General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOf course there's reinfection:
And its going to manifest itself about now the way you can get another cold four, five, or six months later. This is not some wishful thinking exercise: this is a real coronavirus which does what coronaviruses do. It is also probably a self mutating virus and is seen by the body as a different entity than the previous one which infected, or it is more than entirely possible that the immunity is minimal after some number of weeks or months. It is going to be an endemic virus, and we are going to live and die with it.
When I was in school we asked the virology professor why there was no vaccine for the common cold which caused tremendous numbers of hours to be lost in the workplace each year, and also lead to more serious complications in infirm individuals. His response was that if we couldve had one we wouldve had one. But we cant have one because its not so easy.
It is not random that we are beginning to see reinfections in areas where in early cases were noted. It all does in fact make good sense. The fact the common sense is not prevalent these days, the virus has no issue with. Because, the virus doesnt care what you think, what do you feel, or what you think should be the case. Its going to do what its going to do: its like the story with the scorpion and the frog: the frog is the victim because the scorpion does what scorpions do.
ProudMNDemocrat
(18,744 posts)COVID will do what Scorpions will do. Attack and kill while it's venom takes its time to infect and kill. It cares NOTHING for its victims.
Buckeye_Democrat
(15,013 posts)That's just what they do.
CloudWatcher
(1,917 posts)barbtries
(29,588 posts)i asked my chemist BIL when we were going to get a cure for the common cold, and his answer was that there never would be, because the common cold is not common. same thing - the bug changes.
DSandra
(1,168 posts)Each infection will do increasing damage till we die by it or its complications.
Good thing Trump has let this virus flourish in this country... this country is well on its way of declining to the level of a poor African nation, complete with diseases and mass poverty and civil wars.
Bonhomme Richard
(9,080 posts)this is a cold and will act like colds. I also told them that if it were as easy as they are making it sound creating a vaccine then why hasn't anyone made a vaccine for the common cold. they would make a monetary killing if they did.
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)Salviati
(6,034 posts)You can't make generalizations when n = 1
Particularly with this virus, which seems to hit different people in strikingly different ways.
Ms. Toad
(35,298 posts)Link to tweet
Klaralven
(7,510 posts)uponit7771
(91,308 posts)Ms. Toad
(35,298 posts)rather than a relaps, failure to completely recover, etc.
The variant was enough different that it would not have been a mutation within that person; it had to have come in the form of a new exposure/infection.
Chichiri
(4,667 posts)Only about 20% of colds are caused by coronaviruses; the rest are caused by other kinds of viruses, each of which would need its own vaccine. So spending all those millions on researching, testing, and producing a coronavirus cold vaccine that is, say, 75% effective, would result in a product whose tagine is, "Prevents 15% of all colds!" Probably not going to make a profit. That's why we don't have a cold vaccine.
But there is an incredible amount of demand, and thus an enormous potential profit, for a covid vaccine. That's why we're going to have one in months. Yes, covid will always be with us from now on, and we might have to take the vaccine at intervals, like a flu shot. But things will go back to normal in time.
Ferrets are Cool
(21,686 posts)next year. All of our life is a gamble.
IronLionZion
(46,827 posts)https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_causes
Most colds are rhinoviruses. There are also plenty of colds that are completely unknown types of viruses
Warpy
(113,015 posts)Reinfection happens all the time but if we have recovered from a virus previously, our immune systems go to work quickly and take care of the reinfection before we know it's thee. That's how immunity works.
What we haven't seen and are unlikely to see is a second or subsequent illness from this bug, not unless it mutates sufficiently to dodge the immune system. While that is entirely possible over time, there hasn't been enough time for that to happen. Mutations that have occurred are sufficient to track different strains to the probable geographic source, but that's it.
Coronavirus isn't the only cold virus out there, meaning that cold you had in January is usually completely unrelated to the one you get in March. In addition to coronavirus colds, there are also rhinoviruses A, B, and C, parainfluenza, and RSV colds. There are at least 200 distinct viruses known to cause colds, which is why there is no vaccine for them.
We might see second cases documented down the road, but we haven't seen them so far. In addition, the asymptomatic man in Hong Kong who was randomly retested months after his recovery could easily have been shedding viral debris instead of live virus, the debris coming from fast action by his immune system. The point is that he didn't have a second illness.
Also consider that there has been no documented second illness from MERS, another coronavirus that showed antibody titers falling off a cliff after a few months. Antibodies are only part of the story of the human immune system.
denem
(11,045 posts)MERS and SARS-CoV-2 are not comparable. A virus with a reported mortality rate of 35+% is going to die out quickly, one way or another.
Warpy
(113,015 posts)Camels get a mild respiratory illness from it. Humans were not so fortunate.
The virus is still there. No one has had the illness twice.
denem
(11,045 posts)Certainly 35% of them have not.
Ms. Toad
(35,298 posts)Now we're able to confirm by DNA that they are second cases.
One example (from earlier w/o genome sequencing):
I believe it is far more likely that my patient fully recovered from his first infection, then caught Covid-19 a second time after being exposed to a young adult family member with the virus. He was unable to get an antibody test after his first infection, so we do not know whether his immune system mounted an effective antibody response or not.
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/12/21321653/getting-covid-19-twice-reinfection-antibody-herd-immunity
And now this:
Link to tweet
?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1299342270177726464%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.democraticunderground.com%2F%3Fcom%3Dview_postforum%3D1002pid%3D13987365
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3681489
LisaL
(46,190 posts)There have already been confirmed documented re-infections with covid.
I haven't seen anything that wasn't later explained as allergies, flu, and the common cold.
roamer65
(36,959 posts)It is called S309 and saw an article on it. It binds to the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins and renders the virus useless.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2349-y
Warpy
(113,015 posts)as well as the protein binding sites.
Ms. Toad
(35,298 posts)I've been skeptical about creating a vaccine for a virus in the family of the common cold for as long as I've known it was in the family that is responsible for a significant number of colds.
ismnotwasm
(42,408 posts)Cant go into too much detail, but our Infectious disease team thought reinfection unlikely but not impossible. Patient has been hospitalized more than once with positive covid
Response to PCIntern (Original post)
ismnotwasm This message was self-deleted by its author.
roamer65
(36,959 posts)Every 6 months to 1 year to cover the constant mutations.
I am hoping the monoclonal antibody therapy gets delivered first. That has the best chance of success right now.
This will not be like measles or mumps. It wont be a shot and ur good for life kinda paradigm.
Silent3
(15,909 posts)So far, out of many millions of COVID cases world wide, re-infection appears to be a curiosity that pops up now and then, not a major phenomenon. Plus, not every reported case of reinfection has been rigorously confirmed. Since the various tests do yield false positives sometimes, some supposed reinfections might only be bad data.
Bad data can also result from people who were first falsely diagnosed with COVID, then later accurately diagnosed with COVID.
Could risk of reinfection change over time, with reinfection becoming more common because immunity due to past infection fades out, and not enough time has passed to see a big effect from that? Sure. But again, there's no "of course" about that happening.
Further, I have yet to hear of a case of re-infection (apart from this recent one in Nevada) with serious symptoms, and nothing about if, or to what degree, these supposedly reinfected individuals pose a threat of contagion. If anyone has been reinfected AND then has become seriously ill or contagious, that must also be a rare phenomenon so far.
An analogy to the common cold is inapt, because "the" common cold isn't actually any one disease, but multiple strains of cold viruses that mutate very quickly. So far COVID doesn't seen to mutate very quickly.
PCIntern
(26,671 posts)Silent3
(15,909 posts)...not an "of course" it will be a serious problem.