So... they think it will... vaccinate them?
Truly it boggles the mind.
There is the tale (which has a grain of truth in it.) of how vaccination from chickenpox came to be via milkmaids and cowpox, so maybe folks think bird flu will work the same?
this one took a while
We're playing Plague Inc on easy mode.
"Sick people given hugs"
Papa nurgle smiles upon mankind, i guess.
MAGA tards: ivermectin on one hand, industrial raw milk in the other
Serious question, does consuming a virus give a similar viral load as inhaling an equal amount?
Assuming you mean viral load referring to mucuses or blood of the infected. Given that the human influenza virus' entry requires the viral surface proteins (hemagglutinin (HA)) to bind to acids present on respiratory epithelial cells along with cleavage of HA by host cell proteases (enzymes that breakdown proteins) to facilitate membrane fusion. These trypsin-like proteases are mainly expressed in airway tissues, restricting influenza viral tissue response to the respiratory tract. I would say it would be highly unlikely for influenza viral replication existing in an environment lacking this crucial interaction let alone a low-pH environment like the GI tract
But probably not a good idea anyway?
What a long-winded, asinine answer. Using scientific jargon doesn't help communicate your meaning to the layman when you do not bother to actually explain the meaning of the jargon you use.
Put the effort in to explain the science properly. If you can't, then you don't know the subject well enough. If you won't, then you shouldn't be communicating science.
The pot said to the kettle. Your reply to this thread is much better presented, you how to communicate science. I think you need to think a bit more about your audience. Lemmy isn't an academic institution, it's removed posts all the way down.
I'm sure there's some hypocrisy in my replies, but that's not going to stop me from doing the same again. I've worked with scientists for a long time and the way most of them communicate is a pet peeve of mine.
I've thought about this for a while to be sure I'm not just being reactive. I wouldn't ask you to stop, in fact I encourage you to post more. I can't find the time to write such well written replies. Your post is the type of content I like to see and I'm sure others do too.
I'm giving you an unsolicited critique of your comments. If you intend to communicate with laymen about scientific concepts from my experience you're going to have a lot more success approaching it as if you're a supportive teacher rather than trying to prove someone wrong. If you try to be more like Ms. Frizzle than Sheldon Cooper you might reach more people, which is the ultimate goal of communicating science to laymen.
You are actually very good at it, and I encourage you to practice and find what works and what doesn't. Proving someone wrong just makes them defensive, teaching someone or communicating with the public shouldn't make them feel the need to be defensive.
I was being reactive too and that made me crass. Did that commenter deserve it? Not really.
My point wasn't directly to prove someone wrong (their content wasn't wrong, just poorly explained), it was my gut reaction to what I perceived as a type of scientist of any level who sees themselves as better and smarter than everyone else. The most effective way I've found to shut this down is to bully them about their own weaknesses because the majority of this "STEM is the only viable education and makes you smarter than everyone else" attitude only ever comes from people who've never done anything else with their lives.
Most of these types have never held a full-time job besides working in a lab and the totality of their professional and academic experience is in science. Communication, art, history, the "soft" sciences, are things to be made fun of and contain nothing useful in the minds of these types and that leaves them wildly unqualified to communicate science in any format. Their presentations suck, their explanations suck, and their writing and figures suck even if their science is very well done. This means their science is effectively useless because a huge part of the scientific process is communicating what you've done. Almost all of these people become PhDs and then continue this behavior long into their careers! It's not every PhD, but it's a significant portion.
The comment I replied to sounded to me like this type of person (the poor science communication, not the ego part), so my gut reaction was to reply as if to one of those people. I left my other reply because it seemed like a waste of time to shit on the only useful reply while contributing nothing to the conversation myself, so I get why it also looks like an ego trip. I'd peg my actions as more self-righteous than conceited, which is also a problem of ego. :)
Everything you've said is true and you'll just have to take me at my word when I say that the approach you described is how I approach others in my offline and professional life. I work hard to make sure my own science communication is always accessible to my target audience and gives what I see as the necessary context surrounding the topic as well. My intention is never to talk down to people with less experience in an area than me, but no one is perfect and I'm sure it can come off that way occasionally.
That said, my first comment was made in short temper against an assumption/projection of a person and it's something I'll probably do again despite knowing it's not the most useful approach because I'm a fallible human and this type of forum tends to have a culture that encourages this behavior. What I mean by this culture comment is very evident on Reddit, but less so on the spaces I frequent on Lemmy. Commenters frequently leave very confident replies that are factually incorrect or unclear. There is no other way to combat this directly than to call it out and doing so in a way that shuts them down. Not shutting them down leads to drawn out arguments where the person who is wrong dogs in their heels. Yes, you are right that putting someone on the defensive just leads to more of stubborn replies.
I believe poor or inaccurate communications of technical topics can be more harmful than keeping the comment to yourself. It creates an uphill battle for those with expert knowledge and for those who don't have it, but are trying to learn. At that point, correcting the mistake becomes more about educating the commenter. Yes, corrections can theoretically help others, but I find it largely just propagates the false information. That's why I prefer to shut that part of the discussion down.
Additionally, I work in a space where credentials are weighted heavier than factual accuracy, direct critiques of those with power or credentials are dismissed as uncivil, while those from positions of power are not. The only ways to combat that force is to put your nose to the grindstone with those hopes that you one day gain the power that will lend you authority or you stop caring about credentials, offer a direct critique and deal with coming off as an asshole sometimes.
