#immunity

[survivingcapitalism]

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.

[the-forestry-system]

you're immune from ALL reblog bait now

[tecrystali]

plane jane & nymphia wind - drag race #1610

plane is so kind

[horse-is-a-horse-of-course]

eeeee my mom got her paper on long covid published in Nature Medicine!

it supports a body of evidence she’s been gathering over decades that indicates that many more people might be at risk of serious health complications from infections than our available data gathering methods can detect - and that dysfunction in the immune system, pre-existing or not, might play some role in post-acute infectious syndromes.

[sersh]

CLAIRO Mix With The Masters: Clairo and Rostam Batmanglij on "Immunity"

[saywhat-politics]

Former President Trump and his legal team have decided against appealing a court’s decision that found he is not immune from civil lawsuits that blame him for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, after they previously signaled he would file an appeal.

Trump’s decision to not take his broader immunity claim to the Supreme Court means lawsuits seeking to hold him accountable for his role on Jan. 6 can move forward.

The deadline for the former president to file a petition contesting the appeals court’s December decision was Thursday.

A three-judge panel unanimously ruled in December that Trump’s post-election efforts to change the results of the 2020 presidential election were done as a presidential candidate and not as president, meaning he could be held liable for it under U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Trump’s legal team signaled it would appeal the appellate court’s decision in an early January filing.

With no appeal for the Supreme Court to take a look at, the three-judge panel formally sent the lawsuit back to the trial court on Friday, where they will now move ahead.

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

[snobgoblin]

this was much needed so i much made it

[pandemic-info]

"Is anyone else's immune system totally shot since the 'COVID era'?"

Thread. Lots of informed comments, surprisingly.

The answer is yes: lots of peoples' immune systems are totally shot because that's what COVID does: attacks your entire body / vascular system / brain. It is not only respiratory. Long COVID is also a major issue with no reliable treatment.

And the idea that one should "exercise" their immune system by getting sick more is false, a misunderstanding of how immunity works.

[healthinnovations]

Researchers have just uncovered a whole new part of the brain

Researchers have just uncovered a whole new part of the brain. A new study has discovered a previously unknown structure that surrounds the brain. Thoughts health innovators?

A new study has discovered a previously unknown structure that surrounds the brain. A newfound anatomical structure has been discovered in the brain, which appears to play an essential role in the brain’s waste disposal and immune systems, acting as a protective barrier and harboring immune cells that watch for toxic proteins. Playing a multi-faceted role in the brain’s immunity, the team…

[iconsfinder]

[bpod-bpod]

Vital for Immunity

Importance of peroxisomes – organelles inside cells that are involved in lipid metabolism – for immune cell development and immune responses revealed by defects seen in a peroxisome-deficient mouse model of the congenital disorder Zellweger disease

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Brendon D. Parsons and Daniel Medina-Luna, and colleagues

University of Alberta, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Cell Reports, February 2024

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[giulliadella]

Hello, Cells at Work fandom, how are you doing today? Here’s a shitpost I made today out of boredom. I sincerely hope this is the last extremely detailed fanart that I make as a meme. And I can’t wait for my physiology and microbiology classes to end so that I can finally stop thinking about this goddamn anime!

[deesi-academia]

God knew I would be unstoppable if I had a strong immunity

[fabricdragondesigns]

Even with a new booster, the XBB.1.5 vaccine offered no increased protection from infection against the JN.1 variant. This alarming discovery underscores the virus's relentless ability to mutate and evade our defenses, fueling continued transmission, evolution, and the devastating threat of Long COVID.

"Ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 drives escape from mRNA vaccine-induced humoral immunity"

(March 07, 2024)

"However, progressive loss of neutralization was observed across newer variants, irrespective of vaccine doses. Importantly, an updated XBB.1.5 booster significantly increased titers against newer variants but not JN.1. These findings demonstrate that seasonal boosters improve titers against contemporaneous strains, but novel variants continue to evade updated mRNA vaccines, demonstrating the need for novel approaches to adequately control SARS-CoV-2 transmission."

[jaes1lvr]

is it alright, to feel this way so early?