Quote Originally Posted by Cuz View Post
While it’s good to have a decent immune response to pathogens, an overreaction to them — as occurs in highly virulent influenza strains, SARS, dengue and many other diseases — can be more damaging than the pathogen itself. Women, with their robust immune responses, are twice as susceptible as men to death from the systemic inflammatory overdrive called sepsis. So perhaps, Davis suggests, having a somewhat weakened (but not too weak) immune system can prove more lifesaving than life-threatening for a dominant male in the prime of life.
I was just talking to someone about this the other day - the idea that an overreaction of the immune system (such as during an allergic reaction) is what can be worse than the effects of the virus directly. Just like an allergen can make someone stop breathing because of the inflammatory response of the respiratory tract during an allergic reaction, a similar thing can theoretically happen from a virus.