Study finds people have short-lived immunity to seasonal coronaviruses
directorsblog.nih.gov
directorsblog.nih.gov
Would it be possible for a virus that induced long-lived immunity to be seasonal, reoccurring year after year?
And why were the other coronaviruses that infect humans left out of the study?
Because one of them, SARS-1 went extinct in just over a year due to a heroic international response, and the other, MERS, has about a 35% fatality rate and is unlikely to be found in anyone who does not have direct contact with camels.
And our few examples of known re-infections with SARS-2 don't seem to have caused disease the second time around.
Is asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission no longer thought of as a significant transmission route anymore?
EDIT: I'm not saying that a vaccine that conveys protective but not sterilizing immunity means we can stop worrying about true asymptomatic transmission entirely. But I'd assume that it's enough to driver the natural R0 well below 1.0 if everyone gets the vaccine all by itself.
The common cold and influenza are seasonal in the sense that most infections occur during some time in the colder months.
The researchers were trying to figure out how long-lived immunity to other coronaviruses is. Their question was not about the severity of cases, but whether a reinfection is possible. They found that in most cases, levels of antibodies against 4 common coronaviruses spiked about a year after the previous infection.
That could either just mean that the patients still had immunity and their immune system was able to quickly produce more antibodies when they came in contact with the virus again.
But it could also indicate a reinfection. In that case, symptoms would be observable.
As symptoms were not recorded, we are unable to tell which case occurred more often.
Deaths aren't tracking cases, and the tests are probably too sensitive [0], so for all we know it really did wane in the summer. We're in a weird place with this virus in that we don't do anywhere near this extensive testing for other viruses, so we don't actually know if this is normal or not.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testin...
We won't know if it's false until we've experienced both summer and winter in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
Yes, cases increased were high in the summer in the US, but that doesn't tell us anything about whether it will be the same, or lower, or higher in the winter.
How do you know the virus wasn't waning? I have always anticipated that summer was us giving us a break before it got worse in the Fall and Winter. Perhaps it is seasonal, we won't know until Spring. It may be bad in Summer, but really bad during the other times.
The German virologist Drosten said in an interview (a while ago, sorry, no source) that it is expected that survivors will stop producing white blood cells at some point. The next time they get infected with COVID-19 they will develop symptoms of a common cold and get rid of the virus much quicker.
Our immune systems have an inane immune system, an adaptive immune system, a Complement Protein system[0], with hundreds of thousands of proteins that have evolved over millions of years to change shape and form to grab onto and destroy all kinds of bacteria and viruses in the most random/crazy ways possible (It's a lot like microservices, except random monkeys throwing code at a wall and eventually making things work over millions of years), and many many other pieces.
Every vaccine we have today is either based off an inactivated virus or an attenuated virus (a virus moved though hosts to be less lethal to humans). The first vaccine used HorsePox/CowPox to create immune memory for SmallPox by Jenner, 185 years ago.
A lot of these newer vaccines like mNRA vaccines, are not vaccines at all. They attempt to generate antibodies specifically. But there could be hundreds of other interactions that occur when a virus enters your system, that can help build immunity. There's a lot we simply do not know about.
Attempts at SARS1/MERS vaccines led to Imunopathic responses and Immune Enhancement Syndrome. Vaccines are some carefully engineered, invention of science. They came about due to horrific diseases, where doctors tested and experimented on human beings because thousands were going blind, getting paralyzed or dying.
The rush to create a vaccine, with methods that have never successfully created a vaccine before, should be of great concern to everyone.
Is there even enough evidence in those few cases that it was really a reinfection? RT-PCR based tests are good but are not perfect after all, false positives happen.
If you run a RT-PCT enough times, you can generate a match in many cases where someone has never had the virus. The inventor of the PCR (who passed away years ago) took great issue with the way PCR was being using incorrectly with HIV testing. Even today with HIV, PCR is often reported with a viral load number, so doctors can tell what amount of antiviral drugs are needed for patients, and to help identify long-term non-progressives (rare) who may not need drugs at all.
What does that mean? Do they not have similarly unique antigens?
CoVID-19 is a much more dangerous disease than other coronaviruses because it has a spike protein that binds to the ACE-2 receptor on your kidney, heart, blood vessel, and yes lung cells. Other coronaviruses have different spike proteins that bind to different receptors and don't seem to kill people effectively as the CoVID-19 spike protein.
