What if immunity to covid-19 doesn't last?

[wackadoo wabbit]

What the Columbia researchers now describe in a preliminary report is cause for concern. They found that people frequently got reinfected with the same coronavirus, even in the same year, and sometimes more than once. Over a year and a half, a dozen of the volunteers tested positive two or three times for the same virus, in one case with just four weeks between positive results.

That’s a stark difference from the pattern with infections like measles or chicken pox, where people who recover can expect to be immune for life.

For the coronaviruses “immunity seems to wane quickly,” says Jeffrey Shaman, who carried out the research with Marta Galanti, a postdoctoral researcher. . . .

“What I have been telling everyone—and no one believes me, but it’s true—is we get coronaviruses every winter even though we’re seroconverted,” says Matthew Frieman, who studies the virus family at the University of Maryland. That is, even though most people have previously developed antibodies to them, they get the viruses again. “We really don’t understand whether it is a change in the virus over time or antibodies that don’t protect from infection,” he says.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/27/1000569/how-long-are-people-immune-to-covid-19/

[FarPoint]

1. There is a good possibility is may NOT...

[underpants]

2. There is no proof of immunity yet

Not that I’ve seen.

[at140]

6. Plasma transfusion has very good success rate

That is all about acquiring anti-bodies from recovered from covid-19 patients.
That is proof anti-body immunity is present. Too early to say how long the immunity will last.
This disease is only a couple of months old.

[Igel]

14. So far what I've seen has been without control.

And the success rate matches fairly closely, for the small sample sizes they've used, the stats for no treatment.

The one thing they can say is that it doesn't kill. (But if there's a hospital space/staff shortage and it takes additional room/staff, then that would kill and not be reflected in the results of the trial.)

[dalton99a]

3. "If anyone says they know, they don't know what they are talking about"

What sort of immune memory will covid-19 cause? Stephen Elledge, a geneticist at Harvard University says the severity of the disease could put it in a different category from the ordinary cold. “You might have a cold for a week, whereas if you go through three weeks of hell, that may give you more of a memory for longer,” he says.

Other clues come from the 2002-03 outbreak of SARS, a respiratory infection even more deadly than covid-19. Six years after the SARS outbreak, doctors in Beijing went hunting for an immune response among survivors. They found no antibodies or long-lived memory B cells, but they did find memory T cells.

Because doctors managed to stop the SARS outbreak after about 8,000 cases, there’s never been a chance for anyone to get infected a second time, but those T cells could be a sign of ongoing immunity. A later vaccine study in mice found that memory T cells protected the animals from the worst effects when scientists tried infecting them again with SARS.

To Frieman, at the University of Maryland, all this uncertainty about immune response to coronaviruses means there’s still little chance of predicting when, or how, the outbreak ends. “I don’t know when this goes away, and if anyone says they know, they don’t know what they are talking about,” he says.

[MyOwnPeace]

4. Buy more bleach?

DISCLAIMER: Only do this if you believe IQ45 is the smartiest doktor alive!

[kentuck]

5. I seriously doubt if there is an immunity to this virus at present.

Because it hits so many parts of the body. If it hit the lungs this time, maybe it will be the liver or the heart the next time?

[dawg]

7. This is why the strategy of giving up and pursuing "herd immunity" is so profoundly heartless.

Not only does it reflect a willingness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, it is willing to do so before science has determined that it would even be worthwhile. This is only one step away from human sacrifice to appease the gods. I feel like some of us owe the Aztecs and others a belated apology.

[Igel]

15. Nobody's giving up.

Consider Sweden. It looked at what flattening the curve means and is making sure that the curve doesn't exceed hospital capacity.

If there is no vaccine or long-term immunity, then it doesn't matter. It's still likely it'll provide some protection. Most of us would still get the fearsome COVID of Doom. Now, next month, next year. Unless we can wipe it out. All that Sweden's done is get ahead of the curve.

Consider smallpox. Took years of dedicated, committed work by *all* countries to get the prevalence down to close to zero, then dedicated, committed work to identifying any outbreak and ring vaccinating all those exposed, and then the 2nd-tier people exposed (to those who had been exposed).

Still, it took years.

The same trick hasn't worked (yet) for polio, 50 years on. And every time there's an outbreak in a place like Pakistan or Nigeria public health people go a bit weird because so many people aren't vaccinated for it and just count on never being exposed.

One thing that you see comparing previous generations to this one is just how threat averse people have become when it involves novel threats.

[Voltaire2]

8. then we are in for a long plague

which is a situation civilization hasn't had to deal with for a long time.

[SoonerPride]

9. It may mean an annual shot like the seasonal flu

Or maybe even a shot every six months.

That is IF science can find any vaccine that gives you any immunity at all even if it doesn’t last a lifetime.

[DrToast]

11. Yes

We may need periodic booster shots of a vaccine.

There is good early evidence of immunity in animal trials of vaccine tests. So I think it's very likely there will be some length of immunity with a vaccine.

[2naSalit]

10. K&R

[Wounded Bear]

12. I keep hearing there is a real problem with reliability of testing...

especially of the anti-body tests, where the FDA basically opened the gates and every backyard lab in the world is suddenly producing tests, many of which have as low as 40-50% accuracy numbers.

Not gonna buy a lot of these statistics for a while, myself.

[Igel]

16. The news stories have been all other the place.

Usually the ones that say 40-50% refer to the worse antibody tests that have been tried--not the worst COVID antibody tests that have received any approval. Or even the worst COVID antibody tests that have been checked.

You have to read carefully. I don't know if the reporters are stupid or manipulative, but it's coming down to one of those two.

There are a lot of tests on the market. Some have received emergency use approval, and they're pretty good. Some have requested it and the data aren't there yet. Many haven't requested it, Chinese manufacturers have found a gullible market and are flooding it when crap. The one thing you can be sure of is that if it says FDA approved it's not even been submitted for approval.

Even the tests that have FDA emergency approval are still subject to the full validation process.

[colsohlibgal]

13. Then It Is Wait For The Vaccine

There was encouraging news, the Brits seem to have a vaccine that they think may be ready sooner than a year, maybe as soon as 6 months or so.

[Igel]

17. Flip that.

If COVID immunity doesn't last, it means that the vaccine will only impart short-term protection.

Booster shots, then. Perhaps annually. Perhaps more often.

Or we wait for it to peter out, which is likely ... Given enough time.