Not sure if it'd be that simple. The authors discuss only a few specific countries and admit that although the differences in the risk is "remarkably small, some noise arises from generalization across time and countries" [0].
And if you factor in that they were studying mostly Asian countries, Egypt, and Germany, there might be even more discrepancies to account for.
I'm wondering if this is also a factor in transplants and one area of complications that could be identified prior to transplant. A differing immune system and white blood cells would explain many failed transplants and also this might be one instance in which the immune systems of like blood types differ and effect outcomes. May be more case of not only matching blood type but also immune system compatibility, with this being once example of how they differ.
The understanding of compatibility is already factoring in a great deal more than blood type, it's just that there is so much variation that donors rarely match recipients. See the HLA Typing part of this:
> [In 1968] a pandemic of H3N2 influenza, known as the Hong Kong flu, completely replaced the H2N2 and H1N1 seasonal influenza strains that circulated earlier.
I'm curious about the idea of flu viruses completely replacing each other. Do they interact or compete for resources in some way? Could we design a very mild flu which would replace other variants?
It's less like they're competing for resources and more like they're competing to see which one will survive the longest against the immune system. The human body is a nearly infinite source of food for pathogens but antibodies aren't always very precise in the strain they target. False positives are largely harmless so the B-cells that produce antibodies are even less discriminating.
When you have similar strains of a bacteria or virus, they can all cause the same immune reaction (which is how vaccines work) but tiny genetic variations in each strain can also drastically change how effective the reaction is against variant. Since bacteria/viruses reproduce very vast and the immune system is very good at its job, you essentially get an accelerated arms race that heavily favors the survival of the fittest. Even one part per million difference in probabilities is almost enough to guarantee the dominance of a single strain.
That explains tiny variations, but the article is talking about a shift to a new variant which requires a different immune response.
The question is why did this new variant "completely replace" the old ones in the population, instead of just operating in parallel?
The only thing I can think of is that the old flu variants were in decline already due to herd immunity, but the article seemed to imply there was more to it than that.
If it turns out that the very first fly virus you're exposed to has such a large effect on the immune system, it sounds like this could be great news for developing a better fly vaccine to give as a baby's first shot.
How will you make sure the immune response won't be targeted at the same epitopes of all/most of the 18? That protein is known to have decoy epitopes..
I really hate getting the flu ... I hate feeling terrible for 12-24 hours, I hate missing multiple workouts ... hate hate hate.
However, in recent years I've stopped my (seemingly ineffective) efforts to avoid the flu at all costs and further have started to appreciate the positive effects that getting the flu every 12-18 months might have.
In an otherwise healthy adult, what puts your immune system through it's paces - what gives your immune system a workout - like having the flu ?
What happens to my immune system if I don't give it that thorough workout every year for ... say ... 40 years ? What kind of immune system do I end up with at the other end of avoiding the flu for a large chunk of my life ?
Related to that, what else gets killed every 12 months when my temperature goes up to 102 or 104 for half a day ?
> In an otherwise healthy adult, what puts your immune system through it's paces - what gives your immune system a workout - like having the flu ?
That's not how immune systems work. This isn't just a round of going to the gym. Getting a vaccine also gives your immune system a chance to learn and react, but without the severe degradation of your condition and the significant risk of secondary infection.
> What happens to my immune system if I don't give it that thorough workout every year for ... say ... 40 years ?
First of all, you run less of a risk of getting secondary infection when your immune system is weakened. Secondly, you run a higher risk of transmitting the flu to people who can't be vaccinated (for example, babies or the elderly), putting their lives at risk.
> Related to that, what else gets killed every 12 months when my temperature goes up to 102 or 104 for half a day ?
That's the opposite of how your immune system works. While your system is focussed on fighting off one infection, it's less able to deal with secondary infections. You can end up spreading your system too thin and your health can deteriorate much more rapidly.
> That's not how immune systems work. This isn't just a round of going to the gym. Getting a vaccine also gives your immune system a chance to learn and react, but without the severe degradation of your condition and the significant risk of secondary infection.
Citation please. I'm somewhat skeptical about GP's viewpoint, but equally skeptical that you can so confidently dismiss him, given the number of things we still don't understand about the immune system. For example, doctors still haven't managed to cure any autoimmune illness, even though we've studied them for quite some time.
Full disclosure: I suffer from autoimmune illness, and every time I ask me doctor about my condition, the answer is often 'we still haven't figured it out'. The sheer complexity of all the different immune cell types, cytokine signaling, antibody production, etc. is mind-boggling, and is the product of millions of years of evolutionary arms race.
In particular, vaccines predispose your immune system towards an immediate Th2-type (humoral) response, while acute viral infection prompts first a Th1 (intracellular) response, then a Th2 response during recovery.
A strong Th1 immune response is generally more effective against viral illnesses, so it's possible that if you had a different concurrent viral infection, getting the flu could encourage your body to clear both at the same time.
