely to
| confuse people whose first language isn't English. Why
| introduce an incorrect parsing that sounds similar?
| That's more likely to lead learners astray than help them
| understand the idiom.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I wouldn't recommend trying to split hares.
| msrenee wrote:
| Why not? If you've got a hare to butcher, you'd likely
| want to split it. You could leave the carcass whole and
| roast it, but that's only one of the many ways to use the
| animal.
|
| If you want to argue over details that make little
| difference though, I'd recommend using the term
| "splitting hairs" instead.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I was jesting but a serious reason why 'quote unquote'
| may be confusing is the fact that this kind of immediate
| negation is not considered correct grammar in any other
| context I know of.
|
| 'kind unkind'
|
| 'known unknown' (unless your Donald Rumsfeld)
|
| 'seen unseen'
|
| etc.
| msrenee wrote:
| Not my Donald Rumsfeld.
|
| I feel like writing quote-on-quote takes away the ability
| of non-native speakers to search for and learn the basis
| of the idiom. I really don't see how it would be more
| understandable than just typing "quote".
| damiankennedy wrote:
| Also when writing (as opposed to talking) you can
| actually use quotes (as demonstrated by the quotes around
| "quote unquote"). However in the case of "benign" the
| quotes are implying, correctly, that it's not benign at
| all. My preferred method when talking is to use hand
| signals for quotes, question marks and on occasion,
| exclamation points.
| 1bent wrote:
| I think you're responding to your interpretation of the title,
| rather than the article.
|
| They aren't proposing increasing asymptomatic disease, they're
| discussing trying to reduce damage done to individuals.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Right, but that shifts treatment of the disease from being
| mostly focused on elimination to a mixture of elimination
| (you're right that the article makes it clear that these
| researchers are not advocating abandoning elimination
| altogether) and building tolerance. That's inevitably going
| to shift focus away from trying to rid the patient of the
| virus when building tolerance is a more productive approach.
|
| Which 100% sounds like the right approach to take and I don't
| consider this immoral or wrong or anything, just unfortunate.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| It's both. You try to prevent the disease, but for those
| who get infected anyways, you try to improve their
| tolerance. In fact this research could potentially benefit
| the immunocompromised the most, in that they can't rely on
| their immune system to prevent buildup of pathogens so when
| they get sick they will likely end up with a larger number
| of pathogens compared to an individual with a healthy
| immune system. If research can find ways of stopping that
| larger buildup from damaging the body, then being
| immunocompromised is no longer as dangerous for the
| individual.
|
| However, for those that have a weak immune response and
| also don't or can't get this new tolerance treatment, it
| would be a net negative, on that I can agree.
| maxboone wrote:
| Today in "it's a bit of both".
|
| I guess this is a very Dutch thing, but usually the GP here sends
| you home with the advise to take some rest, an antipyretic and
| call again if it gets worse or it doesn't go away after a week.
|
| Still, interesting read - good this is thought and discussed
| about.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Same in France, especially for children.
|
| The time is that you send a kid at school until they "have
| temperature". Before that they sneeze, cough, whatever,
| together with the rest of the pupils. Eventually everyone gets
| ill and the general immunity increases.
|
| When they are are ill it is paracetamol. It used to be also
| antibiotics, now an increasing number of GP do tests before.
|
| EDIT: following up on comments, please note that I am neither
| the Ministry of Health, nor the Ministry of Education - just
| relying the status in France. And a parent who suffered of this
| first-hand.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, and then they expose other kids who then take it home
| who in turn expose their parents. And as one of those parents
| I can't avoid getting ill so often through that one vector of
| exposure that I can't control that it stopped being funny
| long ago.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Good room air filtration can measurably reduce the
| likelihood of aerosol infection. In 10 years it will be
| UVC.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Before that they sneeze, cough, whatever, together with the
| rest of the pupils.
|
| This is not a good thing - repeated infections with the same
| virus only cause damage. Then they infect parents or
| grandparents. Especially now that covid is about, and life
| expectancy has fallen across the world by several years.
