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a different thought about vaccines (question - not arguing)


K&Rs Mom
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This is not about whether vaccines are a good idea or how much immunity they cause.  It's a question about transmitting germs, which is something I never see answered on all these vaccination debates.  

 

If someone is vaccinated, and the vaccine has worked and that person has immunity to whatever, can't they still carry germs anyway?  What I mean is, person A can't catch disease B, because person A is immune, but person A touches a doorknob which has been touched by person C who has disease B (and didn't stay home like they should have).  Then person A uses germy hand to give sippy cup to toddler A, who is not immune for whatever reason - did person A being immune do any good as far as "herd immunity"?  Yes it's good for person A who doesn't get sick, but now that she is not sick, she is still out there spreading the germs that she didn't catch (let's say because her purse is covered with them from putting it on the daycare floor at pickup time, so handwashing isn't a lasting solution, she keeps re-picking up the germs from dirty purse).  Or am I wrong about how germs travel?

 

A personal example - my mom got the flu shot because she babysits my nieces.  Can't she still bring them the flu germs from the grocery cart previously pushed by a flu sufferer?  So her getting the flu shot does not protect my nieces, right?  I'm not trying to argue whether the flu shot is a good idea, or whether she should get it for her own self, only wondering if it actually met the stated goal of protecting someone else.

 

I keep hearing how people getting vaccines means they can't transmit/carry a disease, but it seems like they still could transmit, they just can't catch it.

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It would probably be about the same as passing a toy from a flu-infected person to a well person.  Although, reduced somewhat because the hand won't pick up as much as was originally on the door handle and will pass even less on to the sippy cup.

 

Actually, there might even be less chance of transmission if the hand is somewhat anti microbial.

 

People's bodies are good vectors of flu because their own cells are manufacturing more viruses, which increases the dose the well person is exposed to and thus the chance of transmission.

 

That's my understanding of this anyway.

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My understanding is that most germs don't live that long outside the body. Google tells me that the flu virus lives for about 5 minutes on the hands. So in your example, it would be very unlikely that she would carry the germs long enough to get the kids sick.

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However: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/24/science/tracking-the-common-cold-two-theories.html

 

Two studies with low sample sizes came to different conclusions about how these things are spread.

 

That's a really interesting article.  And makes my question rather useless, if the answer is "we still don't really know." TFS

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Most germs don't live more than a day without a living host, whereas if you're ill you're contagious for a length of time. Plus the number of viruses that you could carry on your hands or on your clothes would probably less than in a sick body. It's a good question though.

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I suppose technically it would be possible just because of germ transfer.  The odds seem astonomically small, though.  You'd have to touch a surface that was recently touched by someone with the active disease and then pass it to someone not immune before the germs died.  Most germs do not live long outside of our bodies (flu is extremely contagious, for example, and only lives about 6 hours on average, depending on where they fall - about 15 minutes in a tissue, up to 24 hours on a hard surface, and life length depends a lot on whether they are inside mucous or not and how much they are in).  Human bodies are not that great a surface to carry living, active, infectious germs (on the surface, not talking about inside).

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Part of the idea is that if more people have the vaccine, fewer people will get sick, so there will be fewer people who will be out grocery shopping while sick and infecting the cart with germs.  If you have 100 shoppers in the store, and 95 of them are vaccinated, there is much less chance that one of the other five will a) be sick at all, and b) if sick, will have touched your grocery cart.  That is, if fewer people are sick, there will be fewer germs out there to pick up.  

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Interesting question!  I would also imagine though that the quantity of virus picked up and carried, especially assuming as some mentioned some of the virus is deteriorating over time, would be extremely less in quantity than the virus being produced by a person actively sick.

 

Here's another question related to this....is there a quantity of virus germs required to make a person sick?  I'm sure it would vary by illness, but is that something that has been quantified?  Like a "critical mass" for germs?

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Here's another question related to this....is there a quantity of virus germs required to make a person sick?  I'm sure it would vary by illness, but is that something that has been quantified?  Like a "critical mass" for germs?

 

That's going to vary based on the person as well as illness.  Ever noticed you seem to get sick easier when you are extra tired or stressed?  That's because the lack of sleep/stress lowered your immune system so it took fewer of any given type of virus or bacteria to make you sick.  My entire family (as in all 4 kids and husband) have been sick recently.  My husband was tested for flu and was positive for influenza b.  I didn't get so much as a sore throat and I was snotted all over by the little guys and sleep in the same bed as my husband and even one day I drank out of a glass of water my daughter had just drunk from.  All I can figure is about a month before the first kid got sick, I started taking a multivitamin and extra D daily so perhaps my immune system was just stronger and so could successfully fight off whatever germs they were trying to pass on to me.  Or, maybe, when I got the flu a couple years ago it happened to be the same one so my immune system was able to fight it off that way.  Who knows.  Whether one gets sick from the same exposure to the same virus as someone else is just incredibly variable (and rather fascinating).

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