Infection vs Disease
I’ve had a few people reach out and ask how someone can still spread COVID-19 even though they have already had it or have received the vaccine.
Let’s talk about infection vs disease. 🧐
Infections cause diseases
When a harmful germ (in this case a virus) enters your body, it usually begins to reproduce/replicate immediately! Any germ (virus, bacteria, fungus, etc) entering your body and starting the replication cycle is an “INFECTION.”
These infectious germs have two goals. The first is to replicate repeatedly inside your body. The second is to escape your body in order to infect someone else and begin the entire process again. 👎
Don’t be alarmed, but these infections happen all the time! 😬 Thankfully, your body’s military (the immune system) is constantly fighting these germs off so you rarely ever know it! 💪 Otherwise, a single virus can become hundreds of thousands of viruses within hours! 😳
But, sometimes a microscopic bug catches our body off guard or for various other reasons our immune system can’t stop it fast enough. When this happens, the germs continue to replicate themselves until their numbers in our body add up so much that they start to cause noticeable problems, i.e., we get sick. A cold virus causes the typical “cold symptoms” if what’s known as the “viral load” is high enough. 🤧 Likewise, a flu virus causes flu-like symptoms, etc. 🤒 Once a virus has reached a high enough viral load to actually make us sick, we call that a state of “DISEASE.” In other words, the infection has progressed to a disease. 🤕 Now the immune system has a real fight on its hands!
Another example that people may have heard of but maybe never connected the dots is the relationship between HIV and AIDs. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is the virus that causes the initial infection. However, the actual harm comes whenever the immune system can no longer fight it back so the viral load begins to increase. Once it reaches a high enough level, the person may develop the signs and symptoms of AIDs (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), the disease. Thankfully, with modern medications we are able to keep many people’s HIV viral loads to essentially undetectable levels for years and they never develop AIDs!
Why is it important that we consider infections and the diseases they cause as two separate events? 🤔
Because you can have an infection but not the resulting disease. 👍
And that means you can potentially transmit (or spread) an infection (e.g. virus) even though you aren’t sick from it. 😳
Infections don’t ALWAYS cause diseases
Let’s say you have been vaccinated against or have natural immunity against a specific microscopic bug. Therefore, the immune system is super quick to start fighting off that bug to stop it from replicating once it enters your body! Awesome! Nevertheless, some replication still happens… The immune system isn’t perfect. 🤷♂️
Remember from above that replication is only one of the two goals that germs have. If they had some success at goal #1, then there’s a chance they could succeed at goal #2, transmission. In other words, if some replication happens, that means some transmission could happen too. 😮
Imagine a game of capture the flag, basketball, or any other sports game where one team (your immune system) is WAY better than the other. Well, even the losing team may get a point in here and there. The same is true here. Even though your immune system is giving the SMACK DOWN to the infection, some of the germs may still be able to sneak 🤫 past it and out the body through a cough or sneeze in order to infect someone else before the immune system is able to completely annihilate the infection. 💪💪💪
So, in that situation, you still got infected and were “infectious” (able to transmit it to someone else) even though there was essentially no chance of you ever getting sick or “diseased.” 😯
Now, because you have immunity or have been vaccinated, are you probably less likely to spread the illness to others? Yes! And are you probably infectious for a shorter amount of time? Yes! But is it still possible for you to spread it to others. YES! 🤔
That’s why even if you’re vaccinated against COVID-19, it’s still recommend that you keep social distancing and wearing a mask. 😷 Even though YOU may be relatively safe, there’s still a chance (even if it’s a small chance) that you could spread it to someone else who is NOT vaccinated. Until enough people have gotten the COVID-19 vaccine that we reach what we call “herd immunity” we will need to continue to watch out for each other. 👍
Consider that the vaccine’s that are currently available were developed strictly for preventing illness from COVID-19. They were not meant to prevent its transmission or spread. They may do that indirectly, or we may get lucky and they do that too. But we shouldn’t count on it. 😊
I hope that’s helpful!
Learn more, stay humble!
TL;DR: We get infected by microscopic germs all the time. Even if you’re immune to a specific germ and there’s little to no chance of it making you sick personally, there’s a chance you could pass it on to other people. The COVID-19 vaccine was made to protect YOU from getting sick from the COVID-19 virus, but it may not prevent you from spreading it to others.
