What If?

Carl Zimmer says that children who aren’t exposed to rhinoviruses have more immune disorders as adults. It’s possible that these mild infections serve to train and calibrate our immune systems.

On the other hand, colds suck. And in addition to being unpleasant, some research says infections by these viruses also weaken our immune systems directly and can open us up to further infections.

All in all, I wouldn’t stand in the middle of a desert for five weeks to rid myself of colds forever. But if they ever come up with a rhinovirus vaccine, I’ll be first in line.

These viruses take over the cells in your nose and throat and use them to produce more viruses. After a few days, your immune system notices and destroys it,3 but not before you infect, on average, one other person.4 After you fight off the infection, you are immune to that particular rhinovirus strain—an immunity that lasts for years.

If Sarah put us all in quarantine, the cold viruses we carry would have no fresh hosts to run to.

“In our reactor?” He thought about it for a moment. “You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”