[ad_1]
People with protective masks move in the pedestrian zone of Vienna. PHOTO: Reuters
Until you put an approved product on the market, this is the best thing you can do for yourself.
Even if they do not protect completely, their use leads to more asymptomatic cases.
Protective masks can inadvertently create immunity against coronavirus, making those infected more easily ill, scientists say in a publication in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals.
An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine released the unproven but promising theory that the universal use of protective masks could help reduce the aggressiveness of the coronavirus, which in turn would lead to a higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. writes the Daily Telegraph.
The masks have already been shown to retain much of the coronavirus-filled droplets that infected people secrete when they speak, cough or sneeze. However, the masks do not fully protect. Drops containing the virus can “escape” through the cracks despite protecting the mouth and nose. However, this is not bad news, say the authors. They think yes
the organism
could
deal with
The minus
quantity
pathogens,
taken with a mask and therefore cause a mild or asymptomatic infection. In other words, the masks can create a kind of live vaccine, say Monica Gandhi and George Rutherford of the University of California, San Francisco.
The theory that a small amount of coronavirus leads to a milder course of the disease is not new. A large study in the “Lancet” in the summer showed that the amount of virus, or so called. The infectious dose at the beginning of the infection largely determines the severity of the disease. Wearing masks serves that purpose:
to reduce
infectious
dose
The more people in a society wear masks, the greater the likelihood that most infected people will not make it to the hospital and will have little or no symptoms. The reason is that even a small viral load can trigger an immune response, which virtually any vaccine does.
Before the advent of the vaccine against smallpox, for example, the so-called smallpox – the first vaccine in the history of medicine.
Doctors applied a small amount of secretion from pimples from people with smallpox to the skin of healthy people. This led to a relatively mild transmission of the disease and the development of immunity in a healthy person. However, as this treatment did not have particularly predictable effects and sometimes led to a serious and even fatal development of the disease, it was eliminated with the introduction of the vaccine.
It is unknown how the amount of virus affects the course of COVID-19 in humans. According to Brinkman, this is clear only in animal studies.
Chinese scientists have shown that hamsters placed behind a barrier made of surgical masks are less likely to become infected with the coronavirus. And those that did get infected were more susceptible to the disease than hamsters, who weren’t protected at all.
These studies have not yet been done in humans, but
Some
observation
support for
theory
On an isolated Argentine cruise ship, where a COVID-19 outbreak was unleashed when passengers received surgical masks and the crew with high-protection N95 masks, the number of asymptomatic cases reached 81%. In previous blasts on other ships, where passengers weren’t equipped with masks, only 20% were mild and asymptomatic.
According to Dr. Monica Gandhi, who is among the authors of the article, the smallpox hypothesis has not yet been proven by studies of a different nature.
If confirmed, universal camouflage could become a form of vaccination that builds immunity and thus slows the spread of the virus in the United States and other high-risk areas of the world while we await the development of a safe vaccine. .
There is already enough evidence that mortality in countries with mandatory use of masks is low even in the case of a jump in the cases after the removal of the locks.
Italy, meanwhile, has begun clinical trials of a hopeful drug for the treatment of COVID-19.
the generic
medicine
raloxifene,
Registered to treat osteoporosis. The studies are being carried out by the EU-funded consortium Exscalate4CoV and use the union’s supercomputer. According to initial data, the drug helps in patients with moderate symptoms. Clinical trials will last 12 weeks.
So far, 7,000 drugs have been studied. In addition to raloxifene, two other drugs will be tested, which show promise, according to the European Commission.
The number of infected people in the world now exceeds 44 million, increasing by hundreds of thousands in literally hours, and the death toll is approaching 1.2 million. the highest number since the start of the pandemic.
[ad_2]
