[Causality1]

Why is so much in this article contradictory? It opens by saying viruses allow or inhibit other viruses by way of differing methods of entering cells but only a few paragraphs later says the difference is entirely due to triggering an immune response.

Further experiments showed rhinovirus was triggering an immune response inside the infected cells, which blocked the ability of Sars-CoV-2 to make copies of itself.

What? What defenses do cells have after already being infected with viral RNA?

"We could see surges in flu. We could see surges in other respiratory viruses and other respiratory pathogens," she said,

Why? Why does covid mean we're going to see unusual winter surges in non-covid diseases?

[hfktk4nrn]

Cells have ways to detect non-self RNA and react to it, like stopping protein expression and releasing alarm chemicals to call in immune system cells. Viruses of course try to block these cell defenses.

This is actually a big problem for mRNA vaccines, which are also foreign RNAs, and to overcome it for example Pfizer/Moderna use unnatural RNA bases, among other things, to bypass these detection mechanisms.

It's not exactly clear how cells can distinguish self/non-self RNA, some markers are known, like different RNA cappings, different letter frequencies, some chemical modifications.