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They're almost always broken down, but there are exceptions. In our gut, there is for example a cell type that's taking small samples of the proteins and longer peptides, in order to feed "information" to our immune system about what might be lurking in our gut. Unfortunately that includes prions. Some of the prions end up in neurons rather than the immune cells, and that's where the problem can happen. In principle it only takes one single prion to trigger the disease.

>It’s not surprising. The flu is less contagious than COVID.

And...I got the flu a (Easter 2022) before I got covid (a month ago) 😩 flu was worse initially but covid is still hanging around driving me nuts

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This is the answer to " the chicken or the egg " question. The 1st "chicken" was a hybrid of two non-chicken species. The sperm cell is made up of DNA of the male and the egg " shell" is made up solely of the DNA of the female. Eve's the first nobe on a new vector.

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> If I remember correctly, only single amino acids can cross into the bloodstream

Small oligopeptides can also cross, via transporters (eg. SLC15A1) that can accept peptides of about 2-4 amino acids.

She is everyone’s great100x grandmother. Everything else after that is everyone else’s great great100x grandmother

Technically yes as long as restrictions were in place, but apparently bacterial respiratory infections skyrocketed lately in both numbers and severity due to the fact that 2 years of reduced contact seems to make people's immune system less prepared against them once said restrictions are lifted.

Tho this theory is controversial

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OP, a similar type of lag and cycling happens with big bodies of water— if you ever live near a lake or large pond, you will find that when summer first starts getting hot, the water is still REALLY COLD, and only starts to get truly perfect swimming temp when it’s already fall and the air is starting to be cooler.

You grow up without immunity to many non-existing diseases, one more in not a problem. Flu is not training wheels for immunity, it's battle of Somme. Anything that makes you actively sick is not a good thing, even though you recover and the consequences are minor, they are there and they add up to significant problems in your old age. So extinction of infectious diseases is absolutely a good thing.

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How does this simplify it any more than just saying they multiply?

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Isn't this a very bad thing? Children will be growing up without developing immunity for this strain, and probably many other(?) virus strains. You mentioned reservoirs in untested populations. What percentage of the global population is regularly tested for this "extinct" strain of flu? I assume it's nit many, leaving huge potential for reservoirs of strains thought extinct, making it most likely that the strain will come back. Or come back from a non-human organism. And when it comes back, people would have less immunity to it and if you compound that with the fact that it would come back as a wave, with everyone getting it at once (as happens with the flu virus) then surely that is a bad thing. Or am I missing something?

This reminds me if a metaphor from Nicholas Nassim Taleb's book Antifragile. If you want to fight forest fires, your instinct might be to ride out and and extinguish every small forest fire, to prevent it becoming a big one. But in doing so, you save more and more tinder from being burned away, leading to a very easily flammable landscape.

In the case of covid protocols, I worry that preventing the small viruses from barraging our immune systems might create an easily infectable population.

I'm way out on a limb here intellectually so I'd appreciate some discourse on this.

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Carbon is sequestered because sedimentary rocks form which contain a lot of carbon, without volcanic emissions to offset that, atmosphere would slowly(over millions of years) run low on carbon. That has happened in geologic history resulting in several periods of snowball Earth, sea ice all the way to equator. To break out of this state enough volcanic activity had to happen for CO2 concentrations in atmosphere to build up again.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the saltiness of the ocean wouldn't affect sea levels surely? Yes salt water if more dense due to it having literal salt added to it, but because its dissolved it doesn't add or take away from the volume?

Or is there something I've misunderstood/am missing?

That is absolutely amazing, thank you.