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Comment by neltnerb | Hacker News Reader

If you take an antiviral like this, do you still develop a good immune response to reinfection?

I wonder because almost everyone who might end up needing this isn't vaccinated (based on hospitalization rates) so I hope that at the end they also end up having some immunity to catching it again at least.

In the moment of course it is better to use than not.

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You should -- protease inhibitors inhibit replication, but existing viruses should be more than enough to generate a durable response in most individuals.

If I remember correctly, it’s not Covid that kills you directly , but a runaway immune response. What was the name… Cytokine storm?

Early treatment means that the virus doesn't replicate from the upper respiratory tract down to the lungs, where yes the cytokine storm can kill you.

Is it not always the case?

Do we say that Ebola doesn't kill you directly, it's the hemorrhaging and multi-organ failure?

Of course it doesn't kill you "directly" for some sufficiently narrow definition of direct.

Except for the flu apparently. The flu never kills. It's the pneumonia and heart failure.

Anyone taking this should still develop an immune memory to covid. As I recall, even people who took monoclonal antibodies (that is to say, an antiviral where they literally inject functional anti-covid antibodies into your veins) developed some degree of natural immunity.

No. There's a big difference between drugs and vaccines. The drug doesn't generally illicit an immune response, but the vaccine is designed to do exactly that.

But by definition, anyone taking this drug is already infected. So their immune system has already been exposed to the virus.

With antibiotics, it is possible to kill an infection without developing a full immune response, leaving the person susceptible to reinfection. Even if that infection is symptomatic and has been going on for days, the immune response still may not be robust enough before the antibiotics kill off the infection. Not sure if that also occurs with anti-virals.

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