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Comment by milesskorpen | Hacker News Reader

From what I've heard & read, we don't actually know that people are rendered immune — and even if they are, we don't know how long the immunity would last.

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This seems iffy; I don't think the reports from last week that people in China and Japan who were sent home and then tested positive again have been really confirmed. Do we have new info on that? We should be seeing more instances in Europe if it's a real phenomenon.

Even if it turns out that immunity doesn't happen, I don't think it changes the reaction that we need at this moment. It will change our decisions going forward, of course.

Don’t know for China but there are couple sources and cases for Japan.

What I think a most plausible explanation is it takes time after symptoms disappear for our immune system to finish wiping out virus. Influenza also has that stretch, though only days long, not weeks.

There's also that little problem we get new versions of the flu virus every year, why isn't that going to happen with covid-19 now? It's got billions of hosts.

It is very likely that this will become an ongoing thing where we have to get shots every year.

From the way things are that's most the likely outcome. As this virus goes through the world people will build immunity for different strains.

Does the re-infection result from there being at least 2 distinct strains of COVID-19?

From what I've read, it seemed uncertain if it was a re-infection or the person simply hadn't fully recovered and their symptoms had resurged

It's not even a re- infection necessarily. Second test could have been a false negative.

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