Quote:
Originally Posted by Malsua
I agree that distance is best, far and away.
As to LD50 and viral inoculum, they did exactly that with mice. They kept shooting them up the nose with stronger and stronger viral inoculum of H5N1 until they found the LD50 dose of it.
A Mouse Model for the Evaluation of Pathogenesis and Immunity to Influenza A (H5N1) Viruses Isolated from Humans
Of course with humans, there is a lot more involved since we aren't lab rats and no two humans are identical. There is certainly a correlation with the amount of initial exposure to virus to outcome. It also appears that in many cases, tcells squash the virus before you end up with any level of bcell antibodies. The PCR test in the "asymptomatics" in many cases is probably detecting viral debris, not active virus. This is probably because the initial inoculum was quite low. Either that or they are running the cycle threshold out to 40+.
Best way to get a low inoculum is distance. Second best way is shielding. Since I can't walk around in a plexiglass cocoon, I'll have to settle on masking indoors in close proximity only. |
All true, of course it is a lot easier to kill a mouse than a person. I agree that severity of illness is proportional to inoculum. The correlation between death and severity of illness would empirically seem correct, but as you know it doesn't always work that way