What happens if a person gets infected with just a single virion?

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Like if just one viral particle gets into your system, what’s more likely to happen: it proliferates undetected and cause an infection, or the immune system eliminates it before it can do so?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Viruses work as numbers game. For each virion, there is a chance it will get to the right place, attach to the right cell, get taken inside the cell, actually start reproducing inside the cell, etc. Probably hundreds of steps, each of which can fail. Our built in non-specific immune system is also there at every stage trying to stop many of these steps. And in the end, even if this one lucky virion makes it into the cell, the cell might just randomly die. The cells lining your insides are dying and being shed constantly.

Studies of COVID-19 for example suggested that it could take tens of thousands or even over a million virus particles to cause an actual “infection”.

Let’s take the rhinovirus as an example. It’s one of the most common cold viruses. Someone with a cold rubs their snot on a door knob. You touch the door knob. Then you touch your lips. A minute later you lick your lips. Now the virus is in your mouth…but then what? If you swallow it, the virus will just be destroyed in your stomach. However, if somehow it gets into the air for a minute and you breath it in, then has a chance to infect. But as in the beginning of my answer, there are a hundred ways this could fail. It’s not impossible but it’s very very unlikely for a single virion to cause disease. And not because of the “immune system” necessarily. Just bad luck for the virus is enough to prevent infection.

However, if your question is more like “assuming a single virion successfully infects a cell, would the immune system still win out?” then the answer could be no, the “built in” immune system at this point has failed. Now it’s up to the slower, more specific version of your immune system to attack the virus. That can take several days as your immunes system slowly comes up with a specific plan to remove this exact virus. This is part of what makes you feel sick, your own immunes system kicking into high gear.

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