[puppypower (OP)]

I was recently doing some basic reading on immunity and I read that all our various body fluids, from blood to saliva, all contain aspects of our immune system. The question I have; can these various fluids in healthy people, who are resistant to the corona virus, be used to spread immune factors to other people by simple social contact? If I was healthy and the virus did not bother me, can I use pepper to help me sneeze out immune factors for others?

If you got the virus, and you were better the next day, that means your body can grid down the virus to where it cannot root and even create basic symptoms. This means it is dead and spread in your body fluids. Your fluids should be rich in damaged virus parts, and other immune factors, that rendered it moot for you and others.

If you consider immediate families who live together, they do not have to wear masks at home, while together. They get to share and spread immune factors to each other via body fluids and close contact. This appears to be safe, effective and free. Socially, this is not allowed. Is the collective mask wearing  due to medicine not being advanced enough to determine who is vulnerable, and who is the cure, so as to attack the problem from two fronts?  Instead we choose one size fits all, since immunity is all a black box, and there is no money in herd immunity.

[Bored chemist]

Your fluids should be rich in damaged virus parts

Not really.
Imagine two people, one got exposed to the virus but, for whatever reason, his immune system destroyed it before it got a foot hold, the other got sick and . for a while, the virus thrived- multiplying like crazy in his cells, but eventually, his immune system won the battle.

Which one has more viral debris?

[Bored chemist]

If you consider immediate families who live together, they do not have to wear masks at home, while together. They get to share and spread immune factors to each other via body fluids and close contact. This appears to be safe, effective and free.

What actually happens is they share the virus- usually they all get infected.

"second hand" immunity like that isn't effective.

[Bored chemist]

there is no money in herd immunity.

There is enormous money in herd immunity. It could save the economy.

But you seem not to understand what it means; in particular, what it costs.

Without any effective treatment, and without a vaccinated population, "Herd immunity" means "let the susceptible ones die".
Once we have buried the 4% of the population or so who die (and institutionalised those maybe16% crippled but not killed), the rest of us don't need to worry about the infection.

That's not a sane strategy, is it?

[puppypower (OP)]

If what everyone says is true, than natural selection appears to have brain dead moments. In other words, almost any virus can help spread itself, by inducing symptoms in its victims, that allow the virus to spread itself, externally, via expelled body fluids. Natural selection was on duty.

However, the God of dice, although randomly giving all virus this basic capacity; throw heads constantly, never gave any humans the capacity to output immune factors, in a similar way, to counter virus? This is natural selection malpractice, since this simple selective change would have created a better balance.

On the other hand, if the 5% attrition is part of the natural design, and this was selected, then there  may have an alternate evolutionary explanation. In this case, the natural goal may be not to protect the sick, from the outside, but to concentrate the strong. Humans breed like cockroaches, so we will never run out of humans. Attrition is not a terminal condition. The selective goal may be to place a stress on humans. to make the species stronger, by periodically purging the weak. This explanation, although complementary to natural selection, is less settling to the human mind compared to the charges of malpractice. However, in the end, Medicine found a source of profit by mimicking this natural design flaw; external induced health for a price.

Was it natural selection malpractice, or was this a natural design to help meet longer term needs of a species that can over populate and stress the earth?

Maybe the next question is, can individuals be artificially induced to expel immune factors, since it would be very effective to have the 95% of the herd, who are less impacted, outputting immune agents, to help lower the 5% attrition rates.

In terms of an artificial parallel, we do give the sick, blood plasma transfusions, since these fluids, from those who have previously fought the disease and won, have healing properties. Maybe we can induce nose bleed in recovered patients, and they can flick the blood into the crowd and give them aid. This may impact the bottomline of the medical industries, and be resisted.

[puppypower (OP)]

there is no money in herd immunity.

There is enormous money in herd immunity. It could save the economy.

But you seem not to understand what it means; in particular, what it costs.

Without any effective treatment, and without a vaccinated population, "Herd immunity" means "let the susceptible ones die".
Once we have buried the 4% of the population or so who die (and institutionalised those maybe16% crippled but not killed), the rest of us don't need to worry about the infection.

That's not a sane strategy, is it?

This is not sane for humans, since we have willower and choice. However, this insane way for humans is the way the preponderance of nature does it. The differences in end result are quite clear. Nature is very healthy and does not require medical expenses. Humans have to invest a lot of resources not needed for the rest of nature. We all marvel at how nature is so healthy, unless humans mess it up with willpower. Strip mining takes choice and willpower.

