[conspire] CABAL in the time of Cholera^W SARS-CoV-2: March event cancelled

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2020, at 5:59 PM, Ruben Safir wrote:
> It is actually simpler than that.  The presense of a pathogen doesn't
> define or even corlate well with disease.  Suprise.  The host is most
> often compromised in some way to all the pathogen get past humeral
> immunity.

FWIW, I did grad-level coursework in immunology, so yes, I do know that. What we think of as "disease" is really the immune response to the pathogen, not the pathogen per se (which was actually Nick's point earlier).

This is why symptoms are so frustratingly overlapping in so many diseases involving the immune system, unfortunately. I had a friend who had what they thought was myasthenia gravis, but didn't *quite* match the symptoms, and when they finally narrowed it down to a far more obscure disease, so much damage had been done that she eventually did succumb. Heartbreaking, but she was someone who was so cool to have known. She'd be on a ventilator in the hospital drawing funny cards for people to cheer *them* up.

Deirdre