Cycling UK Forum

horizon wrote:alanesq: I just wanted to stay with the contagion aspect a bit longer. Here are two quotes from the webpage that karlt kindly provided:

Common cold is the most common disease

Common cold infections are so widespread that there can be very few humans who escape infection each year and most will suffer multiple infections. It has been estimated that adults suffer 2 to 5 colds per year, and school children may suffer 7 to 10 colds per year.

Common cold viruses are not very contagious

Despite the fact that very few of us escape from at least a couple of common cold infections each year, common cold viruses are not very contagious. Under laboratory conditions when healthy volunteers are kept with others who are suffering from common cold infections it has proven remarkably difficult to spread infection from one person to another.

I'm still having trouble with these two quotes. A not unreasonable conclusion is that a lot of people are not catching their colds from each other.

It doesn't mean that at all. It means that most contacts don't cause an infection. Some do. Over the year you come into contact with hundreds of people carrying cold viruses; around 2-5 of them cause an infection in you. I'm not sure how you got from "most contacts don't cause infection" from "most infections don't come from contacts"; it sounds like a version of the all X is Y, therefore all Y is X fallacy.

To give you a cycling analogy - most left turns by motorists don't left hook a cyclist. But all left hooks result from left turns by motorists.

I'm not sure how you got from "most contacts don't cause infection" to "most infections don't come from contacts";

Yes you're right, it doesn't follow. But nor to my mind can it be maintained necessarily that from the contact sometimes comes the cold. It fits the facts but so does the idea that a cold is a response to the cold - 2 -5 times a year. BTW, I'm not suggesting that "most infections don't come from contacts", I'm saying that infection as we understand it doesn't occur at all. In any case I'm more concerned that the writer on the webpage felt it worthy of mention that they had tried and failed to replicate infection in a laboratory test - in fact they seemed to imply that they were surprised at the result and weren't aware of the "only some contacts cause infection" theory.

karlt wrote: The point is that without the virus you CANNOT catch a cold;

I'm just picking up on this point and suggesting that it is also possible to say: "Without the virus you cannot HAVE a cold". The virus is always present: how it got there, what it does and why it does it might however be open to a different interpretation. Just a thought.

horizon wrote:

I'm not sure how you got from "most contacts don't cause infection" to "most infections don't come from contacts";

Yes you're right, it doesn't follow. But nor to my mind can it be maintained necessarily that from the contact sometimes comes the cold. It fits the facts but so does the idea that a cold is a response to the cold - 2 -5 times a year. BTW, I'm not suggesting that "most infections don't come from contacts", I'm saying that infection as we understand it doesn't occur at all. In any case I'm more concerned that the writer on the webpage felt it worthy of mention that they had tried and failed to replicate infection in a laboratory test - in fact they seemed to imply that they were surprised at the result and weren't aware of the "only some contacts cause infection" theory.

They didn't say they'd failed to replicate infection; they said it was quite difficult. Not the same at all.

horizon wrote:

karlt wrote: The point is that without the virus you CANNOT catch a cold;

I'm just picking up on this point and suggesting that it is also possible to say: "Without the virus you cannot HAVE a cold". The virus is always present.

Not to the best of my knowledge. Do you have evidence to back that up?

karlt wrote:They didn't say they'd failed to replicate infection; they said it was quite difficult. Not the same at all.

But I still got the impression that they were a little suprised (I'm not saying that you would have been) - did I read it wrong?

eileithyia wrote:...and remember all those nasties are left on door handles etc., indeed anywhere that people touch after they have sneezed into their hand and/or wiped their nose on tissues etc.

eileithyia, I need you to come in here. Everyone gets 2 - 5 colds a year. The virus is prevalent but the risk of infection is low. So really, why bother with the door handles?

horizon wrote:

karlt wrote:They didn't say they'd failed to replicate infection; they said it was quite difficult. Not the same at all.

But I still got the impression that they were a little suprised (I'm not saying that you would have been) - did I read it wrong?

They may well have been surprised. But it's not really the issue. The point is that they didn't find it impossible to transmit the infection. Just harder than they expected.

I always take 20 drops of echinacea in a little orange juice every 2 hours. Often it goes away overnight, or if not the cold is short-lived. I used to need antibiotics for sinusitis after every cold, but since echinacea it hasn't happened once.

alimck wrote:I always take 20 drops of echinacea in a little orange juice every 2 hours. Often it goes away overnight, or if not the cold is short-lived. I used to need antibiotics for sinusitis after every cold, but since echinacea it hasn't happened once.

alimck: I appreciate your contribution to the debate and I have to admit that the thread title asks about cure but did you have any views about the cause (and did you vote)?

karlt wrote:

horizon wrote:

karlt wrote:They didn't say they'd failed to replicate infection; they said it was quite difficult. Not the same at all.

But I still got the impression that they were a little suprised (I'm not saying that you would have been) - did I read it wrong?

They may well have been surprised. But it's not really the issue. The point is that they didn't find it impossible to transmit the infection. Just harder than they expected.

But wouldn't you still therefore suggest that eileithyia is worrying unnecessarily?

Well it's that season again. It looks like I'm the only person contributing to this thread (We're not surprised, horizon Ed.) but here's my latest offering. It's a full page from the Guardian stuffed full of such nonsense that it's (to me) breathtaking. (If you're squeamish, you should skip the bit about giving children nasal flu vaccinations and ibuprofen:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... inter-bugs

By the way, it proposes that "Colds and flu ... are more prevalent in the winter because we huddle close to people who are harbouring the viruses". Yes "huddling" is the latest theory. You couldn't make it up.

Hi,
My advise ALWAYS wash your hands Before You Eat anything, and don' touch ANYTHING from wash to eat.

If you have flu not "A Touch Of Flu" Then its very unlikely you will be up moving around let alone going outside, work will be intolerable.

My personal (and entirely anecdotal experience) is that Vitamin D at a dose approximately double the RDA has a preventative and mitigating effect. That, I think, is why colds appear in the winter season when photomediated Vitamin D production is low.

No idea if it's actually true, but it seems to work for me.

Ruadh495 wrote:My personal (and entirely anecdotal experience) is that Vitamin D at a dose approximately double the RDA has a preventative and mitigating effect. That, I think, is why colds appear in the winter season when photomediated Vitamin D production is low.

No idea if it's actually true, but it seems to work for me.

Do you mean you never get a cold ?

FWIW I take 1gram of Vit C a day I very rarely get a cold,and if I do it's incredibly rare that it's more than a light one ie; a day or two with a runny nose and a day of a it drying out,then it's gone.
I cannot remember the last time I had what I term as a bad head cold that affects my voice and makes me feel ill.