I don’t think so- it would have a bigger effect if that were true.
For covid in particular the hypothesis was that it prevented transition between an annoying but harmless-to-most upper respiratory infection, to a very serious lower respiratory infection. I don’t know if that panned out for covid or if it transfers to other viruses, but it seems very plausible. “Nasal infection unaffected but progression to lungs inhibited” is an extremely specific prediction that should be fairly easy to measure but I couldn’t find anything on it in a few minutes on google scholar, which I find very disappointing.
A question occurs to me after reading the comments.
Is the implication here that most/many common cold infection pathway is via the throat rather than the nose?
I don’t think so- it would have a bigger effect if that were true.
For covid in particular the hypothesis was that it prevented transition between an annoying but harmless-to-most upper respiratory infection, to a very serious lower respiratory infection. I don’t know if that panned out for covid or if it transfers to other viruses, but it seems very plausible. “Nasal infection unaffected but progression to lungs inhibited” is an extremely specific prediction that should be fairly easy to measure but I couldn’t find anything on it in a few minutes on google scholar, which I find very disappointing.