Do You Get Immunity After Recovering from a Case of Coronavirus? | Hacker News Reader

Do You Get Immunity After Recovering from a Case of Coronavirus?

npr.org

31 pointsgreencore8 comments

That's a very I Don't Know type of article.

Agreed. Poor quality article with little of value to convey beyond those three words, buffed out to the size required of the format.

Just because the article doesn't tie everything up in a nice back and white bow doesn't mean it is low quality.

The answer to the question is "we don't know, it's complicated". It's not a screenplay we're in, reality is messy.

That's fine, so long as the article lets you know that up-front. Title it "Why we don't know yet whether you can get Corona a second time."

This is, literally, the first sentence in the article.

> It's unclear whether people who recover from COVID-19 will be immune to reinfection from the coronavirus and, if so, how long that immunity will last.

There are abstracts of scientific papers that are not as upfront about their results as the first sentence of this article is.

If you think that's frustrating, wait until you read about Antibody Dependent Enhancement [1], which is the situation where antibodies from a previous infection actually enhance the virulence of a subsequent exposure.

Immunology is complicated and dynamic. That's why it takes 12-18 months to prove that a new vaccine won't end up being worse than the disease.

[1]

If you don't develop immunity, think how that will affect the economy. With immunity, it's possible this is a temporary condition, and once we get through it, we can go back to something we almost recognize as normal, and the economy can start to recover. Without immunity, it's more like something has fundamentally changed. For example, dining out at a restaurant or seeing a movie in a theater may be things that people are not comfortable with for years.

Why is everyone so obsessed with the economy? I think the coronavirus is the perfect defense mechanism from nature for the environment to recover

Reply on news.ycombinator.com