Anyone able to explain viral load to me?

[Crimples]

Trying to understand a bit more about viral load. From reading I understand that the severity of infection can depend on whether you receive a “large” dose of the virus or not.
Ultimately it seems that the vast majority of us are going to end up catching the virus at some stage in the absence of a vaccine/treatment arriving soon.
With this in mind, am I crazy to think that for people that are not in the vulnerable group it would be worthwhile aiming to catch a “small” dose?
For example, from mail items, groceries, door handles?
Then, presumably, one would hope to acquire a milder case than if they had contracted it through face to face droplet contact from someone infected??
Anyone with a science background able to explain why this might be a bad idea?

• Because catching it once might not guarantee long term immunity; it might only last a few months (this is the case with other types of coronaviruses that cause the common cold).

• If too many people catch it at the same time, the 5 - 10% who do need hospital care will overwhelm the NHS.

Jury still seems to be out on how much the initial viral load effects the severity of covid:

"We know for some diseases that the dose of virus a person is exposed to will directly correlate with how severe the disease is. A good example of this is influenza. A 2015 study from the US showed that the higher the dose of influenza virus given to healthy volunteers, the worse their symptoms. Viruses are tiny particles that must get into our cells in order to replicate, so the logic is that the more starting virus particles there are, the more cells will be infected.

However, virusesreplicate exponentially. A single infected cell can produce hundreds, if not thousands, of copies of the particle. This means that for some viruses, even a tiny dose of virus is enough to cause an infection. For example, for half the population, it takes just18 particles of norovirusto cause an infection. This can lead to the classic clinical signs of vomiting and diarrhoea. In such infections, the virus replicates so fast that the starting dose can become much less relevant.

Is the initial dose of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) related to the disease severity? At the moment, we just don’t know. The only way to answer this question definitively is with “experimental challenge studies”, which involves intentionally infecting healthy volunteers in order to study diseases and their treatments. These would be ethically questionable because of the potential severity of the disease."

theconversation.com/coronavirus-does-the-amount-of-virus-you-are-exposed-to-determine-how-sick-youll-get-135119

I’d been wondering about this too. Great explanation Popc0rn, thank you.

I suspect, but no idea if it's true, that both of those cases are considered a small viral load and would result in a mild (for the individual) case (but could still be serious if unlucky). you're just less likely to catch it from mail etc than passing contract with a person.

If you expect to receive a high viral load in the future for some reason then that would not be totally unreasonable, and it's probably the intention once 'they' decide the nhs can cope and e nd lockdown.

But you shouldn't hold a coronavirus party to catch it, that is probably a high load.

No because it isn’t just about viral load. Probably. Basically no one knows yet. ICU Professor from UCL on BBC news on Tuesday said what they do know is being male and over 50 seems to be the biggest risk BUT could also be viral load and more importantly it could be ‘a genetic predisposition that we just don’t understand yet’.

I have been wondering the same thing. And if this is true then the vulnerable people staying home might actually be a bad idea - it might be better for those people to catch a mild dose at the supermarket than wait for another family member to catch it and then get a really big dose from being in close contact with them?

I think you are more likely to get a high viral load if you come into contact with multiple people with the virus,or highly sick patients. Which is why we're seeing so many nurses, doctors and carers losing their lives to the virus.

In China peole with the virus were isolated with others. Would that mean they got worse being in a heavily infected environment, or does viral load only matter when you’re first infected?

The article from the Conversation, posted above, is the best explanation of the currently available evidence that I've seen.

Great article @Popc0rn I suppose the other great unknown is each individuals immune response, ideally you want your body to respond enough but not too much.
I knew it couldn’t be as straightforward as
Touch your Amazon parcel = Low dose
otherwise I’m sure the government could maybe have gone down that road

Viral load in the most simplest of forms is like a poison.

The more poison you ingest the more chance it has of killing you. Viruses don't work like that of course, they multiply, but as a simple analogy the poison idea works.

You don't want to ingest any poison at all and it's the same with the virus. This is not a virus you want to get.

We have no idea whether immunity is possible and what the long term health implications of getting COVID-19 are going to be. For example, those who survived SARS had lung damage.

This is why the WHO and every other credible scientist was screaming at the UK government to back track on the planned strategy of herd immunity.

We simply don't know enough about this virus.

That would have been a great deal for Amazon, wouldn’t it!!

I don't know, I'm not a scientist. I only know about viral load in relationship to HIV.

With HIV, if you have unprotected sex with someone who has HIV...if that person has a high viral load....you are more likely to contract HIV. So that could be someone who was recently infected, don't know they have it, their immune system hasn't quite worked out how to respond....so their viral load is very high. So you are also at high risk of infection now.

If you have unprotected sex with a person who has HIV, but they know that, and they are taking the recommended medications, and having their blood monitored, then their viral load will be so tiny that you are very very very unlikely to contract HIV from that person.

I've never known about viral load affecting the severity of the disease in the recipient. Only in the infected person being more likely to pass it on while their viral load is high.

Maybe that's why doctors and nurses are more vulnerable to covid19, because they are dealing with people who are very sick with a high viral load, so they are much more at risk of contracting it....which will sadly end up in many more deaths.

P.S. I am not saying HIV and Covid have anything in common....before people jump on me!!!! Im just talking about viruses in general....and sharing my little knowledge which could be completely wrong!!!

I know nothing about viral load either. But I read that viruses mutate slightly every time they infect someone new. So it seems plausible to me that healthcare workers could be exposed to several slightly different versions of the virus from different patients.

Could this mean they can be infected several times with different versions creating a bigger strain on the body as it fights 'multiple' infections? This could help explain why several young medics died in China.

Choux.....that's really interesting, I hadn't thought of that. So it's like the health care workers are getting an onslaught of loads of different mutations of the same virus.

That's so sad.