Reeteka Sud, Research Coordinator, Nimhans, Bengaluru: No. There is nothing to suggest that Indians have better immunity, either thanks to genetics or the environment they live in. Air quality impacts people's lungs and every other major organ system. This includes the immune function that is affected by air pollution in a big, bad way. In other words, bad air quality does not help the immune response—the reality is quite the opposite. There is a lot of evidence to show that. Some citations (Air pollution and health; Mechanistic impact of outdoor air pollution on asthma and allergic diseases; Air pollution's impact on immune function in the brain—this meta-analysis summarises over a hundred articles to show particulate matter in polluted air increases susceptibility to infection. Press release from Berkeley, talking about the work of some of their scientists on how air pollution alters immune function, makes asthma worse; [Relatively] long-term effects of childhood exposure to air pollutants). It's like this—a trained athlete can better run a marathon when they are well rested; as opposed to running a marathon immediately after running sprints all night long. The immune system is trained to identify invaders and attack them. Having been constantly exposed to pollutants is like a series of sprints for the immune system—it gets things under control but then it's always 'on'; so not at its best when a new pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 comes along that requires a sustained battle. The bottomline: It's not an open question that air pollution hurts our immune function; but scientists are trying to understand how. This work is going on in many labs round the globe, including here at home. One of the ICMR labs from Bhopal also had a paper on it recently (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29202419).

misinformation

Ashwatthama Is Dead: On the Theatre of Lies in Wartime

Truth Versus Misinformation