The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten - Chapter 1.2

From an immunologist to all the uneducated people here who don’t understand how infections work:

• Firstly, there are such things as latent incfections. Viruses or pathogenic microbes may already be present in your body in a stand-by resting state to avoid immune detection. Such species have often evolved to activate during periods of stress (physical or mental). Factors such as fatigue or prolonged exposure to cold can contribute to the activation of latent pathogens already inside of your body without contact to other people.

• Secondly, pathogens needn’t be directly transmitted by other humans. Viruses, bacteria, and other microbes may be adapted to multiple hosts making them transmissable between animals and humans; take for example avian flu or parastites like Trypanosoma brucei, which can be transmitted by felines to humans.

• And lastly, pathogenic microbes and viruses are typically propagated via aqueous particulates. The rainy seasons are prime time for the spread of desease because viral particles and microbes survive for far longer on surfaces in ample moisture, as they are far less threatened by drying out and dying/denaturing under such conditions.

Under humid conditions, the air is saturated with water and thus microscopic saliva droplets from a sneeze do not evaporate as fast and travel much further; you may come in contact with pathogenic particles without direct contact with their originally infected host, either via droplets blows around by the wind or via contact with contaminated wet surfaces (park bench that was sneezed on or whatever)