CoVID neutralizing antibodies target the unique spike protein so the fact that other coronaviruses don't present a durable target isn't relevant.
Also, if you can get enough people vaccinated at one time to provide herd immunity, perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to have long-term immunity, as the pandemic could be ended there and then.
Antibodies are tied into what helped you get over your initial infection, if they don't do anything how did you clear initial infection? Sure - we don't have the studies yet - but this claim that there is no immunity is totally bogus - the reality - we don't yet have a study for THIS virus to show the full cycle of immunity - that doesn't mean Covid is a magic virus.
Secondly, this title "short lived immunity" is ridiculous. The issue is immune response, ie, when re-infected can your body clear disease efficiently. Isn't that how most immune responses work, you don't even really trigger them pre-infection. But then you get an exposure, body response kicks in (often better on repeat) etc.
I'm tired of these "masks don't help", "antibodies mean nothing", "reinfections are common" type articles.
It's also important to compare cities and countries of comparable magnitude, size can make a big difference.
Americas have followed the rules, in almost all regions. People all over the US stopped being social days or weeks before the lockdowns even started.
What are you basing this on?
Many stopped immediately, but many have no stopped. There are even COVID parties, and open rallies with 500,000 attendies: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/08/sturgis-mo...
> Antibodies are tied into what helped you get over your initial infection, if they don't do anything how did you clear initial infection?
It's not magic, it really is a thing with mutations in a handful of other viruses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhanceme...
It was an early fear that I think we're past by now.
It's so important to be precise and specific when taking about Covid19; it's not flu.
The 1919 pandemic didn't just "disappear" it killed many of its hosts, and people used social distancing, additional hygiene measures, and mask wearing to help reduce the infection rates. AIUI it was more rapid in producing symptoms and more deadly - leading to less infections and perhaps less deaths than a Covid19-like virus might (at that point in history).
Cars were around, but nearly as common as they are now. In 1919 there were 72.5 cars per 1000 people in the US. It was 838 in 2018.
So far, expecting things to turn out semi-shitty seems to be the way to go. At first our national health agency didn’t take the threat seriously. Then they took it very seriously but didn’t think we’d see a second wave because our restrictions worked. Heh, now we’re heading toward a winter with high amounts of new restrictions that are targeted at the second wave that is unlikely to lift until sometime next year. And this is in a country that has so far handled the pandemic better than most.
Covid is endemic (it is not a pandemic). When exactly will we experience no mass covid deaths? (we experience mass flu deaths).
Simply, never. Is it really that in 3yr time we will be "happy" with a 0.2% rate? (ie., 50% of current rate). Will "half the number of grandparents" dying be a tolerable amount?
The justification behind everything here is alarmingly short-termism, I can only imagine govs are waiting for some kind of "vaccine" or "health theatre" that will allow people to resume normal behaviour. (cf. airport security theatre exists to encourage people to fly; it is demanded by airlines so people feel flying is safe. One assumes they hope vaccines will play the same role.)
However gov.s are at their financial breaking points re Lockdown as a strategy, and it'll be this that goes first. Hard to say what the political ramifications of that are, many middle-class shut-ins simply refuse to believe gov. is a limited actor.
Kinda like smoking which kills 500k americans every year.
The actual number of fatalities are dropping in almost every region. The trouble with "new cases" is they just add to the existing insanely high number, instead of resetting to cases-per-month. A lot of these cases aren't even serious at all. Remember during the H1N1 flu, Obama actually reduced testing to quell fear.
And the restrictions are likely going away. It's been months and humanity cannot go on this way. Ecuador high courts have struck down a lot of their lockdown restrictions and emergency powers. In the US, the Stickman decision in PA could be the most important decision of this entire year[0]. We're seeing lockdown protest in Germany, UK and there would be protests in Australia if Victoria didn't go absolutely insane.
I realize a lot of people have died, but in the US, 96% of them are over 55. The "long term effects" narrative is taking hold, and I've read the UK case study of 60+ patients published through a Charlottesville journal, and the majority of them were elderly or high risk.
https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/
Only 6k people in the US died without having an additional comorbidity (heart disease, obesity, etc.)
It's time to isolate the vulnerable, and let the rest of the population go back to making their own decisions about what risks they want to take with their lives. Offer subsidies for people who want groceries delivered and never want to go out and take any risks again.
100 year from now, historians will look back at 2020 as the year of mass hysteria.