Like a Pencil

Friends, loved ones, strangers, I am prompted to write by a recent conversation. An old friend of mine (by which I mean the mother of one of my childhood friends) got Covid a month ago. Thankfully she was fully vaccinated, so a mild case. I told her that she now needed to be extra careful about wearing a mask in public. She said, “Why? Doesn’t being infected make your immune system stronger?”

No. No no no. A thousand times no.

We have to get away from this pernicious analogy of the immune system as a muscle. It is in no way like that. Any immunologist will roll their eyes at this. And tell you no.

An imperfect, but better analogy is that your immune system is like a pencil. Break the tip (get infected), sharpen it (fight the infection), and you are sharp again, but the pencil is shorter. Break it and sharpen it enough and eventually it is a stub.

(Reference links at the bottom, including studies, mask sources, Community Transmission maps, and how to build a Corsi-Rosenthal filter box.)

Something important to understand about Covid-19 is that it is not trying to kill you. It might, but that’s not its ultimate purpose. Its purpose is to make as many copies of itself as possible, as fast as possible, and transmit itself to other hosts as efficiently as possible to make more copies as fast as possible. It penetrates cells and hijacks the reproductive mechanisms to spin out copies of itself. The ugly things that happen to your body are collateral damage.

There are several relevant consequences to this.

The first is that amidst all this copying there are errors. The more copying, the more errors, or mutations. Viruses are the ultimate brainstorm-and-see-what-works kinda guys. Banging around in millions of people Covid mutates, some versions failing, some succeeding, and some excelling. A virus in widespread distribution is in constant research, development, and testing. Inevitably it gets better at what it does. That is, transmitting, infecting, and dodging or degrading our immune systems. The latest one (that we know of), XBB1.5, is good. Like Liam Neeson, it has a particular set of skills. Skills that make it a nightmare for people like you. The version of Covid you get first will probably be unlike the next version you are exposed to.

The second consequence is that some of the damage that Covid does doesn’t just apply to the particular version that infected someone, or even just to Covid. Covid has a tendency to exhaust your naïve T-cells and B cells. What the hell does that mean?

Imagine you have a castle and a bunch of dimwitted guards. They have to be told who to go after. Guard teachers (B-cells in our bodies) go to some of the guards and say, “See those guys in green hats? Go after them.” The guards go after anyone in a green hat. In our bodies the green hats are particular proteins on the surface of the viruses. It’s important to always have some uneducated guards (naïve T cells) and teachers (B cells) in reserve, so if bad guys in blue hats or yellow hats show up, some other guards are available to be trained on them.

Covid over-revs your immune system so much that it can use up most of your naïve T cells. They are all ready to pounce on the version of Covid you just got, but not the next version. For that matter, not any other novel microorganism, be it virus, bacteria, yeast, or fungus. The most up to date research shows that people who have had Covid have long term (months, maybe years) immune deficiencies. The news stories about kids hitting the ICU with supposedly routine childhood illnesses are an indicator. Studies following people post-Covid show higher rates of infectious disease compared to those who are Covid-free.

Covid also sticks around. Autopsies of people who have had Covid show that it has taken to hiding in lung tissue, lymph nodes, and even cartilage. This, of course, keeps the immune system on constant alert, wearing it out more and causing autoimmune problems. Covid survivors have higher rates of rheumatoid arthritis, vasculitis, and other autoimmune disorders.

Another mechanism may be Covid’s tendency to imprint the immune system on the particular variant. I’ll skip the biochemistry and even the clumsy analogies and just say that your immune system learns to attack the variant you already got and takes longer to learn about novel variants.

To sum, if you have had even a moderate case of Covid, your immune system is probably a twisted pile of smoking wreckage. You should be even more cautious about Covid exposure, as well as exposure to other pathogens.

This is aside from the universal symptom of vascular endotheliopathy. That is, the inflammation of the lining of every blood vessel in your body, resulting in microscopic blood clots anywhere that blood flows. That is, the blood clots that increase your chances of a heart attack or a stroke by a factor of three. Covid is transforming from a hand grenade into a time bomb.

Another correction of popular mythology: The levels in Vermont aren’t low. The CDC changed its methodology from “Community Transmission,” based on infection rates, to “Community Level” based of hospital admissions. With high vaccination rates in Vermont, hospital admissions are down. However, Covid is still here with a vengeance.

So, be that person. That is, the person wearing a mask in the grocery store, in the hardware store, in the meeting, on the bus, in the airport. Eventually we’ll get a mucosal (nasal) vaccine that will actually prevent infection. Maybe enough people will die that…wait, no, over a million Americans have died and we’re still losing thousands a week and most people are strolling around barefaced, cheerfully breathing virus on each other. For now, and until you can get a mucosal vaccine, wear a mask in public. Filter indoor air. Test before and after spending time with groups of people. Be safe, loved ones.

LINKS:

A lot of studies

Armbrust masks, made in the USA

The 3M Aura 9210+, the most comfortable mask I have found

Maps compared. Scroll down to section 3 and select your state in the drop down menu in the right hand column.

Professor Corsi himself showing you how to make a filter for cheap