The soft palate, uvula, redundant pharyngeal tissues, and sometimes the tonsils are removed (51).
It also explains why virus can be isolated from the throats of infected individuals who have had their tonsils and adenoids removed.
In comparison to airborne transmission symptoms such as sore throat, pharyngeal erythema, and enlarged tonsils, submandibular lymphadenopathy are more frequent than coughing and coryza.
It was quite surprising that an eventual carrier status in the tonsil was enough to explain the main variability in transmission between the transmission trials.
One possibility is that they recirculate back to the tonsil, where they produce infectious virus and are thereby lysed or subject to immune attack.
Altogether, 114 (54 %) of 212 human strains were indistinguishable from tonsil strains.
My wife's tonsils never bothered her much after that close brush with tonsillectomy, which proves she didn't need the operation.
Unfortunately the status of the tonsil can only be measured at necropsy or maybe earlier when taking tonsil biopsies, which was not tested in this study.
