My latest COVID-19 lit review: do lower doses of viral exposure cause less severe disease? srconstantin.github.io/2020/06/02/Dos…
We care about exposure dose, first of all, because this allows us to make tradeoffs when it comes to quarantine. Can we 80/20 safety by allowing brief, light exposures to the virus while avoiding heavy exposures?
Second of all, we care about dose effects in exposure because it might be possible to produce *immunity* without *severe disease* from targeted low-dose exposures (esp. in young healthy volunteers). How likely is it that this could work?
The direct evidence is pretty sparse here, but I think it's more likely than not that, all else equal, lower doses of virus are more likely to produce mild or asymptomatic disease, while higher doses are more likely to produce severe disease or death.
Unfortunately, this is nowhere near enough information to tell us *how low a dose* is safe. But we should start thinking in those terms, especially as the lockdowns continue and start posing overwhelming economic burdens to many.
(How risky is it to let your kid play at the playground? What if it's an indoor playground? Or a swimming pool? What about working in an office with a mask? If it's going to be years before a vaccine comes out, we need to know where these lines are!)