> you run less of a risk of getting secondary infection when your immune system is weakened
That's true, but you haven't shown that getting the flu weakens your immune system.
> While your system is focussed on fighting off one infection, it's less able to deal with secondary infections.
Your citation doesn't actually support your claim. Latent subclinical infections are real, and it's possible that acute febrile illness can stimulate the immune system to go after other bugs that have been hiding or dormant.
There is some evidence that ongoing viral infections can weaken your bodies defenses against bacterial illnesses and vice versa.
We may not have a complete picture of the immune system but one of these comments is square in the realm of "not science but sounds pretty good" and one at the very least in the ballpark of "conventional science we learn in school". Even if the former turns out to be correct several years from now it won't have been because of the revolutionary new hypothesis first put forth in an HN comment. They've done something we all do where we draw conclusions from our own experience which frequently turns out to be absolutely bullshit. Humans tease out patterns where there are none.
Yes, we do not want the flu. If you want to train your immune system, get the flu shot.
I got the flu 10 months ago as a healthy male in his late 20s, the first major illness I've had since I was 11. 102+ fever for over 5 days and then developed a pneumonia coinfection which knocked me out for another week. It was not just an inconvenience, it scared me being that sick.
The hospital I went to in Philadelphia to get treatment for the pneumonia said they had several young adult patients who were otherwise generally healthy in intensive care due to the bout of flu going around and related complications/coinfections. The flu kills people -- between 3,000 and 50,000 per year in the US [1]. Count yourself lucky that your experience with the flu has been as you described, if it was even the flu at all.
12-24 hours seems more like a "stomach flu" (Gastroenteritis) or a cold (rhinovirus), neither of which is influenza (aka "the flu").
According to the CDC: "Most people who get influenza will recover in several days to less than two weeks, but some people will develop complications as a result of the flu."
As others have covered and explained better than I can, the immune system isn't a muscle that needs an annual workout, especially given the risks of serious complications like pneumonia.
Don't mistake the flu for a cold. A cold is an inconvenience, the flu kills between a few thousand to tens of thousands of people, depending on which strain is currently dominant, every season in the US alone. You don't have to be particularly old or young for it to kill you either, quite a few otherwise perfectly healthy adults also manage to get to be unlucky.
This. DO NOT FUCK WITH THE FLU. Seriously it can be so much worse than you think.
My wife is a surgeon and works with legitimately sick people every day. The result of which is she typically has no sympathy for me when I get sick. As in "Can you please make less noise when you are vomiting. I'm trying to sleep here". No sympathy, except when I got the flu. I've never seen her that worried, because she knew from experience that the flu can kill you.
Parent almost certainly had a cold if it was gone in 24hrs.
Depends on the strain. Some strains affect healthy adults worse than the sick. A fit 20 year old can have worse time than a sickly child or elderly person.
A strong immune system can be a liability. When I was nearly hospitalized with the flu, I was in my late twenties and in the best shape of my life. Which is why I must repeat myself, DO NOT FUCK WITH THE FLU.
Getting your flu shot should give your immune system plenty workout.
It's like sparring at 1/2 power with full pads vs. getting into a full on street fight. Sure, the street fight will give you a slightly more real practice session, but at what cost? There is a lot of collateral damage there.
Yeah, the two times I've gotten a flu shot, it's followed by a few days of congestion and a cough, maybe a slight fever. But it's much better than the time I was down with a fever, lethargy, and light headedness during finals week one year.
You realize that the flu kills lots of elderly people? It's not just about you. A year in which the flu vaccine actually works well enough to break transmission would give a lot of people an extra year of life.
> In an otherwise healthy adult, what puts your immune system through it's paces - what gives your immune system a workout - like having the flu ?
Getting a vaccine is training for the big game. Getting the virus is the big game. Show up to the big game without proper training and you might win, have a few broken ribs, a new face, a limp, or you might just straight up lose.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic but wanted to say something.
Science it's very different of an oracle. Oracles are about vagueness, good science it's the opposite.
The proposal of new theories it's always a good thing, because other strength of science is that never anything is definitive.
The shock that I have not yet recovered it's epigenetics. After dismissing Lamarckism as ridiculous for so long, it seems that there is some truth there.
We should be a little more humble and don't dismiss nothing as 'ridiculous'. 'Improbable' take exactly the same space in the text and it's a more wise attitude.
Only, science generally doesn't claim to have all the answers or be right all the time. It is all part of moving forward. Sometimes there are differences between scientists, but that's to be expected as we are still learning stuff. Science doesn't know everything and that's ok.
Not only that, but vaccines aren't extortionate in their prices - they only count for a portion of the profits drug companies make. Most places in the US have somewhere to get the vaccines at a decently low cost - but even out of pocket they aren't too expensive and part of the cost is the nurse or pharmacist (and so on) that is administering the shot to you.
Religion, most times, deals with morals. Many of them are extremely interested in when you have sex, for example. And often, the god-form is seen as all-knowing and infallible.
