COVID-19 F.A.Q.

An immune response that is too strong can cause something called a cytokine storm, which is an overreaction, a panic of sorts in your body’s inflammation and immune systems- it’s like having firemen storm a building with water even though the building is not on fire while drowning the people inside. If you’re someone who gets sudden high fevers when you get even a cold, then it’s extra important to coax your immune system to respond with more balance. It’s also a reason to not push your immune system to react too strongly. This is why so many young people die of SARS or flu, their immune response goes into overdrive and begins causing irreversible organ damage.

An immune response that is too lethargic can allow the infection to grow before starting a good response. A fever is a good thing generally (not if you fall in the overreactive immune response category though). In weak immune responses, fever helps by increasing the speed of enzymes, the inflammation response (sounding the alarm) which allows the transport of immune cells that fight infection to flow into the right places quickly.

Inflammatory cell signals (the fire alarm in a building for example) and the immune system share a delicate dance in