|
| Schools could install air purifiers for a few hundred bucks
| per room and greatly reduce infections
|
| PS: a lot of responses perpetuate the urban legends about
| immunity. So I thought I would respond here:
|
| 1 - getting many infections as a child does not keep you safe
| when you are a pensioner. Immunity does not last the rest of
| your life.
|
| Most vaccines need to be refreshed every 10 years. The proper
| term is Immunological memory, and is a complicated subject I
| don't fully grasp. That's why we had booster shots for COVID,
| immunity from it disappears quickly.
|
| 2 - getting infected is not consequence free. Just because
| you gully recovered does not mean you have no lasting damage.
| Serious infections cause microscopic damage in your organs.
| That damages is patched by connecting tissue / scar tissue.
| That tissue is not functional - if it patches a kidney, that
| kidney is less capable. You don't need to get Ebola to suffer
| damage - even a serious case of flu takes a toll.
|
| 3 - many immunities are worthless - for example the flu
| mutates every year, and if you want immunity from it, in UK
| we do flu vaccines. So if you want immunity from it, take
| every vaccine when it's offered. But if you got a vaccine 3
| years ago, chances are that particular mutation will not
| reoccur in your life, and it offers no particular benefit
| ever again.
|
| 4 - pathogen load is a thing - you don't need to fall ill to
| generate immunity. When you are walking about, your body is
| getting tiny amount of pathogens - and most of the time the
| quantity is too small to get you sick, but your immune system
| deals with them. You do not get infected because someone
| sneezed 20 miles downwind and you inhaled 1 virus particle.
| Schools / kindergartens with poor ventilation create pathogen
| hot-tubs with unnaturally high pathogen loads. This is like
| an infection hot boxing. We know ventilation is terrible
| because often have CO2 concentration in excess of 2000. There
| is nothing natural about this, cavemen did not encounter such
| conditions. Improving ventilation reduces how many pathogens
| are floating in the air, even if the same number of kids are
| sneezing.
|
| Bottomn line is, immune system is not like a dog that you
| train once, and it's also dangerous because you can get
| allergies or autoimmune diseases.
|
| There is no evidence that subjecting people to excessive
| number of infection by creating disease petri-dish conditions
| in school has any benefit.
|
| Also Kurzgesagt has many videos on immune system:
| https://youtu.be/M-K7mxdN62M
| pessimizer wrote:
| When you're young you have your best chance by far against
| most diseases, and after you've had it you likely pick up
| some degree of immunity to it (and other things like it)
| that you carry with you when you become a parent, or a
| grandparent. One of the signs of age is how _rarely_ you
| catch flus. All those mutations recycle and even though you
| 've become weak, you've built up a library.
|
| Not all diseases behave like that, and all should be
| treated differently. Really you should just do public
| health, and have statistics, and let those make the
| decisions instead of doing policy by omission, or deciding
| by intuition.
| robbiep wrote:
| This is not a particularly strongly true statement, and in
| fact there is quite a lot of evidence that for the vast
| majority of coughs/colds/viral infections it is in fact
| false. This is evidenced by the surge in infections a child
| (or a new nursing or medical student) receives on starting
| daycare/hospital. For sure COVID and the Flu have
| significant flow on effects to the population but COVID
| aside (there is some weird evidence coming through about
| repeated infections in different populations here) having
| an infection pretty much always results in a significantly
| reduced second round (or you are, in fact, immune)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > This is evidenced by the surge in infections a child
| (or a new nursing or medical student) receives on
| starting daycare/hospital.
|
| I don't think this is evidence that getting sick as a
| nurse in daycare is good for you. This only evidences
| that people adapt to an repeat infection and environment
| with pathogens.
|
| The comparison should be made against a person that never
| had to go to daycare and never had to get sick there ->
| would they be more or less healthy.
|
| I am not an immunologist of-course, but everything I read
| indicates that this conventional wisdom is build on
| misunderstanding of the immune system .
| refurb wrote:
| All of those things might be true, but if you've ever been
| around kids, they are unavoidable.
|
| They pick their nose, touch everything, lick their hands,
| put things in their mouths, etc.
