So this is the virus that’s been keeping me at home. It gives your kids croup in their tiny windpipes, it gives me this wheezy cough.
Confirmed by the CDC:
“HPIV-1 is generally responsible for outbreaks of croup in the fall. In the United States, the outbreaks tend to be more widespread in odd-numbered years.”
And to that I said, “Wait … what now?” I get that it starts in the fall, same as the flu, because the air isn’t humid and virus can last longer in the air, and then in the fall the kids get together in school and spread it, but how is the virus organized enough to know what the current year is, much less odd or even?
(Wags at work suggested the virus uses Mural to stay organized.)
2 responses to “TWIL: Organization”
Not an immunologist here, but I’d guess that it might have a long-enough immunity period after you get it each time to last partly through the following year for the bulk of the spreading population, such that everyone gets it one year, then most people are resistant enough to it the next year to not get it, but then the following year their immunity is gone and they all get it again (possibly asymptomatically).
Either that or there’s a little teeny virus calendar somewhere…
(I’d also be curious as to southern-hemisphere habits of the virus…)
KC – I think that might be why the article references “the fall” instead of a month name. And your analysis makes sense to me.