If certain illnesses go dormant in the warmer months, how does it ever exist in a hot area in the first place (Arizona, Florida etc)?
In: Biology
They don’t really go dormant, so much as they’re harder to spread around. If a germ needs to be in water to remain infectious, for example, an arid environment will dry it out and leave it exposed, making it harder to spread from person to person.
Separately, some atmospheric conditions help people deal with symptoms, so diseases are less painful or noticable to the infected. For example, a way to help alleviate symptoms of many respiratory diseases like COVID is to breathe in warm, humid air, like in a hot shower. So depending on the environment, people might not know they’re sick so people assume there’s not much going around.
We don’t know enough about SARS-COV-2 yet to be truly sure about any of those things for it. The variation in symptoms from person to person seems to be immense. We do know that warm, humid weather isn’t a cure-all: Brazil is likely going to be a major epicenter very soon given it’s poor management of the crisis thus far, and Florida is shortly to be a disaster zone of epic proportions for similar reasons. New Orleans, a notoriously hot and humid city, is also a major epicenter right now.
How does it get to the warm area?
Its likely spread to the warmer areas by visitors, via plane, train and automobile.
The seasonality of respiratory viruses is poorly understood and is not tied solely to local weather conditions.
The interesting thing about Arizona is that the summer months are more like winters elsewhere – we spend most of our time from June-September indoors, in closer contact with coworkers, etc. But I’ve still noticed a seasonality – most colds showing up from Nov – Feb.
It’s more about UV intensity as the earth tilts towards the sun in the northern hemisphere during the summer. UV radiation deactivates viruses, the more UV, the more deactivation in the wild, the less spread.
I think what you are asking about is why flu season happens during the winter.
It is less about how the virus survives in cold or warmer weather and more about how people behave when its cold out.
People tend to socialize indoors where they are forced to be closer together. Making it easier for the virus to spread.
The difference with covid-19 virus is that we are asking people not to visit each other. So if the virus is in a house, it will only effect the people living in that house, they should not have any visitors to pass it on to the next house. They should also not be going to visit anyone to allow the virus to spread.
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