This Is How Your Immune System Works

Like a sack of snakes

We’re in respiratory virus season.

The season when the media and their favoured medical grifters start selling us comforting lies about why so many people are ill.

As you’re probably aware, a myth has taken hold in recent years that the reason for increased sickness is because lockdowns and pandemic measures kept people away from the bugs and germs we need exposure to for a healthy immune system.

This is nonsense. But lots of people believe it. It feels right. Psychologically it is a welcome explanation, because it means when we get ill, we can tell ourselves it is actually good for us.

We’re catching up on those bugs we missed out on, the myth goes. Our immune system is in debt. Getting sick is the path back into the black. That hacking cough is simply your route back to baseline health.

It also neatly supports a business-as-usual agenda. Don’t worry, keep spending. It’s the perfect explanation to keep the capitalist train on the tracks.

It doesn’t stand up to any logical reasoning. But people are buying it.

One of the reasons people are buying it is because it’s crafted in terms that are simple to understand. Bugs ‘train’ our immune system. Lack of infections results in an out of shape immune system.

So I thought I’d write something to dispel these myths in equally simple terms that I hope people can understand.

Something you might want to share with friends and family who have bought into the propaganda.

First off, let’s scrap the debt analogy. Your immune system is not a bank that goes into debt without regular viral deposits. Your immune system is more like a sack of snakes. A sack of 100 snakes. Constantly wriggling and writhing. Always alert and on the look out for viral and bacterial danger. These snakes are your friends.

And all viruses are snake charmers. The job of a virus is to hypnotise your snakes and steal them from your sack. Some are much better at doing this than others. But every stolen snake leaves you with a weaker, not a stronger immune system. That’s one less snake in the sack to attack future viruses.

All viruses, in the process of stealing that snake, leave behind a scent that keeps the snakes hyper alert for the next time it comes along.

Measles for example, is a pretty good snake charmer, able to enter the sack and steal quite a few snakes (let’s say 10). But it leaves behind a very strong scent, meaning that the remaining snakes stay on the look out for that scent forever.

Importantly, the measles virus is also lazy. It never tries to change its scent to get into your sack and steal another snake.

Ebola is an incredibly effective charmer. It lulls most of your snakes to sleep, taking over the sack and stealing lots of snakes (let’s say 80). In a high number of cases, the few snakes you have left are not enough to fight back against the disease.

Ebola survivors, those whose small number of snakes were able to fight the virus out of the sack, are often left with lifelong post-Ebola complications and very weak immune systems.

The virus that causes covid – SarsCov2 – is also an effective snake charmer. Nowhere near as effective as Ebola. But pretty good. And, crucially, unlike measles, it is not lazy. It is constantly changing its scent. In fact it is one of the most successful viruses ever known to humanity in its ability to change scent.

This is why it can charm its way into your sack of snakes every few months.

How many snakes these viruses take each time is crucial, and depends on a lot of factors.

Vaccines help. They are like pouring grease into the sack. They make it harder for a snake charming virus to get a good grip on your snakes and yank them out. As the charmer is trying to get a grip, the snakes are attacking.

Some greases are more effective than others. Some wear off over time. Combined with a virus that changes its scent regularly, like the one that causes covid, there is no lasting immunity. This is also why, with a virus like SarsCov2, it’s good to keep adding some grease to the sack.

If you want to live a long life, the goal is to lessen the number of snakes stolen from your sack over your lifetime.

If you’ve had a lot of snakes stolen by age 40, you almost certainly won’t make it to 80.

At the top of the sack you have a cord. You can tie this cord tight and stop the charmer reaching into your sack. This is what a mask does to stop airborne pathogens.

But we live in society. And this is not always possible.

So then you might want to give the snakes a hand. In the early stage, when the charmer is playing his flute, you have a window of opportunity to interrupt his playing.

The viral load (how many viral particles you breathe in) is critical to the outcome of the attack. SarsCov2 takes around 48 hours to get up to full strength. But by the time you get symptoms (that’s the snakes attacking) it’s too late to make the charmer miss a note. This is why having a post-possible-infection routine is helpful.

In those early hours, nose sprays and mouth washes might help make him miss a note or two, reducing the number of snakes that become hypnotised, leaving more snakes alert to attack. Other research says green and black tea, as well as supplements such as vitamin C and zinc, might also help keep your snakes alert.

There are of course caveats. Different people have a different number of snakes in their sacks. Some have stronger, more venomous snakes. Some have weaker snakes. Some of this is down to pure genetic dumb luck and some is down to past infections. Quite a bit is down to the vaccines we’ve received over our lives, especially in childhood.

The other thing that can happen is that a virus co-exists in your sack with the snakes.

Epstein-Barr virus for example is very good at doing this. It’s estimated that 90% of people are infected with EBV. It lives alongside your snakes and doesn’t try to steal them.

HIV is also very good at doing this. But unlike EBV, HIV stealthily and over time steals your snakes. Before the invention of effective HIV drugs, the virus regularly stole every single snake in a person’s sack over years, leaving the sufferer with no snakes. People then died when a common cold virus or relatively benign bacteria came along.

They were defenceless.

While EBV is normally chill and doesn’t steal snakes over time, it can suddenly become very aggressive in the presence of another virus. It is suspected that activation of latent EBV when another virus enters the sack plays a role in post-viral conditions, including long covid.

It also appears that in some cases, the virus that causes covid can live in the sack and steal snakes over time, just like HIV. The medical term for this is lymphopenia.

Even in cases where covid doesn’t progressively weaken your immune system like HIV, it always takes some snakes and weakens your future defences against other pathogens. Getting a virus that steals some of your snakes 1-3 times a year is not beneficial for you. It is actively harmful.

This is how your immune system works. Decent scientists, like Stephen Griffin, know it. They’re just not the ones mass media journalists interview very often. Very occasionally, like in this Financial Times op-ed, the truth about your sack of snakes is told. But it’s far too rare.

This is why, before vaccinations and clean water standards, high child mortality rates meant that average life expectancy was 45. Sacks got emptied quickly.

This is why so many people now are more sick more often than before covid.

Any other explanation you might hear is propaganda to keep you grinding away in the system.

Don’t let them steal your snakes.

This winter, keep that sack as full as possible.