|
| Unless you're willing to put them in a plastic bubble until
| they are adults and stop doing that, they're going to get
| sick.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Unless you're willing to put them in a plastic bubble
| until they are adults and stop doing that, they're going
| to get sick."
|
| And in practice, this would be a really bad idea, because
| the moment you open that plastic bubble, all the
| pathogens that are constantly in the air anyway, will hit
| them bad, as they are totally unprepared for it.
|
| One of the theories _why_ children put everything in
| their mouth, is exactly to expose them to world of
| microorganisms early on, so they can get used to it,
| while their immune system is developing.
| Technotroll wrote:
| Why is this not a good thing? Could you please expand upon
| this, or offer some sources that support your claim?
|
| Isn't it also the case that lowered exposure to general
| pathogens, also decreases general tolerance and resistance
| to them, leading to more complications down the line? Thus
| living in a clinically scrubbed environment can also be
| equally as harmful, which could also be part of the
| aftermath of 2020?
|
| This is of course anecdotal, but personally I never had
| such a bad influenza as after that period of severe
| isolation, when I finally started meeting people again. And
| the same is true for many of my colleges, one of which
| contracted Asthma due to the severity of the disease. This
| was regular influenza after isolation, and not Corona, btw.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Why is this not a good thing? Could you please expand
| upon this, or offer some sources that support your claim?
|
| I expanded my reply, but why would it be a good thing?
| Think about it - 'getting ill is good for you' is a
| counter-intuitive claim, and the only reason you are
| asking me for proof, is that you have gotten used to
| accepting this urban legend.
|
| This is not 'natural infections' -> there is no natural
| situation where you stuff 30 monkeys in a box with poor
| ventilation and raise CO2 concentration to 2000 ppm, so
| that the few sick monkeys can achieve really high
| concentration of pathogens.
|
| I think the idea that it is 'good' is civilisational
| copium. It's like when people claimed that sending kids
| into coal mines builds character.
| Technotroll wrote:
| > Think about it - 'getting ill is good for you' is a
| counter-intuitive claim, and the only reason you are
| asking me for proof, is that you have gotten used to
| accepting this urban legend.
|
| Sorry, "getting ill is good for you" is not what I meant
| to convey. Instead, what I wrote is that _lowered
| exposure to general pathogens, also decreases general
| tolerance and resistance to them._ This means that it 's
| very likely detrimental to live in "clinically" clean and
| filtered environments, as it is also detrimental to live
| in isolation for too long.
|
| The most extreme example of this are all the natives who
| got sick and died as the conquistadors arrived in South
| America. They died because they had no prior exposure,
| and thus no defense against, the pathogens that the
| Europeans unknowingly brought with them. Thus I'm fairly
| sure that it's trivial to prove that prolonged isolation
| will also lower your tolerance for common influenza
| pathogens. I don't know this, of course, but I'm sure an
| experiment where both yours and my claim were tested
| would be very interesting to read!
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Schools could install air purifiers for a few hundres
| bucks per room and greatly reduce infections
|
| That may be true for teenagers and up and perhaps more
| crowded workplaces or university halls. But I think you are
| greatly underestimating how nasty and excessively touchy
| most kindergarten and primary school kids are, that really
| is not fixable with just HEPA filters. Kids will always be
| a bio-hazard agglomerate of disease vectors it is kind of
| unavoidable when you put them all together.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "This is not a good thing - repeated infections with the
| same virus only cause damage."
|
| Or not, if immunisation was achieved, like it usually does.
| If you would keep the kids at home, everytime they have to
| sneeze, then the schools would be pretty empty in winter,
| general education level drops further and everyone will get
| sick again anyway, the first time they interact with other
| people outside their home, as they let their immune system
| without work.
|
| The situation in the kindergarten was and is quite horrible
| after covid. All the diseases they did not get, while in
| lockdown - they got now and concentrated (that means, now
| it slowly seems to be moving towards normality).
|
| So air purifiers might still be useful, but I think it is
| an illusion to think to be able to prevent all or most
| diseases. Sure, some very dangerous strains are to be taken
| with caution and if a lockdown would be really necessary,
| so be it. But infections are just a normal thing.