[/quote]

Not really.
Imagine two people, one got exposed to the virus but, for whatever reason, his immune system destroyed it before it got a foot hold, the other got sick and . for a while, the virus thrived- multiplying like crazy in his cells, but eventually, his immune system won the battle.

Which one has more viral debris?

It is a question of timing. The first person has some useful immune factors, sooner. He may help the other person, whose immune system needs a front end boost. Since the second person allowed the virus to multiply much longer, he will have more viral debris in his fluids. His fluids may be even more potent in terms of relief to other wii need a stronger boost. Watered down saliva may not be as effective as concentrated saliva for the sickest people.

This is why I often wondered if humans can trade immune factors, via body fluids, for future needs simply, by coexisting together in a natural way. I know if you healthy and sneeze in public many will assume germs and not immune factors, so people are trained to avoid this. This can create a false negative where aid is seen as a threat. I have never heard medicine comment on this.

[Bored chemist]

Since the second person allowed the virus to multiply much longer, he will have more viral debris in his fluids.

OK, so it took you a while, but you answered the question.

"...second person ... will have more viral debris in his fluids.".
And that's the opposite of what you said here

If you got the virus, and you were better the next day,...Your fluids should be rich in damaged virus parts,

This is not sane for humans

Good to see that you recognise that a policy of "herd immunity" is insanity.
So the problem isn't that "there's no money in it"; the problem is that it's the wrong thing to do.

Nature is very healthy

There is nothing more natural than death.

[evan_au]

I often wondered if humans can trade immune factors, via body fluids

There is a known technique called "convalescent plasma" which has been used for a number of diseases like ebola (before an ebola vaccine was available).
- There was a trial of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 in India, but it was not effective. Partly because it was a poorly designed trial.
- When Donald Trump came down with COVID-19, one of his treatments was a high-tech version of convalescent plasma.

When you overcome a disease, your body produces antibodies, which attack various parts of the virus.
- These antibodies circulate in your bloodstream
- Your body continually removes them from the bloodstream - the half-life is about 2 weeks
- If you are no longer exposed to the virus, production of the antibodies reduces to low levels over the next month or so.
- Convalescent plasma requires that a healthy person who has recently recovered from the disease go to a blood bank, and have plasma extracted from their blood. This contains concentrated antibodies.
- I have donated plasma several times (plasmapheresis) - it took about an hour connected to a machine (take a good book or podcast!), and you can repeat the process every month.
- This produces a yellowy liquid (plasma) which contains various immune factors. This is later subject to further processing to separate out the antibodies, clotting factors, etc.
- The level of antibodies in normal family contact is far too low to transfer a useful amount of antibodies to protect family members from the millions of virus particles shed by an infected person. Putting the patient in an isolation room, wearing masks and rigorous hand-washing will be far more effective.

There are downsides to the convalescent plasma process:
- A month or two after infection, the donor's antibody levels will have dropped. (The India trial did not test for antibody levels against SARS-COV2.)
- A month after treatment, the recipients antibody levels will have dropped, so they will again be subject to infection. If this is for prevention, they would need another treatment.
- ..which is why convalescent plasma is normally reserved for people who already have severe disease, and are at high risk of dying.
- Plasma contains a mix of antibodies. Most of the antibodies will be for things apart from SARS-COV2.
- Some of the antibodies may attack the person to whom they are given, so it makes sense to at least have a blood-type match.
- The person making the donation may have some disease which may be transferred to the recipient

However, we now have vaccines which have known concentration and proven effectiveness, and are now in rollout.
- They are factory-produced, and will not transfer disease from one person to another
- They provide several layers of immune protection (not just antibodies, but a supply of white blood cells as well)
- The recipient can produce their own antibodies, without requiring ongoing treatment
- The immunity lasts much longer - we know it lasts for months rather than weeks (but this virus is too new to know if the protection lasts for years).

The high-tech version of convalescent plasma given to Donald Trump used factory-produced pure ("monoclonal") antibodies which were known to be effective at neutralizing SARS-COV2, and free of disease.
- This treatment is still in trials.
- If approved, this might be useful if someone catches severe COVID-19 before they could get vaccinated

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiserum