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*How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle A.I.’s Harms*
Alarmed by the power of artificial intelligence, Europe, the United States and others are trying to respond — but the technology is evolving more rapidly than their policies.
When European Union leaders introduced a 125-page draft law to regulate artificial intelligence in April 2021, they hailed it as a global model for handling the technology.
E.U. lawmakers had gotten input from thousands of experts for three years about A.I., when the topic was not even on the table in other countries. The result was a “landmark” policy that was “future proof,” declared Margrethe Vestager, the head of digital policy for the 27-nation bloc.
Then came ChatGPT.
The eerily humanlike chatbot, which went viral last year by generating its own answers to prompts, blindsided E.U. policymakers. The type of A.I. that powered ChatGPT was not mentioned in the draft law and was not a major focus of discussions about the policy. Lawmakers and their aides peppered one another with calls and texts to address the gap, as tech executives warned that overly aggressive regulations could put Europe at an economic disadvantage.
Even now, E.U. lawmakers are arguing over what to do, putting the law at risk. “We will always be lagging behind the speed of technology,” said Svenja Hahn, a member of the European Parliament who was involved in writing the A.I. law.
Lawmakers and regulators in Brussels, in Washington and elsewhere are losing a battle to regulate A.I. and are racing to catch up, as concerns grow that the powerful technology will automate away jobs, turbocharge the spread of disinformation and eventually develop its own kind of intelligence. Nations have moved swiftly to tackle A.I.’s potential perils, but European officials have been caught off guard by the technology’s evolution, while U.S. lawmakers openly concede that they barely understand how it works.
The result has been a sprawl of responses. President Biden issued an executive order in October about A.I.’s national security effects as lawmakers debate what, if any, measures to pass. Japan is drafting nonbinding guidelines for the technology, while China has imposed restrictions on certain types of A.I. Britain has said existing laws are adequate for regulating the technology. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are pouring government money into A.I. research.
At the root of the fragmented actions is a fundamental mismatch. A.I. systems are advancing so rapidly and unpredictably that lawmakers and regulators can’t keep pace. That gap has been compounded by an A.I. knowledge deficit in governments, labyrinthine bureaucracies and fears that too many rules may inadvertently limit the technology’s benefits.
Even in Europe, perhaps the world’s most aggressive tech regulator, A.I. has befuddled policymakers.
The European Union has plowed ahead with its new law, the A.I. Act, despite disputes over how to handle the makers of the latest A.I. systems. A final agreement, expected as soon as Wednesday, could restrict certain risky uses of the technology and create transparency requirements about how the underlying systems work. But even if it passes, it is not expected to take effect for at least 18 months — a lifetime in A.I. development — and how it will be enforced is unclear.
“The jury is still out about whether you can regulate this technology or not,” said Andrea Renda, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies, a think tank in Brussels. “There’s a risk this E.U. text ends up being prehistorical.”
The absence of rules has left a vacuum. Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, have been left to police themselves as they race to create and profit from advanced A.I. systems. Many companies, preferring nonbinding codes of conduct that provide latitude to speed up development, are lobbying to soften proposed regulations and pitting governments against one another.
Without united action soon, some officials warned, governments may get further left behind by the A.I. makers and their breakthroughs.
“No one, not even the creators of these systems, know what they will be able to do,” said Matt Clifford, an adviser to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, who presided over an A.I. Safety Summit last month with 28 countries. “The urgency comes from there being a real question of whether governments are equipped to deal with and mitigate the risks.”
Europe takes the lead
In mid-2018, 52 academics, computer scientists and lawyers met at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Brussels to discuss artificial intelligence. E.U. officials had selected them to provide advice about the technology, which was drawing attention for powering driverless cars and facial recognition systems.
The group debated whether there were already enough European rules to protect against the technology and considered potential ethics guidelines, said Nathalie Smuha, a legal scholar in Belgium who coordinated the group.
But as they discussed A.I.’s possible effects — including the threat of facial recognition technology to people’s privacy — they recognized “there were all these legal gaps, and what happens if people don’t follow those guidelines?” she said.
In 2019, the group published a 52-page report with 33 recommendations, including more oversight of A.I. tools that could harm individuals and society.
The report rippled through the insular world of E.U. policymaking. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, made the topic a priority on her digital agenda. A 10-person group was assigned to build on the group’s ideas and draft a law. Another committee in the European Parliament, the European Union’s co-legislative branch, held nearly 50 hearings and meetings to consider A.I.’s effects on cybersecurity, agriculture, diplomacy and energy.
In 2020, European policymakers decided that the best approach was to focus on how A.I. was used and not the underlying technology. A.I. was not inherently good or bad, they said — it depended on how it was applied.
So when the A.I. Act was unveiled in 2021, it concentrated on “high risk” uses of the technology, including in law enforcement, school admissions and hiring. It largely avoided regulating the A.I. models that powered them unless listed as dangerous.
A European Commission spokesman said the A.I. Act was “flexible relative to future developments and innovation friendly.”
The Washington game
Jack Clark, a founder of the A.I. start-up Anthropic, had visited Washington for years to give lawmakers tutorials on A.I. Almost always, just a few congressional aides showed up.
But after ChatGPT went viral, his presentations became packed with lawmakers and aides clamoring to hear his A.I. crash course and views on rule making.
“Everyone has sort of woken up en masse to this technology,” said Mr. Clark, whose company recently hired two lobbying firms in Washington.
Lacking tech expertise, lawmakers are increasingly relying on Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and other A.I. makers to explain how it works and to help create rules.
“We’re not experts,” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, who hosted Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and more than 50 lawmakers at a dinner in Washington in May. “It’s important to be humble.”
Tech companies have seized their advantage. In the first half of the year, many of Microsoft’s and Google’s combined 169 lobbyists met with lawmakers and the White House to discuss A.I. legislation, according to lobbying disclosures. OpenAI registered its first three lobbyists and a tech lobbying group unveiled a $25 million campaign to promote A.I.’s benefits this year.
In that same period, Mr. Altman met with more than 100 members of Congress, including former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and the Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. After testifying in Congress in May, Mr. Altman embarked on a 17-city global tour, meeting world leaders including President Emmanuel Macron of France, Mr. Sunak and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.
*House-to-House Gunfights in Gaza, and Chaos on Capitol Hill*
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Inspecting a damaged site in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Israel widened its military assault against Hamas in the southern part of the enclave.Credit…
*There Is a Better Way to Pick a Presidential Nominee*
Is the Democratic Party making a mistake by renominating President Biden to face the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in 2024? A nontrivial number of voices in and outside the party seem to think so.
But it’s already a mostly moot point. The system Americans use to nominate presidential candidates is not well equipped to make swift strategic adjustments. Voters choose candidates in a sequence of state-level primaries and caucuses. Those contests select delegates and instruct them on how to vote at a nominating convention. It’s an ungainly and convoluted process, and politicians begin positioning themselves a year in advance to succeed in it.
It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be. Political parties in most democracies have the power to choose their leaders without going through a monthslong gantlet.
The best way for a party to choose its leader is for that party to convene, confer and compromise on a candidate who serves its agenda and appeals to voters. The conventions of the mid-20th century, deeply flawed as they were, were designed for that purpose. If those flaws were fixed, they would be far better than what we use today.
Should Mr. Biden run again or step aside? On the one hand, he has stubbornly low approval ratings, and a number of polls show him trailing Mr. Trump. On the other hand, polling a year out is often misleading, and so are job approval ratings in a polarized age. Mr. Biden is old, but so is Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden defeated him last time.
Replacing an incumbent president with another nominee is very rare and probably should be. But a convention could do it if necessary. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson stepped down at the beginning of the year, and Democrats could realistically expect to find a nominee before Election Day.
The system was different then. When Mr. Johnson decided not to run for re-election, he declared, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
The “and I will not accept” matters. Mr. Johnson was acknowledging that the party might nominate him even if he didn’t run. In 1968, when the decision was made at the national convention, the party could do that. That’s not something it can easily do today.
Only a small fraction of states held primaries that year, and most of those didn’t commit delegates. Primaries were a tool to gauge public support, not make the final decision. Hubert Humphrey, the eventual nominee, won no primaries or caucuses. Instead, he won with support of unpledged delegates selected through state conventions — delegates who represented an older, more establishment part of the party.
The apparent injustice of Mr. Humphrey winning the nomination without winning primaries was a big part of how we got to our current system. Many members of the Democratic Party felt that their perspectives weren’t well represented by those establishment delegates; their voices were being heard in the primaries and caucuses.
The party set out to create a national convention that was more representative of the party, but what evolved was something else, the system we use today — the one that has all but locked us into a candidate almost a year out from Election Day.
Early states winnow the field. The next states largely determine who the nominee is. States that vote late in the process often have little effect. Success depends on the ability to stand up a campaign in state after state in the first few months of the year, which in turn depends on the ability to raise money and attract media attention. It’s a process, not a simple decision.
This system could produce a candidate who is battle tested by the primaries and otherwise broadly popular. It might also select a candidate who appeals narrowly to a group of dedicated followers, especially in early states, where a close victory can be leveraged into later success. (Think of Mr. Trump in 2016.)
In no way does it let party leaders take stock of an awkward situation, such as what Democrats face now (low approval ratings for an incumbent) or, for that matter, what Republicans face (a front-runner facing multiple indictments).
Party leaders are not completely helpless. In “The Party Decides,” the political scientists Marty Cohen, David Karol and John Zaller and I argued that party activists and leaders could exert a lot of influence on their party’s choice — so much so that they typically get their way. When they can agree on a satisfactory candidate, they can help direct resources to that candidate and help that person stay in the race if he or she stumbles. (Think of Mr. Biden in 2020.)
But that takes time. It is, at best, a blunt instrument (hence its failure among Republicans in 2016). The nomination is still won in the primaries, and an incumbent is especially hard to replace.
Most democracies give far less power than that to a single political leader, even an incumbent or influential former leader. Healthy parties can limit their leaders.
Empowering the Democrats to replace Mr. Biden or the Republicans to move on from Mr. Trump would come with costs. A party that could persuade a sitting president to stand down would also have the power to persuade outsiders, like Bernie Sanders and Mr. Trump, to not run at all.
For some, giving party leaders this kind of influence is unsettling. It shouldn’t be. The job of choosing a nominee is complicated. It involves the strategic trade-off between what kind of candidate can win in November and what kind of candidate represents what the party wants in a leader.
Letting the party make these decisions is not inherently undemocratic. Just as voters select members of Congress, who then gain expertise, forge compromises and bargain to make policy, so too could voters select party delegates, who would then choose nominees and shape their party’s platform.
Polling and even primaries could continue to play a role. In many years, the voice of the party’s voters might speak loudly, and party leaders would simply heed it. In other years, such as for Democrats in 2008, voter preferences might be more mixed. It’s worth noting that in 2008, Democratic superdelegates (those not bound by the results of any primary) switched their support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama after seeing his appeal in the primaries. If all of the delegates had been free to switch, would the outcome have been the same? We don’t know, but in a representative democracy, elected representatives do often listen to voters.
In other words, the development of a more active, empowered party convention would not have to be a return to the past. The nomination of Mr. Humphrey in 1968 was a problem, but it wasn’t because the decision was made at a convention. It was because the delegates at that convention didn’t represent the party’s voters.
Moving the decision back to the convention would not be a trivial matter. Even if voters and politicians could adjust to the change — a big if — each party would need to select representative and competent delegates. Our experience with representative democracy should tell us that this is possible but far from inevitable.
But such a convention would still be superior to the current system, in which a small number of voters in a handful of states choose from a pool of self-selected candidates who have been tested mostly by their ability to raise money and get attention in debates.
Both of these systems have a claim to being democratic. But only the first would give the party the kind of agency implied by claims that it is making a mistake by renominating the incumbent.
*Trump Unbound: An Autocrat in Waiting?*
As the basic parameters of a second Trump presidency come into focus, I find myself growing increasingly fearful. As the article presents in detail, Donald Trump, if re-elected, could transform the American government into something close to a dictatorship.
Because I am an old white guy, it seems unlikely that I would be targeted and jailed or condemned to one of his camps. But if you are a high-profile Democrat, a person of color, an undocumented immigrant or someone who has spoken out against him, he may very well have his sights on you.
Mr. Trump must not be underestimated, and his goals should be taken both literally and seriously. The election in 2024 may very well be our last chance to stop him.
Richard Winchell
St. Charles, Ill.
To the Editor:
A second Trump presidency not only would be more radical, but also seems inevitable. Donald Trump and his handlers have learned to exploit every weakness in our democratic system of government.
Our founders must have assumed that those who gravitate to government service would essentially be people of good faith, and the rotten apples would be winnowed by our system of checks and balances. But here we are less than a year away from the election, and while Mr. Trump’s transgressions have drawn 91 criminal charges, there has been no justice yet.
He has proved to have a serpentine instinct to capitalize on weak links ranging from the Electoral College to our justice system, gathering strength every time he flouts the rule of law.
Robert Hagelstein
Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Wants Voters to See Biden as a Threat” (news article, Dec. 4):
While former President Donald Trump is notorious for ascribing to others deficiencies that he himself manifests constantly, his latest exercise in projection — calling President Biden “the destroyer of American democracy” — should be dismissed as ludicrous if the issue were not so crucial to the future direction of our country.
The list of Mr. Trump’s actions that subvert basic democratic norms makes it clear that he is the potential threat to democracy if he is elected to a second term.
One can only hope that the more thoughtful of his devoted followers will finally understand the danger of electing someone to lead the country who either misunderstands the concept of democracy or is willing to undermine it to further his own ambitions.
Patricia Flaherty
Duxbury, Mass.
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the ‘Deep State,’” by Donald P. Moynihan (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 2):
Reading Professor Moynihan’s essay reinforced a fear that I have had since the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Donald Trump just might win the next presidential election. But although I worry about what he would do to our government and our society while in office, there is another fear that haunts me.
What would happen when his term ends? I believe that he would not step down. He would claim that he is entitled to stay on as president regardless of the results of the next election. I think he would assert his right to be in power for the rest of his life. And he has enough supporters that his coup might work.
To the Editor:
Re “Houston Shows How to Tackle Homelessness,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, “How America Heals” series, Nov. 26):
Mr. Kristof’s column was both sobering and encouraging. As an I.C.U. nurse working during the cold winter months, I regularly see the inhumanity of relegating our most vulnerable citizens to the dangers and indignities of life on the streets.
For those who don’t see this side of life, here are some examples of patients I’ve cared for: a patient found outside near death whose body temperature was 71 degrees, patients whose feet or hands are black and necrotic from frostbite, patients with severe burns all over their body because their makeshift heater ignited their tent, or patients with carbon monoxide poisoning from a camp stove used in their tent to try to keep warm.
To the political and social leaders of Oregon, enough hand-wringing and placing blame on drugs, alcohol or mental health alone. Mr. Kristof’s statistics on Oregon’s failure to effectively organize and follow through on housing help are pretty damning.
Let’s move past good intentions and follow Houston’s example of what works. I dream of a day when I won’t see patients come into my care frostbitten, burned or poisoned as they try to survive on the streets.
Grace Lownsbery
Wilsonville, Ore.
You link the stabbing of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, to the special dangers that certain inmates face by virtue of their notoriety.
The truth is that violence against prison inmates, no matter their level of fame, is a standard feature of the American mass incarceration system. Studies over an 18-year span show that deaths in state and federal prisons increased by 42 percent, even as absolute numbers of people imprisoned fell (a decarceration trend that was reversed in 2022). By the studies’ final year, deaths caused by homicide or suicide were at their highest levels ever recorded.
The most callous among us might conclude that prison is a punishment and therefore rightfully harsh by design. But even the most staunch supporters might reconsider when faced with an often overlooked reality. In the federal prison system, almost 70 percent of defendants in cases from 2022 were held in pretrial detention — innocent until proven guilty, and already condemned to levels of violence that don’t distinguish by levels of fame.
Anthony Enriquez
New York
The writer is vice president, U.S. advocacy and litigation, at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.
To the Editor:
“Composting’s Community of ‘True Believers’ Jilted as a Curbside Program Grows” (news article, Dec. 2) describes how devastating Mayor Eric Adams’s budget cuts will be to community compost organizations. But it also perpetuates the idea that community-scale composting is unnecessary with the rollout of the city’s curbside collection program.
With the lack of trust in recycling, we need solutions that create many more true believers, such as those at the New York City Housing Authority, where residents drop off food scraps in return for fresh healthy vegetables.
The city also needs good-quality compost to properly maintain the millions of dollars of green infrastructure that it has recently installed. When compost is applied to street trees, rain gardens, parks and community gardens, it makes the soil and plants healthier, reduces flooding and air pollution, provides summer cooling, and makes the city greener and cleaner.
Instead of cutting community-scale composting, the city should be trying to increase the number of small-scale compost sites to enable a substantial percentage of our food scraps and yard waste to be transformed into a valuable neighborhood resource.
Clare Miflin
Brooklyn
The writer is executive director of the Center for Zero Waste Design.
*Peru’s Top Court Orders Fujimori Released From Prison*
The ruling, which affirms a decision to reinstate a pardon, defies an order by an international court that former President Alberto Fujimori continue to serve his sentence for human rights violations.
Peru’s top court on Tuesday ordered former President Alberto Fujimori released from prison, where he is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations, defying an order by an international court that the South American country keep him behind bars.
The court, Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal, voted 3 to 1 to reaffirm its decision to instate a presidential pardon granted to Mr. Fujimori in 2017; the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had found the pardon violated the rights of his victims.
Mr. Fujimori’s lawyer told reporters that the former president would most likely be released from prison on Wednesday.
Some experts described the decision on Tuesday by Peru’s top court as an example of institutional decay in a country that has undergone back-to-back political crises in recent years.
“Until now, we hadn’t seen this attitude of the Peruvian State of open defiance, of saying basically that it’s no big deal if we do not comply with our international obligations,” said Pedro Grández, an expert on Peruvian constitutional law.
Ahead of the court’s decision, the Inter-American court reiterated its decision that Mr. Fujimori should not be released under the 2017 pardon. But President Dina Boluarte’s center-right government is expected to abide by the decision of the Peruvian court.
In its ruling, the Constitutional Tribunal said that if the international court believed that Peru was violating its international obligations, it should take the matter to the Organization of American States, the regional body that the Inter-American Court is part of.
“The body that decides is the Constitutional Tribunal,” the right-wing lawmaker José Cueto said after the verdict. “The Inter-American Court of Human Rights can say whatever it wants and do what it believes is appropriate, but we don’t have to listen to it,” he added.
The decision was the latest development in the roller coaster surrounding Mr. Fujimori’s incarceration, and it came amid a surge in political scandals and concerns about impunity in the country of 33 million people.
Mr. Fujimori, who was elected three decades ago as an anti-establishment outsider, came to power as hyperinflation ravaged Peru’s economy and left-wing rebel groups carried out terror campaigns in which tens of thousands of people were killed.
Two years after his election, Mr. Fujimori dissolved Congress with the support of the military, suspended the Constitution and began ruling as a dictator.
His tenure was marked by a brutal government counterinsurgency campaign against leftist guerrillas. Dozens of civilians were subjected to extrajudicial killings at the hands of death squads that prosecutors said Mr. Fujimori had created. He abruptly resigned by fax from his parents’ homeland of Japan in 2000, after videos showing the country’s spy master paying bribes were made public.
Mr. Fujimori was convicted in 2009 of human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity under international law in connection with the extrajudicial killings and kidnappings. He was sentenced by a Peruvian court to more than two decades in prison, and has served 16 years.
Mr. Fujimori’s family says he has pulmonary fibrosis, a terminal illness. Now 85, he has been held in a special penitentiary for Peruvian presidents in Lima, along with two other former presidents, Mr. Castillo and Alejandro Toledo. Mr. Fujimori’s daughter Keiko Fujimori is an influential opposition leader who narrowly lost last year’s presidential election to Mr. Castillo, as well as two previous presidential runoffs.
In 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Mr. Fujimori ahead of an impeachment vote that Mr. Kuczynski survived with the support of Mr. Fujimori’s supporters in Congress. The pardon was annulled the following year, and Mr. Fujimori was ordered back to prison. In 2022, the constitutional tribunal reinstated the pardon, but the Inter-American court ruled against it before Mr. Fujimori could be released. The Peruvian tribunal now claims that the court did not have the jurisdiction to make that decision.
After the decision, television stations showed a group of Mr. Fujimori’s supporters celebrating outside the prison.
“He’s very calm, enthusiastic and clinically stable,” Mr. Fujimori’s lawyer, Elio Riera, told journalists after speaking with him. “He’s very hopeful about the fulfillment of this order.”
Carlos Rivera, a lawyer who represents victims of the massacres that Mr. Fujimori was found guilty of perpetrating, said the tribunal’s position moved the country toward “a scenario of noncompliance with sentences of an international body.’’
Dino Carlos Caro, a law professor at the University of Salamanca, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Why the fear of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights? The Court fulfills a fundamental role in protecting human rights, but like any body, any power, it has limits.”
In 2018, the international court described a path for Mr. Fujimori to seek a pardon that would conform to international law: It required him to publicly apologize to his victims and pay civil reparations.
“While the court opened the door to a new, legal pardon, Fujimori and his defense and family have never wanted to cross it,” Mr. Rivera said.
