I mean common cold has been around for a long time. How has the immune system not learned how to fight it?
In: Biology
The ‘common cold’ is a virus. Viruses are creatures, same as you and me. Viruses infect other creatures in order to survive and procreate. Our bodies do their best to become resistant to viruses so we survive and can procreate, and viruses do their best to overcome that resistance so they survive and can procreate.
The “common cold” is actually a hundred or more different viruses.
Your immune system does learn how to fight the specific “cold” you presently have.
You may develop immunity to some but are still vulnerable to the others.
In addition its possible your immunity to a virus wanes over time.
While it’s possible a virus mutates so that your immune system no longer recognizes it, given how many different types of “cold viruses” there are, you can get a few colds a year and still not get all of them (or lose immunity to some you used to be immune to).
We have to to develop immunity to specific pathogens through exposure. We do not inherit immunity against them like bacteria can using CRISPR-Cas9 as a defense. When we get sick from a pathogen we develop antibodies against it that prevent us from getting sick from it if we encounter it in the future. However, pathogens replicate and mutate very quickly which allows them to evade our defenses against infection. Thus there is an ongoing coevolutionary process of our immune systems getting more effective and pathogens getting more evasive.
It is immune to the common cold. Or at least, last year’s version of it. Viruses like that and influenza mutate so rapidly that the disease you caught 6 months ago is now sufficiently different that your immune response doesn’t work anymore and you have to start from scratch again.
The common cold specifically is a virus that keeps developing and changing, which is also the reason there is no medication for it (there are only stuff to ease the symptoms).
Immune system is like an active army. Is not a wall, it’s a mf who roam around attacking bacteria like a Far Cry protagonist
Cold symptoms can be caused by a multitude of viruses. When I get a cold here at home in Canada it’s a 2 or 3 day event where the worst ever is a week. I got a cold once with a European strain of something (I travelled there for 2 weeks and worsened on the plane ride home) that knocked my sense of smell out for 10 days and wrecked my ears for over 8 months with serious fluid build up. I had severe neck and shoulder pain and a small palsy. I couldn’t purse my lips properly to whistle because of the fluid in my face
“The Common Cold” makes it sound like it’s one disease, it’s not, it’s a family of hundreds of different viruses all of which are capable of changing over time through mutations.
There is no one cold virus. There are about 200 viruses that cause cold like symptoms. Most are rhinoviruses (about 10% are corona viruses). You likely have immunity to many, just not all. That’s why kids get so many more colds than adults.
If you want a recent example of how absolutely awful humans are at basic hygiene in the face of a single pathogen, just look at Covid. People massively overestimate the safety and effectiveness of their habits even in the face of a virus we have a vaccine to. People are forced to care more about their income for a single day than public health. All a virus has to do is mutate and not be deadly enough to kill off the host species (or make us care enough to eradicate it) and it’ll stick around.
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