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March 14

Viral infection transmission

1. suppose you are infected and you come in contact with someone else who is infected with the exact same virus. Can that make either or both of you *more* infected than you already were?

2. The virus is mutating quickly, so maybe the person you come in contact with has a slightly different strain. Same question as above.

Note: science question, not medical, though the current event inspiration is obvious. I trust we are all taking as many precautions as we can. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:54D9:2ABB:1EDB:CEE3 (talk) 00:46, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If the virus has started replicating already and you have a measurable viral load, the minute contribution from a second source will probably not make much of a difference. Viral superinfections do occur, and if the second strain is considerably more virulent, it may make a difference. If it is only slightly different, that is not impossible but somewhat unlikely. --Lambiam 04:41, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notably, if an organism is infected by multiple strains of influenza at once, this can result in antigenic shift, where daughter viruses are produced that combine genes from both strains. This basically creates a new strain, which can then spread rapidly because nothing has resistance to it. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:49, 15 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Microplastics in the oceans: Thermal load

Do microplastics in the world's oceans increase the capacity of those oceans to store heat?

The water in the oceans weighs about 1,400,000,000,000,000,000 tons. The combined mass of the microplastics in the oceans is estimated to be about 300 tons. The specific heat capacity of the materials making up that mass varies but is on the average about one quarter of that water. So it is about the same as a relative increase from 1,400,000,000,000,000,000 to 1,400,000,000,000,000,075, less than 0.000000000000006%. It should be clear that this is not going to make a measurable difference. --Lambiam 09:08, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The argument holds, but I think the current estimate for Microplastics in the ocean is more around 300000 tons (with overall plastic load increasing by around 10 million tons per year, but most of the plastic is "macro"). See e.g. [1]. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:36, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the correction. I used a figure from our Microplastics article that said "270 tons", but I should have checked the source (which has "270.000 tones" [sic]). Now corrected. --Lambiam 17:58, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]