*Will Exercising With a Cold Make You Sicker?*
If you have mild symptoms, a short, low-intensity workout may be fine. But experts say there are important things to consider.
Q: Is it safe to exercise when you are sick with a cold? And if so, what exercises are best?
Whether you’re a die-hard exercise devotee or just beginning to get into a workout groove, you may worry that coming down with a cold could derail your training routine. Does your runny nose mean you need to skip your exercise session, or could a workout actually do you some good?
Researchers have looked into this very question and have concluded that a mild cold does not always have to sideline you. But there are several key caveats to keep in mind. We talked to the experts behind the research to highlight what you need to know.
Do the ‘neck check.’
Before you don your workout gear, assess your symptoms carefully. “The most popular advice is to do what’s referred to as the neck check, where if symptoms are above the neck, exercise is probably safe,” said Thomas Weidner, a professor of athletic training and chair emeritus of the school of kinesiology at Ball State University in Indiana. If your only symptoms are nasal congestion and a low-grade headache, for example, a light workout shouldn’t make your cold worse.
In fact, a landmark study that demonstrated this was led by Dr. Weidner in the 1990s. In it, 50 young adults were infected with the common cold virus and randomly split into two groups: one that did 40 minutes of moderate exercise every other day for 10 days, and one that didn’t exercise at all. The researchers found that there was no difference in illness length or severity between the two groups — meaning that working out moderately did not prolong or exacerbate their colds. Other research done by Dr. Weidner has led to similar findings.
If, however, you do have symptoms below the neck, such as a hacking cough, chest discomfort, nausea, diarrhea or body-wide symptoms like fever, muscle aches or fatigue, “then it’s not a good idea to exercise,” Jeffrey Woods, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said via email.
Monitor your symptoms.
Also keep in mind that symptoms can evolve, and what might begin as a runny nose could later become something more serious, like bronchitis or the flu. Proceed with caution, keep tabs on how you’re feeling and skip the workout if you start to feel worse.
“There’s this myth that you can sweat out a virus, but that is a terrible thing to do,” said David Nieman, a professor of biology at Appalachian State University and director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the North Carolina Research Campus. If you’re not feeling well, heavy exercise can exacerbate your symptoms and increase your risk for complications, he said. “It has the potential to really bring you down.”
If your condition does deteriorate, it’s best to rest until the symptoms go away, Dr. Nieman said. “Then, gradually get back into the routine,” he added. “Relapse can be common if you get back too quickly and push hard.”
In rare cases, exercising intensely while you’re sick, or even shortly after you’ve recovered, could lead to new or lingering symptoms like exhaustion or unexplained pain. Researchers believe this phenomenon is similar to how some people develop long Covid or chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME/CFS), which are illnesses that can develop after an acute infection. “It can be serious for a small percentage of people if they push exercise too hard during the illness or soon thereafter,” Dr. Nieman said. “You may enter into this unexplained syndrome, and it’s not worth the risk.”
Another unlikely but possible consequence of working out heavily while battling an upper respiratory infection is myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, which can cause symptoms such as a rapid or abnormal heart beat, chest pain or shortness of breath.
Researchers aren’t entirely sure how common it is to develop these more serious conditions during or after a viral infection, or why the body reacts in this way. But there is speculation, Dr. Nieman said, that the immune system goes into “a strange level” of overdrive that ramps up inflammation.
Stick to moderate workouts.
If you’re confident that your cold symptoms are manageable and you still feel up for exercising, Dr. Woods recommended “moderate intensity cardiovascular exercise for 30 to 45 minutes a session.”
A brisk 30-minute walk outside or a low-impact workout on an elliptical machine or stationary bike would be a good option, Dr. Nieman said. Dr. Woods also noted that lifting light weights is fine. But avoid going to a gym, Dr. Nieman said, so you don’t spread your germs to others. He also emphasized that this is not the time to strain yourself or go for a personal best.
If at any point you feel light headed, tightness in your chest or any pain while exercising, consider that your cue to call it quits.
If all goes smoothly, however, you might feel a “psychological boost” after exercising, Dr. Weidner said, “and that’s a plus, given the symptoms that might drag a person down.”
Once you’re fully recovered from your cold, slowly ease back into your exercise routine, gradually increasing the length and intensity of your workout. Research shows that when you’re healthy, regular moderate exercise may actually decrease inflammation, improve your immune response and lower your risk of getting upper respiratory infections in the first place.
*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*
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