Masks May Function as a Kind of Crude Vaccine

[forehandplus]

A New Theory Asks: Could a Mask Be a Crude ‘Vaccine’?

As the world awaits the arrival of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine, a team of researchers has come forward with a provocative new theory: that masks might help to crudely immunize some people against the virus.

The unproven idea, described in a commentary published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is inspired by the age-old concept of variolation, the deliberate exposure to a pathogen to generate a protective immune response. First tried against smallpox, the risky practice eventually fell out of favor, but paved the way for the rise of modern vaccines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/health/covid-masks-immunity.html

[Dumbastheycome]

Wow ! Nobody yet been brave enough to   make  comment?

I'm in !

The link provided  by the OP provides information that, theoretical or not, echoes existing common advice in favour of the idea that reducing "viral load" in first contact instance with a virus assists a reasonably healthy immune system to react and suppress more efficiently. The result is a greater chance of  asymptomatic impact for those who do not present with a weakened physiology or already stressed immune system due to  existing recognized variables.

Understandably it would be difficult to demonstrate proof with ethical considerations involved should such comparative experiments involving a  large  cross section  of subjects be carried out. Right?

 

 

 

[forehandplus]

Widespread mask-wearing may explain why Covid has taken a decidedly less dangerous turn in the EU.

[partington]

"Viral load" does not mean the initial infective dose. This is an incorrect assumption by many reporters and non-qualified medics (ie non-virologists), who sometimes within the same article will explain the difference but then confuse the two in a subsequent paragraph, I suppose because the word load makes them think of loading something into you.

 

The initial infective dose can be thought of as the spark that starts the fire - at most it would be a few thousand viruses unless you are infected by hospital samples. Shortly after you have been infected the number of viruses continually replicating in your body has reached a level many thousands or millions of times greater than any initial infective dose could conceivably be, and this amount is your viral load.

 

There is as yet no evidence that the severity of the disease or the amount of virus that builds up in your body after infection (viral load), is related to the amount of virus in the initial infective dose, (though it might be) and there is even conflicting evidence as to whether a greater viral load, that is the rapidity with which the virus is replicating inside your body during your illness, is even related to the severity of disease symptoms.

 

At least this was the case back in March when this New Scientist article was published [ I haven't kept up since then:]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238819-does-a-high-viral-load-or-infectious-dose-make-covid-19-worse/#ixzz6XmW7U9zg

 

"The average number of viral particles needed to establish an infection is known as the infectious dose. We don’t know what this is for covid-19 yet, but given how rapidly the disease is spreading, it is likely to be relatively low – in the region of a few hundred or thousand particles, says Willem van Schaik at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Viral load, on the other hand, relates to the number of viral particles being carried by an infected individual and shed into their environment. “The viral load is a measure of how bright the fire is burning in an individual, whereas the infectious dose is the spark that gets that fire going,” says Edward Parker at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."

 

If you have a high viral load, you are more likely to infect other people, because you may be shedding more virus particles. However, in the case of covid-19, it doesn’t necessarily follow that a higher viral load will lead to more severe symptoms.

 

For instance, health workers investigating the covid-19 outbreak in the Lombardy region of Italy looked at more than 5,000 infected people and found no difference in viral load between those with symptoms and those without. They reached this conclusion after tracing people who had been in contact with someone known to be infected with the coronavirus and testing them to see if they were also infected.

Similarly, when doctors at the Guangzhou Eighth People’s Hospital in China took repeated throat swabs from 94 covid-19 patients, starting on the day they became ill and finishing when they cleared the virus, they found no obvious difference in viral load between milder cases and those who developed more severe symptoms.

 

However, a study of patients hospitalised with covid-19 in Nanchang, China, found a strong association between disease severity and the amount of virus present in the nose. “Those with more severe disease had a higher level of virus replication, although we have no evidence to relay the initial exposure dose to disease outcome,” says Leo Poon at Hong Kong University, who was involved in the study. “That rumour is still an open question to me.”

 

 

[thaibeachlovers]

On 9/11/2020 at 7:52 PM, forehandplus said:

The unproven idea, described in a commentary published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is inspired by the age-old concept of variolation, the deliberate exposure to a pathogen to generate a protective immune response. First tried against smallpox, the risky practice eventually fell out of favor, but paved the way for the rise of modern vaccines.

All of which is nothing to do with masks.

 

They didn't infect people with small pox, they infected them with cowpox which renders us immune to smallpox.

[vaultdweller0013]

On 9/14/2020 at 7:51 AM, thaibeachlovers said:

All of which is nothing to do with masks.

 

They didn't infect people with small pox, they infected them with cowpox which renders us immune to smallpox.

Initially, intentional exposure to smallpox, not cowpox, was used. It was done using scabs from infected individuals as the source material. The practice was imported from the Middle East/Asia and became more common in Europe during the early 1700's. In the mid 1700's research started on using cowpox instead of smallpox. In the late 1700's vaccinations using cowpox were successfully administered and it replaced using smallpox as it was much safer.