| Especially for children. This way they train their immune
| system step by step. So removing that step will be actually
| dangerous later on as there are quite some diseases that
| are quite mild for children, but deadly for adults, if they
| did not catch it as a child.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| For Coronaviruses, there's no long-term immunity that
| would prevent reinfection, nor does it confer immunity
| that would last into adulthood. It's measured in weeks
| and months. In the case of COVID, infecting children over
| and over again does not result in "training" their immune
| system, but instead weakens it, resulting in things like
| the pediatric care crisis we've seen in the US over the
| past year or so (as children were made more vulnerable to
| other diseases after having COVID).
| wswope wrote:
| > The proper term is Immunological memory, and is a
| complicated subject I don't fully grasp.
|
| It's very obvious. You're citing a popsci video while
| accusing others of falling prey to urban legends, and
| declining to offer references to the people asking for
| them.
|
| Let me be unequivocal: all the points you've made are
| inaccurate (except #2), because you lack this fundamental
| understanding of the difference between adaptive and innate
| immunity, and the value of paratope diversity.
|
| "Getting sick" (i.e. an infection reaching the point where
| it causes clinical symptoms) is crucial for the development
| of the adaptive immune response, whereby the body tries
| "randomized" antibody structures until it develops new ones
| that can bind to an antigen. Having a broad range of
| antibodies developed through this process, called somatic
| hypermutation, is important because your body uses prior
| antibodies it's developed as starting points for developing
| targets against new antigens, so even for rapidly evolving
| targets like the flu, exposure to previous strains still
| can help stack the odds in the body's favor.
|
| Ditch the youtube, and instead find a good literature
| review on immunology (e.g.
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2010.07.022). Please stop
| blowing uninformed hot air.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Thank you for the link, I will check it out - I am
| upfront about my relative ignorance. I wanted to
| challenge the conventional wisdom because I feel our
| responce to COVID / etc. was haphazard.
|
| At the moment my faith in Schools, very rigid
| institutions, to adapt and properly consider risks to
| children is essentially zero.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > There is no evidence that subjecting people to excessive
| number of infection by creating disease petri-dish
| conditions in school has any benefit.
|
| Genuine question: what defines "excessive"? The way you put
| this seems to bury the actual question at hand, which
| determining what level of illness policy, sanitation, etc.
| is too much?
| braymundo wrote:
| Yup, paracetamol being prescribed for everything is a bit of a
| meme here.
| maxboone wrote:
| Yeah, sometimes it's a bit much.
|
| Especially because I already do the paracetamol & wait myself
| before I go to the GP to begin with, but at least my current
| GP understands that.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| These days it tends to be ibuprofen.
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| Or both, "studies show that both taken together is just as
| good if not better than opioids and narcotics!"
|
| Yep!
|
| I'll save you all the rant about opioids.
| refurb wrote:
| Yes, they work better used together, but except for a few
| specific types of pain (e.g. dental) they are far
| inferior to opioids.
| cnity wrote:
| I would like to sign up for the opioid rant.
| msla wrote:
| Tolerating disease means dooming some people to die.
|
| I know that's popular among some political groups, but it is
| still inhuman.
| iamcasen wrote:
| Illness is largely a function of overall health. As a society, we
| generally lead very unhealthy lives: eating mountains of
| processed food, working too much, sitting indoors and staring at
| screens. We have a failed concept of the nuclear family, which
| means very little support with child-rearing, and soaring costs
| around everything involving the home and family.
|
| All of this stacks the deck against the majority of Americans.
|
| Is it any wonder our bodies cannot fight off disease naturally?
|
| When you also add in that we have an absurd fear of illness and
| death, our behaviors get more and more neurotic, which then adds
| to the stress, which then further compromises our health.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| I'm not sure that you understand the meaning of nuclear family.
| It is a family composed of mom, dad, and kids. This differs
| from single parent households. You may want to rethink what you
| wrote.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Is it any wonder our bodies cannot fight off disease
| naturally?
