© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Battle Within: Coronavirus And The Immune System

Your immune system is probably more prepared than you think.
Your immune system is probably more prepared than you think.

Analysts, journalists and leaders are very focused on how COVID-19 affects the world around us.

But what about how it affects the world within us? How does the human immune system handle a disease that it’s never even interacted with before?

Matt Richtel is a reporter with The New York Times and the author of “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System.”

He says that while commercials and common parlance suggest Americans need to “boost” their immune systems during quarantine, it’s better that we think about “balancing” them instead.

So how do we do that? And what are conditions normally like inside the average immune system?

Copyright 2020 WAMU 88.5

Chris Castano