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Medicine Science

Competition Between Respiratory Viruses May Hold Off a 'Tripledemic' This Winter (science.org) 88

Posted by BeauHD from the watchful-waiting dept.
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Triple threat. Tripledemic. A viral perfect storm. These frightening phrases have dominated recent headlines as some health officials, clinicians, and scientists forecast that SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) could surge at the same time in Northern Hemisphere locales that have relaxed masking, social distancing, and other COVID-19 precautions. But a growing body of epidemiological and laboratory evidence offers some reassurance: SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses often "interfere" with each other. Although waves of each virus may stress emergency rooms and intensive care units, the small clique of researchers who study these viral collisions say there is little chance the trio will peak together and collectively crash hospital systems the way COVID-19 did at the pandemic's start.

"Flu and other respiratory viruses and SARS-CoV-2 just don't get along very well together," says virologist Richard Webby, an influenza researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "It's unlikely that they will circulate widely at the same time." "One virus tends to bully the others," adds epidemiologist Ben Cowling at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. During the surge of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in Hong Kong in March, Cowling found that other respiratory viruses "disappeared ... and they came back again in April." When a respiratory virus sweeps through a community, interferons can broadly raise the body's defenses and temporarily erect a populationwide immune barrier against subsequent viruses that target the respiratory system. "Basically, every virus triggers the interferon response to some extent, and every virus is susceptible to it," says immunologist Ellen Foxman at Yale University, who has been exploring interference between SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses in a laboratory model of the human airway. Rhinoviruses, which cause common colds, can trip up influenza A (the most prevalent flu virus). RSV can bump rhinoviruses and human metapneumoviruses. Influenza A can thwart its distant cousin influenza B. "There are a lot of major health implications from viral interference," says Guy Boivin, a virologist at Laval University who co-authored a review (PDF) on viral interference earlier this year.

Now, viral interference researchers are closely watching the newest respiratory virus to circle the globe. "What interactions could SARS-CoV-2 have with other viruses?" Murcia asks. "To this day, there are no robust epidemiological data." For one thing, the widespread social distancing and mask wearing in many countries meant there was little chance to see interference in action. "There was almost no circulation of other respiratory viruses during the first 3 years of the pandemic," Boivin says. Also, SARS-CoV-2 has many defenses against interferons, including preventing their production, which might affect its interactions with other viruses. Still, Foxman has published evidence that, in her organoid model, rhinovirus can interfere with SARS-CoV-2. And Boivin's team has reported (PDF) that influenza A and SARS-CoV-2 each can block the other in cell studies.
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Competition Between Respiratory Viruses May Hold Off a 'Tripledemic' This Winter More

Competition Between Respiratory Viruses May Hold Off a 'Tripledemic' This Winter

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  • I placed my bet (Score:4, Funny)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Saturday November 19, 2022 @09:17AM (#63063545)
    I put $2 on a SARS-RSV-Flu trifecta.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I put $2 on a SARS-RSV-Flu trifecta.

      The problem is that while individually your immune system will, when fighting one likely block the others, it doesn't mean different people won't be fighting different diseases at the same time.

      COVID will hit one person who while recovering from it not get RSV or the flu. Meanwhile someone else gets the flu and not COVID or RSV. Etc. But then all three circulate even if only one affects anyone, and now you have all 3 kinds of people needing to go to hospital, flooding it

  • Three Stooges Syndrome (Score:4, Informative)

    by JeffOwl ( 2858633 ) on Saturday November 19, 2022 @09:40AM (#63063599)
    The Simpsons called it again
  • Wow, so we're skipping the doubledemic straight to the tripledemic. I'm somehow afraidly indifferent.

  • "researchers who study these viral collisions say there is little chance the trio will peak together and collectively crash hospital systems"

    Stay healthy, my friends.

  • I'm not sure about the word choice. I'm not big on taking advice from small cliques. No matter how cliquey they are.

  • From one of the articles linked:

    Still, interference isn’t a sure thing when multiple viruses are circulating. A household survey of 2117 people in Nicaragua, for example, found both flu and COVID-19 cases peaked at the same time in February, suggesting “limited viral interference,” the researchers concluded in a preprint. “I think of interference as a small push,” says Aubree Gordon, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, researcher who led the study with colleagues from Nicaragua’s Ministry of Health. “It depends on population immunity and when that virus last circulated and flu and COVID vaccination rates.”

    So there may be appreciable, little, or no effect of one virus on another. What I find interesting is the effect of "flu and Covid vaccination rates" - I wish they had either specified what those effects are, or said that they simply don't know. Assuming that avoiding a Covid infection or minimizing its effects is the top priority, I'd like to know if getting the flu shot a few weeks after my Covid shot was good or bad.

    • Assuming that avoiding a Covid infection or minimizing its effects is the top priority, I'd like to know if getting the flu shot a few weeks after my Covid shot was good or bad.

      Depends, did they target the right strains this year? I haven't checked yet, so I actually don't know. I've never got the flu shot before, but as I am getting older, I am starting to think about it. I am sick right now, covid test negative, so I might have a flu already. There was one minor episode of vomiting, and I still have muscle aches and sore throat. My lady is also sick with apparently the same thing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Assuming that avoiding a Covid infection or minimizing its effects is the top priority, I'd like to know if getting the flu shot a few weeks after my Covid shot was good or bad.

        Depends, did they target the right strains this year? I haven't checked yet, so I actually don't know.

        Flu took a big dive in terms of genetic diversity during the first two flu seasons during the COVID pandemic, between the masking, the social distancing, the elevated vaccination rate, the steep reduction in foreign travel, and viral interference. H1N1 was nearly wiped off the map, and Influenza B/Yamagata *was* wiped off the map.