|
| You need to prove that we could previously. The various plagues
| and epidemics (Athens, Antonine, and Black to namea few) are
| excellent proof that returning to unprocessed food won't much
| help.
|
| > When you also add in that we have an absurd fear of illness
| and death
|
| The Momento Mori rose in response to the Black Plague, so
| that's not new either.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Like the plague? Together with the Swedes it killed 85% of the
| inhabitants of my hometown.
| feintruled wrote:
| That 'survival of the fittest' interpretation is not the angle
| the article is coming from, I think. It's saying 'if you can
| control the symptoms, why worry if you have the disease?' Or
| rather, what if you were sufficiently tolerant to a pathogen
| you didn't display any symptoms.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| I help merchants sell fruits, eat many, forage also in my area,
| people are always a bit shocked when I directly eat tomatoes,
| kiwis (with their skin), dates, peppers without washing them, but
| I don't get ill at all, my immune system is probably stronger
| than theirs after decades of a forager lifestyle, it sorts what
| needs to be, digest correctly
| aurizon wrote:
| if we tolerated disease - as man did from time immemorial, we
| would allow diseases to reach a steady state. We would soon die
| out as a race due to population decline as we are well below the
| required rate of replacement in a diseased population. We would
| have to outlaw birth control as the current rate of replacement
| would not be enough if half our children died by the age of 5 -
| as they did in the 1700-1800's. Survivors might be more
| resistant, but I and many others do not feel this is a good
| strategy. Nature 'saw' the need for an immune system - it was
| that or die. About 90% of the native populations of North, South
| and Central America died from the diseases brought from Europe by
| Columbus and those that followed. This huge wave of deaths spread
| from the points of contact by tribal passage and preceded the
| later growth of hybrid populations of europeans/natives. It was
| only by later LIDAR surveys of large land areas that these
| ancient agricultural zones were revealed - some of which are now
| being explored - large structures - over grown by vegetation.
| Some were killed by older disease spreads prior to Columbus - it
| is not a new/unique phenomenon. So the article's premise is false
| - we can not back to the old ways.
|
| That said, a better understanding might allow the linked
| pathogen/prey relationship between diseases and their host
| populations to be broken - as we have done with smallpox?
| lesiki wrote:
| > We would soon die out as a race due to population decline as
| we are well below the required rate of replacement in a
| diseased population
|
| Isn't there a strong correlation between birth rate & child
| mortality? Most rich societies have slowed down their birth
| rate in large part because you don't need 5 kids in order to
| ensure 1 makes it to adulthood.
|
| If we tolerated disease, we would probably increase birth rates
| to compensate for the spike in child mortality.
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Conversely, increasing child mortality necessarily increases
| child care effort per adult child: a bad deal that can only
| be compensated by having children at a significantly younger
| age.
| slushh wrote:
| >We would have to outlaw birth control as the current rate of
| replacement would not be enough if half our children died by
| the age of 5
|
| We could also make rising children less of an obstacle. If you
| build the infrastructure around rising children so that rising
| 2 children is not a full-time job, then parents would get more
| children.
| vidarh wrote:
| There is little evidence of that. Countries with more support
| do not necessarily retain higher fertility rates. Look at
| e.g. the legal right to nursery places with capped costs,
| long parental leave, and subsequent financial aid in Norway.
| It might be it'd happen if you exceed a certain level of
| support, but we've not cracked that nut yet.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I think coat housing still bites even in norway. I am
| relatively cobfident that cheap housing would allow
| improved birthrates.
|
| If population declines, maybe housing will get cheaper, but
| our current system directs unhealthy amount of cash into
| houaing market and inflates it beyong it's natural state.
| vidarh wrote:
| While I think addressing prices are important, consider
| that the high housing costs reflects drastic increases in
| income. The living standard in Norway has increased
| massively from when I was a child there, and the benefits
| given to families with children as well. Yet birth rates
| have declined in parallel with the increasing wealth.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > high housing costs reflects drastic increases in
| income.
