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point78 | 5 years ago

So wash your hands and gargle and your symptoms are mild?

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chippy|5 years ago

Another anecdote: someone online who works in a virus lab doing other stuff said that if you are ill, have a shower twice a day and rinse mouth with mouthwash to reduce viral load.

If you need to go out, when you come back, remove all clothes and wash and then have a shower.

rooam-dev|5 years ago

Interesting indeed, perhaps by reducing the quantity of virus we give more time to our body to prepare for the "invasion"?

gwd|5 years ago

I've heard that as well. Basically, the spread of the virus inside your body is exponential too, whereas the immune system's response time will be fairly static. So if you're exposed to a little, the immune system has time to respond before the infection gets out of control; if you're exposed to a large amount, by the time the immune system starts to respond, the virus is already widespread in your system.

Tepix|5 years ago

That's a theory I've heard before. I don't remember where, unfortunately. Does anyone have a source?

The basic theory is that if you catch the virus, you want to have it in your nose first so your body has time to start a response before it reaches your lungs.

If you get a large dose into your lungs at the start (perhaps because you work at a hospital with insufficient PPE) it's less likely to be mild.

odiroot|5 years ago

I wonder how much of the virus is enough to "catch it"? One droplet? 100 droplets?

netjiro|5 years ago

This is unknown, it's individual, and varies over orders of magnitude between different diseases.

oxymoran|5 years ago

I couldn’t get tested so not 100% that I actually had covid but as soon as I started having some symptoms I started gargling with diluted hydrogen peroxide and rinsing my sinuses with a strong saline solution. I can’t see how this would hurt and why this isn’t recommended given that the virus replicates in the nose and throat.

fsh|5 years ago

The viruses are replicating inside your cells. You can't just "disinfect" living tissue without killing it. There is a reason why medicine relies on evidence and does not recommend whatever random "treatment" someone came up with.

papaf|5 years ago

I couldn’t get tested so not 100%

In Bavaria they are only testing people with symptoms and the positive rate is around 10% [1].

Everybody thinks they have it but the symptoms could also be down to a cold. I am not pointing this statistic out to prove you wrong -- I just find it interesting.

[1] https://www.lgl.bayern.de/gesundheit/infektionsschutz/infekt... and search on the page for 'Laboruntersuchungen'. The left axis is number of tests and the right axis is percentage of positive tests.