Why is the immune system so fast to respond to allergens, but take days to fight off a legitimate infection?
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Familiarity and dosage of the irritant. That’s how immune systems work. With people with allergies, the immune system knows what that thing is, sees a quantity that makes it notice it, and thinks that it really doesn’t like it.
Plus I doubt things like pollen and such mutate their “appearance” (so to speak). If your body identifies a specific plant pollen as something it dislikes, it’ll remember and the pollen probably didn’t really change much since last time.
With infections, you probably are getting a smaller dose and it may have changed enough that your body doesn’t see it as “the flu we had a problem with last time we saw it.” Plus infectious things are fighting back, reproducing, and doing their own actual damage to the body.
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