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Comment by qbasic_forever | Hacker News Reader

Covid antibodies, even vaccine induced ones, don't stick around for much more than 3-6 months. Whatever natural immunity you got nearly 3 years ago is long since useless. You're either getting lucky or an asymptomatic case and not knowing it.

edit: Since you're unvaccinated, go get a covid antibody test and check for yourself how good (or terrible) your immunity is to the virus. You can take either one, the S type or N type test, since you won't get a false positive from vaccine antibodies. Put your money where your mouth is and find out exactly how little protection natural immunity from 3 years ago is providing you.

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> Whatever natural immunity you got nearly 3 years ago is long since useless

This is factually incorrect. You don't have perhaps protection against infection, nor probably symptomatic disease, but there is working natural immunity, in the form of immune memory and cell based immunity (T lymphocytes). That is far, far more resistant to variants than humoral (antibody based) immunity, mainly because only antibodies neutralizing the S protein are able to prevent infection (so more vulnerable to mutations).

Cell based immunity can't prevent infection, and can not necessarily prevent disease (as in, having fever, cough...), but it is very effective in dampening the effect of infection (either through recruitment of other immune cells, or by killing infected cells). Memory T and B cells generally last quite a lot of years (and with SARS-CoV-2, up to two years at least), so this memory is long-lasting.

Where is the T cell immunity? People are on their fourth and fifth infections now. If there were strong T cell protection we wouldn't see constant reinfection.

T cells will save us has been a big coping strategy from people trying to claim the pandemic is over too soon. Hucksters like Monica Ghandi have been saying T cells will save us for years now.

When... when will it happen I ask. Over a million dead bodies and people still racking up infections. Back up to an average of 500 people dying a day even in our summer lull right now, and it's climbing again.

Where is the T cell protection?

Look at the entire continent of Africa. A high seroprevalence of SARS-COV-2 antibodies, and yet these mostly underdeveloped nations have a much lower death rate even if you count excess deaths due to poor reporting than the US with supposedly all the best to fight it. My thought is that statistically Africans are thinner and get outdoors more than their obese, diabetic, and hypertension-suffering peers in the US and Europe sitting on their couches. I tested 113 a full year after my COVID-19 infection on an IgG test when 15 or over is considered a positive antibody test. I am going to get tested again when I return from Saudi back to the US a full two years after my infection. I bet I am still in the 80s or thereabouts. And I have not had a second infection. I am fit, do not suffer from hypertension or diabetes, and I had COVID. These are solid, scientific factors that put me in a lower risk category even if I get COVID again.

See my response above, however, to your edit remark: a full year later I tested 115 (15 is a positive for IgG test). I referenced studies for both SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 and COVID-19 where antibodies are detected much further out than your 3-6 months. They are still testing positive for antibodies to SARS-CoV-1 (2003), 19 years later.

To your "lucky" point, I can't qualify that. If I have an asymptomatic case, that tells me my natural immunity must be pretty good, given my multi-vaccinated colleagues, at least three of them, have lost work due to second and third infections. They had the vaccination before getting COVID, so I wonder if they have weak immune systems, or the vaccine somehow is not as good as natural immunity. The CDC finally admitted natural immunity was as good or better after a year of ignoring natural immunity, and after they pushed it on healthy children, and Pfizer makes tens of billions of dollars with every booster or new series of vaccines.

I truly believe in the next 5 years it will become more clear that the majority of people who suffered from COVID that were under 55 years old was because of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, or other immune-compromised patients. The numbers are already in the CDC datasets and other datasets from around the world showing this trend. Everyone has a horror story of a young, healthy person who died, however it is the thin tail of the distribution, and not the norm, and it is a very statistically insignificant number to push a one-size fits all mandate to vaccinate.

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