|
| But it doesn't, housing prices have. roughly doubled in
| UK for example since 2008, and wages have fallen.c
|
| If you measure housing cost is multiples of income, they
| have grown massively in the past 70 years. If the price
| of chicken went up as much as price of housing over the
| same period, a chicken would cost like $55 or smth
| vidarh wrote:
| What matters is the long term trends and the multiple is
| less relevant than the affordability of the monthly cost
| of housing, or there wouldn't be sufficient buyers able
| to afford driving the costs up.
|
| The multiple of my mortgage to income is higher than for
| my parents, but I'm still left with more spending power
| left over, because my lending is cheaper, the LTV higher,
| and not all the other costs have increased at a similar
| rate.
|
| Overall, despite a higher proportion of my income going
| to housing, I'm far better off than my parents were at my
| age.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I am not sure about your personal situation, but my
| parents paid off their property faster because it was
| cheaper, despite higher interest rates. After 15 Years
| all theie property is fully paid. They are much better
| off now.
|
| And low interest rates didn't last, now they are back up
| in Europe, so people with large mortgages are not having
| to make huge repayments and will be making them for the
| next 30 years.
|
| generally speaking we have more capital tied up in
| housing than we do in productive economy. This is
| inefficient deployment of capital and is not economically
| healthy.
| vidarh wrote:
| I think this is a distraction. It's very simple: House
| prices reflects peoples ability and willingness to pay.
| The demand doesn't come from nothing. If people couldn't
| pay,there wouldn't be demand no matter how much people
| would like to.
|
| Meanwhile, in the UK where I am now, there is plenty of
| _empty_ housing at lower cost.
|
| What there is a lack of is housing people want to pay for
| where they want to pay for it, because many - not all -
| can afford to be picky.
|
| That's not to say it wouldn't be a tremendous benefit to
| society to drive down house prices, because it would, but
| the housing market is elastic:
|
| People can, and have (and many still do), lived in far
| more cramped conditions, and do when they can't afford to
| pay more.E.g. house shares and the like.
|
| The actual problem of high prices is a level of
| inequality that means _a subset_ struggle more. But that
| is insufficient to explain e.g. fertility rates across
| the board when the overall wealth is at it is.
|
| Considering my original example, if you look at
| indications of disposable income in Norway, you'll see
| people e.g. taking far more holidays abroad, far more
| have holiday homes, etc. despite spending more on
| housing.
|
| Overall wealth is through the roof and you see it
| everywhere. And yet fertility rates are not.
|
| This is also consistent with the development we see
| _everywhere_ in the world. It 's played out in country
| after country, and is an effect that plays out over many
| decades.
| jplrssn wrote:
| There's pretty strong evidence that policies like
| subsidised child care in high-income countries lead to
| higher fertility rates.
|
| https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/02/16/why-there-are-
| so...
| aurizon wrote:
| Once women gained control of their own fertility - they
| voted with their bodies. Many of the old large families
| were, in essence, forced on women, to the detriment of many
| as death was common in childbirth until late in the 19th
| century.
| explorer83 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with Norway's culture. Personally, if I
| had access to these benefits, I would have more children
| and faster. But I do see people who have the financial
| means and time to raise children who view children as a
| restriction of their life experience.
| vidarh wrote:
| This seems to be the challenge. Some people will have
| more kids if they can, but a lot of others will see more
| money as an opportunity to do all kinds of things that
| are hard to combine with having more kids. There may well
| be a balancing point where beyond a certain level of
| wealth people will start having more kids again, but so
| far we haven't found it.
| aurizon wrote:
| True, many women/couples delay children, but look at Japan
| where the population has been in decline for many years to
| the point that there are thousands of empty houses - the
| converses of many places where zoning rules designed to block
| new homes for the express reason of forcing scarcity =
| upwards $$. There is huge inertia in the trades to build it
| the old way = codes the old way. We even have laws that
| mandate windows in all rooms from the days when coal/wood
| fireplaces were in every room. We got central heat, but we
| still build no inner rooms with no windows these days. Want a
| window = wall screen with a video of a scene you like - not
| brick walls 6 feet away.
| explorer83 wrote:
| We do sacrifice a lot of our time to raise children. But it's
| the cost of childcare that makes it really difficult imo.