        I would expect targeting to be closer than average, then. Unfortunately, last season, it was a bad mismatch (thirty-odd-percent effectiveness, with some early estimates suggestin

    • There is interference. It is circumstantial though. When you get a flu, you stay less active for 2-3 weeks so chances of you getting some other virus during that time are reduced. Same as if people are forced to mask for 2 years, the virus activity will be reduced. But then, people lose immunity to these viruses and the waves of infections come in. We knew all that already. We just chose to ignore the consequences.

      • But then, people lose immunity to these viruses and the waves of infections come in.

        You don't lose immunity to a virus. You lose immunity to a specific strain of a virus. It's why the flu shot changes each year. It's a different strain so your body needs the extra boost to fight it if by chance you do become infected.

        We knew all that already. We just chose to ignore the consequences.

        When you say ignore the consequences, you mean people who didn't want to wear a mask and died from contracting covid? Peop

  • immune system overdrive (Score:3)

    by lkcl ( 517947 ) <lkcl@lkcl.net> on Saturday November 19, 2022 @10:30AM (#63063707) Homepage

    what i heard from someone who has experience with infections is that the human body immune system goes into such complete fanatical overdrive when first detecting any infection that any *new* infection is obliterated. what Richard Webby is saying seems to concur with that [simplistic] perspective.
    what the person also told me is, if you *do* get more than one infection at a time, it's because you're dying (basically). your body - including your entire immune system - is shutting down.

    the bit that's new to me is that Foxman's team appears to be saying that the actual *viruses themselves* tend to clobber other viruses, which is really very interesting.

    • what i heard from someone who has experience with infections is that the human body immune system goes into such complete fanatical overdrive when first detecting any infection that any *new* infection is obliterated. what Richard Webby is saying seems to concur with that [simplistic] perspective. what the person also told me is, if you *do* get more than one infection at a time, it's because you're dying (basically). your body - including your entire immune system - is shutting down.

      the bit that's new to me is that Foxman's team appears to be saying that the actual *viruses themselves* tend to clobber other viruses, which is really very interesting.

      I don't think that any of the expressed concern involves any specific individual acquiring multiple respiratory illnesses at the same time. The concern is that there are three circulating widely at once, tripling the exposure. You'll only get sick with one, but odds of encountering something is higher.

      Think of it sort of like wildfires and simultaneous flood season. Sure, you're probably not going to get a fire the same day you get a flood, but you've still got two major issues that might wipe out your

      • I don't think that any of the expressed concern involves any specific individual acquiring multiple respiratory illnesses at the same time.

        While it's believed to be unusual to date, you can get flu and covid at the same time [frontiersin.org] (for example) and there's no particular reason to believe otherwise. There was a lot of mask use through the last two flu seasons, and masks are more effective at stopping flu than covid, so the incidence of influenza infection was decreased.

    • what i heard from someone who has experience with infections is that the human body immune system goes into such complete fanatical overdrive when first detecting any infection that any *new* infection is obliterated. what Richard Webby is saying seems to concur with that [simplistic] perspective.
      what the person also told me is, if you *do* get more than one infection at a time, it's because you're dying (basically). your body - including your entire immune system - is shutting down.

      the bit that's new to me is that Foxman's team appears to be saying that the actual *viruses themselves* tend to clobber other viruses, which is really very interesting.

      I suspect that's mostly right, a lot of the reason you feel sick isn't the infection itself, it's the immune response. So once you are sick it's probably difficult to get a secondary infection.

      But that would also suggest you can get infected with both COVID and the flu as long as both infections really take off at the same time.

      If that model is right (the general immune response making new infections really difficult) it suggests that if you've just had an exposure to COVID or another virus you might be abl

    • I agree. It hadn't occurred to me that viruses might be competing in the body, though it probably should have.

  • Multiple infections at one time are possible... (Score:3)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Saturday November 19, 2022 @10:48AM (#63063747)
    ... and not even super rare, if you bother to test many people for such occurrences. But immune-competent individuals, which are the vast majority of people, can fight off two or even three different viruses replicating in their bodies at the same time, about as certain as they would eliminate one kind of virus.

    A part of the "competition between viruses" that may be more relevant than the "interaction between viruses" for the situation at ICUs is the competition for the limited number of individuals with compromised immune systems - and that number does not change depending on how may different kinds of viruses circulate.
  • It read in a book about the plague, that it was responsible for chasing leprosy out of Europe in the same way.

    • That's the most interesting comment I've seen all week.

    • It read in a book about the plague, that it was responsible for chasing leprosy out of Europe in the same way.

      Yes, when you kill half the population and people are further spread out and not interacting with one another, infections tend to go down. In the same way that social distancing helps prevent the spread of viruses to others.

  • The Simpsons 3 stooges syndrome confirmed. The Simpsons is advancing epidemiology theory. Also, one of the writers for Futurama created an actual mathematical theorem for the plot of an episode.
  • Here we go people, PANIC! PANIC! PANIC! Our new bio medical police state and the media need to make money and gain control while the scientists make educated guesses again.

  • Entering my second week with what i am pretty sure is the RSV. Have no energy, its hard to breathe and go up stairs, when before this I was perfectly fine and healthy.

    Its pretty nasty. I find I am sleeping most days immediately when i get home from work. No appetite at all, and for the first 5 days i had these chain lightning headaches and fevers. Its not fun at all. Thought it was a head cold at first but its been dragging.

  • Let's throw around buzzwords like "Tripledemic" to get the masses all excited and scared and easily controlable. "Dance, monkey, dance! And do it all on one foot". And this was something that was going on long before Covid. Terrorism was a big win for the fear machine, and we had other panics thrown around scince the 1970s and before, but the 21st century is when it really got going. And people bring out their most fascist tendencies to fight the big boobymen and monster others into submission with more rul

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