People without the receptor that HIV targets are immune to HIV because of that, like how a rock is immune to verbal abuse or double foot amputees are immune to ingrown toenails. The immune system being able to kill something isn’t the only way things can be immune to other things.
Immune here means you have an immune response. I’m pretty sure the word here is “carrier” because unless your body is actively destroying it, the virus is hitching a ride.
this is a shitpost community, not a biotech publication, so immune here means the dictionary definition, not any domain-specific technical jargon, otherwise people can’t make shitposts about diplomatic immunity
lacking the receptor that HIV uses to hijack the regular immune response in order to reproduce means the regular immune response destroys it
even in a normal person, after exposure, a lot of HIV gets destroyed by other parts of the immune system, often enough to eliminate it before an infection gains a foothold. Once an infection takes hold, it outbreeds the immune response as it’s the part best equipped to deal with a large viral load that it interferes with.
if you’ve got the virus in your body, but due to the lack of the receptor, it can’t reproduce, then it doesn’t remain viable for very long as each viron accumulates damage over time, and ceases to function once it’s too badly damaged. People carrying a disease have enough viral reproduction going on to balance out the virus being destroyed.
totally or partially resistant to a particular infectious disease or pathogen.
protected or exempt, especially from an obligation or the effects of something.
Merriam Webster
: not susceptible or responsive
especially: having a high degree of resistance to a disease
a: produced by, involved in, or concerned with immunity or an immune response
b: having or producing antibodies or lymphocytes capable of reacting with a specific antigen
a: marked by protection
b: free, exempt
So unless you pretend that MW’s 2b sense is the only valid one, the immunity is immunity.
If you have a sample of HIV at 37°C in blood, but with all the immune cells removed, it’ll still all become inert after around a week simply due to chemical reactions with other components of blood etc… It’s pretty comparable to a population of animals - if you take away their ability to reproduce, they’ll die of old age when left for long enough even if you’re not actively killing them.
Edit: fat-fingered the save button while previewing the formatting
And the context was a sentence that was correct if you used OED sense 1, or MW sense 1, but you decided to parse it as MW sense 2b and then complain that the sentence was incorrect.
When a normal person is exposed to HIV, it reproduces inside of them, so can then go on to expose more people, and if there’s enough of it, infect them in turn (if there’s a smaller amount, their immune system will normally be able to clean it up before it gets enough of a foothold). If someone’s lacking the receptor, then no matter how much they were exposed to, their immune system will eventually manage to remove it all without becoming infected because it can’t reproduce. If they had a ludicrously large viral load, then there’s a possibility that it could be passed on before it was destroyed, but most of the ways people get exposed to HIV aren’t enough to infect someone who’s vulnerable, let alone infect someone else via secondary exposure if there’s not been time for the infection to grow.
Even if you ignore that there’s an entirely valid sense of the word immune that has nothing do do with biology (i.e. the one in phrases like diplomatic immunity), my original comment is entirely consistent with the dictionary definition of the biological sense of the word. There are probably sub-fields of biology where immunity is used as jargon for something much more specific than the dictionary definition, but this is lemmyshitpost, not a peer-reviewed domain-specific publication.
People without the receptor that HIV targets are immune to HIV because of that, like how a rock is immune to verbal abuse or double foot amputees are immune to ingrown toenails. The immune system being able to kill something isn’t the only way things can be immune to other things.
Immune here means you have an immune response. I’m pretty sure the word here is “carrier” because unless your body is actively destroying it, the virus is hitching a ride.
How about we operate at high school biology levels of understanding?
As for whether the virus will be eliminated, it depends on the health of the immune system and the person.
OED:
Merriam Webster
So unless you pretend that MW’s 2b sense is the only valid one, the immunity is immunity.
If you have a sample of HIV at 37°C in blood, but with all the immune cells removed, it’ll still all become inert after around a week simply due to chemical reactions with other components of blood etc… It’s pretty comparable to a population of animals - if you take away their ability to reproduce, they’ll die of old age when left for long enough even if you’re not actively killing them.
Edit: fat-fingered the save button while previewing the formatting
Context is how you determine definitions. This is not hard. We’re not talking about legal immunity here.
And the context was a sentence that was correct if you used OED sense 1, or MW sense 1, but you decided to parse it as MW sense 2b and then complain that the sentence was incorrect.
Isn’t it more like how a rock is immune to being puked on?
It’s still covered in vomit and can make other people sick, it just can’t get sick from it.
When a normal person is exposed to HIV, it reproduces inside of them, so can then go on to expose more people, and if there’s enough of it, infect them in turn (if there’s a smaller amount, their immune system will normally be able to clean it up before it gets enough of a foothold). If someone’s lacking the receptor, then no matter how much they were exposed to, their immune system will eventually manage to remove it all without becoming infected because it can’t reproduce. If they had a ludicrously large viral load, then there’s a possibility that it could be passed on before it was destroyed, but most of the ways people get exposed to HIV aren’t enough to infect someone who’s vulnerable, let alone infect someone else via secondary exposure if there’s not been time for the infection to grow.
You do not understand what immunity is. you are using it as a metaphor.
Even if you ignore that there’s an entirely valid sense of the word immune that has nothing do do with biology (i.e. the one in phrases like diplomatic immunity), my original comment is entirely consistent with the dictionary definition of the biological sense of the word. There are probably sub-fields of biology where immunity is used as jargon for something much more specific than the dictionary definition, but this is lemmyshitpost, not a peer-reviewed domain-specific publication.