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 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
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’ 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.
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