how long for a cold to transfer... (1 Viewer)

[EricW]

just wondering how long it takes a cold virus to gestate/manifest before you start showing symptoms. i high school teacher once told me 3 days but that was a while ago and i don't know if i'm remembering correctly...

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Incubation periods can vary widely.

 

[Eric_L]

Sometime between when you finally get the kid back to school from their cold and the time you start finally catching your own work up.

 

[LDfan]

For a typical cold virus 3-7 days is probably a good guess. Actually that probably holds true for most viral infections since a virus literally invades, reproduces, invades, reproduces and so on until a threshold is met where your body realizes it and wham, you are sick.
Then your immune system catches on, all kinds of complex immune things happen and about a week - 2 weeks later you've built up antibodies which rapidly controls virus particles in the body and your symptoms go away.

Jeff