I guess I'm done justifying myself now, but I hope you understand the point of my justifications was to help explain the reasoning behind my approaches rather than to counter your critiques and absolve myself from my approach. I do justify my actions for myself, but sharing your reasoning always helps with empathy regardless of whether your actions are right.
I care less about replying or sharing my knowledge on social media these days, but your critiques are welcome and I have thought about my replies the last few days as well. Ultimately I decided to brush it off and move on after my last one despite disagreeing with your first reply, but I respect good faith discussions and think your last comment deserved a thoughtful reply. Thanks for putting up with me sharing most of my thoughts at length. I usually try to keep my comments short and unserious because I know that my serious replies tend to become very long otherwise.
You're right and I'll try to be less reactive and aggressive the next time I see a scientific comment that disappoints me. I replied more to a projection than to the actual commenter and they didn't deserve such a harsh response. Thank you for calling it out (and fuck Sheldon Cooper).
That's a fascinating question. I'd love to hear from an actual epidemiologist.
You don't swallow all of the milk and thus not all of the virus particles. There's always some residue that can then start to infect you just as if you inhaled the virus.
TLDR: If I interpreted what you are getting at, no. The rest of the comment is about questions surrounding yours that I think are more relevant.
If you inhale a certain amount of virus particles vs drinking the same amount of virus particles, the amount of virus particles that are able to infect cells would be lower in the drink than what was inhaled. So no, the amount of virus particles that can infect you would be lower in the milk.
Fun side fact: there are some routes in your gut to access your immune system, such as the lacteals. Some vaccine researchers have targeted these, but it's notoriously difficult to produce an oral vaccine that is effective as administration by other routes.
The route of infection isn't always important once an injection takes hold. If you get infected by the same virus via drinking vs inhaling, you're still infected with that virus and your body will still have to fight it off.
Quantity doesn't matter so much once you pass the bar for an active viral infection because viruses produce an obscene amount of replicates once they infect a cell. The bar for infection does vary by the pathogen and route of exposure, so it can take a much larger quantity of virus particles for an infection to take hold through your gut than through your lungs. Different viral species are able to more efficiently infect you via different routes as well.
Aside from those effects, how are differences in the route of an infection important?
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The types of protection your body provides against infection varies by route. Mucous, antibodies, the types of immune cells, the density of immune cells, and environmental factors like pH and clearance of mucous (how quickly it is removed and replaced) all affect how difficult it is for a pathogen to get through and infect it's target cell type. Some examples are: your nose protects you by catching things in the mucous and then running out your nose or down your throat, your stomach is acidic and lined in mucous, so viruses can't get through as easily and are likely to be destroyed by the acid, the layers of your skin make it extremely difficult for anything to get through unless you get an open wound.
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The route of the infection changes the types of immune cells that encounter the pathogen, which can affect the type of protection your body develops against that pathogen. Sometimes this is the type of cell formed, but it can also be where are most of these cells located.
A pathogen in your muscle (or an injected vaccine) will produce cells to fight the infection and cells to remember the pathogen as well as help fight an infection caused by that pathogen in the future. This can reduce the severity and length of symptoms you experience with future infections.
A pathogen in your mucous membrane (I'm mainly talking your nose and nasal-spray vaccines) will produce all of the types of protection that would be produced in your muscle, but it can also produce antibodies that will interact with the pathogen and prevent a new infection from occurring.
Vaccine researchers are trying things like nasal sprays instead of intramuscular injections in order to target this preventative immune protection. This isn't the only potential benefit, but it's one reason to do this and some vaccines are available as nasal sprays.
All of this is generalized and immunology is vastly more complex than I made it sound here. To be frank, immunology is so complex that we still largely are guessing during vaccine research. We know things, but everything in the immune system is interconnected and there are still many things we don't know. We only have part of the puzzle and are missing the picture on the box. Even when we do find an effective treatment, chances are it was an educated guess, but we don't actually know all of the mechanisms behind the protection.
Hopefully that helps make things a bit clearer.
Drinking infected milk sounds like an ineffective and potentially dangerous way to protect yourself, but frankly, it's not entirely without merit. I definitely won't be doing it.
My milkshake brings all the boys to graveyard
And they’re like, it’s better than SARS.
I used to think if these people did the dumb things they would die before having any impact on the rest of us.
I say we let natural selection take its course
Plz don't, I work retail.
It's truly our way.
Millenia of storytelling: These are things that can happen, let's make sharing information fun.
History: Look at all this misery. Look at it.
Post-covid: Ok boys, we gave it a go. Good job overall, but we need to do better next time. Let's hit the showers then the replays to see what we can do better.
Us: Why is this happening? Who did this to me? Because I've been kept in the dark I will decide how to handle this new situation and spread the word.
Still unlikely to develop human to human transmission this way.
That's totally how human to human transmission is going to start.
I mean, it may give 'em immunity. Just not how they think it should (although I'm not sure if they can think at all) :D
Natural selection:
It can be passed from mammary glands? That's.... Oh it must be on the skin and getting mixed into the product...
Good news! The mortality rate is so high it's unlikely to spread as far as COVID!
Whatever this is refuses to load for me
I get that a lot and have to click the "hd" full version button for it to load
America has the best education in the world.
Memes
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