| Unless you have a high paying job, you are quite literally
| going to work so you can afford to pay other people to watch
| your children while you're at work.
| namdnay wrote:
| If that were the main factor you'd expect to see much
| higher fertility rates in French families for example,
| which isn't really the case (especially if you exclude
| families of foreign descent)
| maxboone wrote:
| That's quite the extreme, this article doesn't remotely propose
| tolerating a potentially devastating pathogen.
|
| It's more about the idea that someone can be healthy, even if
| they carry a pathogen.
| XorNot wrote:
| Could you please read the article before typing?
|
| The article is about research into non-immune system based
| adaptive systems of the body that reduce disease susceptibility
| - i.e why some animals and people can tolerate higher bacterial
| or viral loads without dying then others, and can we develop
| drugs which enhance these effects or augment them (i.e. giving
| glucose support to malaria infected rats which arr experiencing
| an overactive drop in glucose production due to natural
| responses to effects of malaria).
|
| It's about therapeutic agents to boost survivability without
| looking directly at pathogen kill paths - it is admittedly
| weirdly titled.
| dang wrote:
| Please edit out swipes like the first sentence here. The rest
| of your comment would be just fine without that.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. One of them
| is " _Edit out swipes_ ", and there's even another about this
| specific case:
|
| " _Please don 't comment on whether someone read an article.
| "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be
| shortened to "The article mentions that."_"
| maxboone wrote:
| Thank you.
| konschubert wrote:
| I think the article says: "Some scientists think that sometimes
| it may be better to tell your immune system to take it slow, such
| that you have fewer symptoms caused by the immune response".
|
| We are already doing this, no?
|
| Every time we take medication that lowers our fever during an
| infection (antipyretic ), we trade a bit of immune response for a
| much more comfortable illness.
|
| The other aspect of this is that carrying more pathogen, for
| longer, increases the chance that you will infect others.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Doesn't it also increase the odds that you'll create new
| variants of the illness? I remember a lot of theorizing that
| some COVID variants developed in immunocompromised individuals
| who hosted the virus for months.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think the jury is still out whether the fever is beneficial
| of harmful for the recovery process in most common illnesses.
|
| My personal theory is that fever arose as a specific mechanism
| against specific pathogen that humanity encountered some time
| in the past. Probably very lethal. The only people who survived
| were ones that were getting fever when encountering large
| number of various antigens. That pathogen I think is long gone
| and most human pathogens are completely not influenced by the
| fever. But the mechanism largely remained.
|
| Or perhaps fever works against bacteria so if you keep yourself
| isolated when you are having viral disease it's useless, but if
| you still contact people when virally ill maybe fever protects
| you from secondary bacterial infection to some degree.
| echelon wrote:
| Every immune cell recruitment and proliferation event gets you
| closer to the Hayflick limit.
|
| You cause damage to your body through inflammation. You invoke
| deleterious pathways that normally sit idle.
|
| Getting sick primes the immune system for defense, but it is
| also damaging to healthspan.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Don't most immune cells derive from stem cells? Stem cells
| express telomerase so they aren't really subject to the
| Hayflick limit.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "increases the chance that you will infect others."
|
| Or that it could do more damage, depending on the type of
| infection. For example, HPV os though to only lead to cancer
| for those who have a persistent infection for a few years.
| chrisan wrote:
| Ya, you aren't suppose to take an OTC pain reliever around the
| covid vaccine as it could reduce your immune response
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| Not sure why you got downvoted. But I believe you're right. I
| did read that you should not take the otc pain reliever
| before the shot but can do so when symptoms develop after the
| shot.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Off topic but I'm curious. I've seen lots of people telling
| others they've been downvoted. How are you able to tell?
| Are you using a specific app or just the website, is there
| a number like reddit or just the slight greying seen in
| soon to die posts. Just curious since i have no ability to
| see downvotes
| throwawayadvsec wrote:
| comments get progressively more greyed out then hidden
| when they receive downvotes
| msrenee wrote:
| Some apps don't show the greying out.
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