But I also have to wonder if the kids with auto-immune diseases or "common" allergies elsewhere might just die the first time they encounter some event that'd otherwise be caught and treated in "the first world" ?
> The hygiene hypothesis has difficulty explaining why allergic diseases also occur in less affluent regions. Additionally, exposure to some microbial species actually increases future susceptibility to disease instead, as in the case of infection with rhinovirus (the main source of the common cold) which increases the risk of asthma
I think having a common cold infection each year does not bring any benefits, it certainly does not make anybody immune to common cold
https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-08-13-crowds-vs-friends/
"Your Immune System is Not a Muscle"
> Four main categories of pathogens that humans deal with are viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. The evidence for pathogens that may be beneficial to the immune system is almost entirely for parasitic worms and friendly (commensal) bacteria. In contrast, many viruses can even trigger the onset of autoimmune diseases or allergies.
Putting people in a small poorly-ventilated box with a bunch of strangers (some of whom perhaps recently flew to the other side of the planet and back) is the abberant behavior, really.
Plus the air is not always “fresh” depending on where you live and what time of year. Ozone, smog, smoke, etc.
Plus for those of us with allergies, an open window during for example ragweed season can be a nightmare.
>> In a paper submitted to the Royal Society of London, they described how over the course of six months they had used sunlight to prevent bacteria from growing in a tube.
Humans have known about this for millennia, with ancient doctors regularly telling people to expose wounds to sunlight. Even animals have been seen instinctively "sunning" a wound. (I remember a BBC doc about Antarctica where a penguin was shown exposing a bite wound to the low-angle sunlight.) Only in recent years has a fear of cancer caused us to retreat from any and all sunlight, a fear revisited as we learn the downsides.
https://www.jefftk.com/p/glycol-far-uvc-and-cfm-measurement-...
I can't wait for a dynomight article about this :D
"This happened despite murine norovirus being more resistant to far-UVC than many common human respiratory viruses, likely due to its tough protein outer ‘shell’.".
Under wide spread use, would viruses simply mutate to being more resistant to far-UVC?
> Far-UVC is like an aerial disinfectant or bleach, except that it is harmless to humans at practical germicidal doses, and thus should not provoke resistance to its uptake. It does not alter pathogens in a way that allows resistance to emerge, a serious problem for antibiotics. Instead, it thoroughly damages microbial genomes at random, destroying bacteria and viruses alike, whether they are drug-resistant, vaccine-evasive, or indeed newly emerged.
>Instead, it thoroughly damages microbial genomes at random, destroying bacteria and viruses alike, whether they are drug-resistant, vaccine-evasive, or indeed newly emerged.
A view which treats microbes and viruses into generalized buckets of 'good' or 'bad' is far too simplistic. It's interesting that there is no concern with a "random, destroying" action that avoids even a whiff of mention on impact to the vast benign or helpful biomes that would also be randomly destroyed.
Admittedly, I know very little in this space. However, I've formed an opinion that the complex interplay of these biomes has non-deterministic outcomes. Pathogenic microbe impacts could be as much a symptom/reflection of an imbalanced healthy ecosystem within the local environment versus a sudden "invasive" presence that needs destruction. It seems very reckless to indiscriminately torch a local environments microbe population without acknowledging that your well-intentioned efforts may be taking an imbalanced environment and making it even more imbalanced.
War is peace ? /s