Coronavirus has infected majority of Americans
Source: Washington Post
Before omicron, one-third of Americans had been infected with the coronavirus, but by the end of February, that rate had climbed to nearly 60 percent — including about 75 percent of kids and 60 percent of people age 18 to 49, according to federal health data released Tuesday.
The data from blood tests offers the first evidence that over half the U.S. population, or 189 million people have been infected at least once since the pandemic began — double the number reflected in official case counts. Officials cautioned, however, that the data, in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, does not indicate people have protection against the virus going forward, especially against increasingly transmissible variants.
“We continue to recommend that everyone be up to date on their vaccinations, get your primary series and booster, when eligible,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a media briefing. Kristie Clarke, the CDC official who authored the report, said by February, “evidence of previous COVID-19 infections substantially increased among every age group, likely reflecting the increase in cases we noted as omicron surged in this country.”
Clarke said the greatest increases took place in those with the lowest levels of vaccination, noting that older adults were more likely to be fully vaccinated. The largest increases were in children and teenagers through age 17 — about 75 percent of them had been infected by February, based on blood samples that look at antibodies developed in response to a coronavirus infection but not in response to vaccination. That’s about 58 million children.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/26/majority-americans-coronavirus-infections/
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) that just issued that is being referenced is here. Link to PDF - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7117e3-H.pdf
ETA to add the chart -
= new reply since forum marked as read
I thought that was how it works. Everyone who caught the virus OR got vaccinated - should all be carrying antibodies.
So wouldn't that include just about all of us?
but the antibodies are not the only entities that make up the immune system and the variants can sometimes be just different enough to make the antibodies (or other contributing cells) not as effective.
There have been and continue to be studies to compare the immune response from an exposure and infection (unvaccinated) vs the response from the vaccine (and the effectiveness/longevity of the result). And as I posted in this thread here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2908686 an interesting development about the T-cells that might have evolved in someone who had previous exposure to a non-COVID coronavirus, is probably a "faster" way the body can get at the virus before the antibodies get generated.
There was a fascinating study on the inflammation response that the virus can cause in people published here - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04702-4 and what was found was that the virus can actually attack and infect those "first responders" like the white blood cells, and basically use them not as an incubator for replication, but to set them up to be "poison pills" that spew inflammatory substances as they die.
Study reveals how COVID-19 triggers severe immune response
By NANCY FLIESLER | Boston Children’s April 6, 2022 Research
Illustration of a macrophage battling bacteria. Image: urfingus/iStock/Getty Images Plus
This article is part of Harvard Medical School’s continuing coverage of COVID-19.
A study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital explains for the first time why COVID-19 causes severe inflammation in some people, leading to acute respiratory distress and multi-organ damage. Surprisingly, the study also finds that antibodies that people develop when they contract COVID-19 sometimes lead to more inflammation, while antibodies generated by mRNA COVID-19 vaccines seem not to. Findings were published April 6 in Nature. The team was led by Judy Lieberman, HMS professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s; Caroline Junqueira, HMS research associate in pediatrics at Boston Children’s; and Michael Filbin, HMS assistant professor of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“We wanted to understand what distinguishes patients with mild versus severe COVID-19,” said Lieberman. “We know that many inflammatory markers are elevated in people with severe disease, and that inflammation is at the root of disease severity, but we hadn’t known what triggers the inflammation.”
Fiery death of immune cells
The investigators analyzed fresh blood samples from patients with COVID-19 coming to the emergency department at Mass General. They compared these with samples from healthy people and from patients with other respiratory conditions. They also looked at lung autopsy tissue from people who had died from COVID-19. They found that SARS-CoV-2 can infect monocytes—immune cells in the blood that act as sentinels or early responders to infection—as well as macrophages, similar immune cells in the lungs. Once infected, the team found, both types of cells die a fiery death called pyroptosis that releases an explosion of powerful inflammatory alarm signals. “In the infected patients, about 6 percent of blood monocytes were dying an inflammatory death,” said Lieberman. “That’s a large number to find, because dying cells are rapidly eliminated from the body.”
Examining the lung tissue from people who died from COVID-19, they found that about a quarter of the macrophages in the tissue were dying. When the researchers studied the cells for signs of SARS-CoV-2, they found that about 10 percent of monocytes and 8 percent of lung macrophages were infected. The fact that monocytes and macrophages can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 was a surprise, since monocytes don’t carry ACE2 receptors, the classic entry portal for the virus, and macrophages have low amounts of ACE2. Lieberman thinks SARS-CoV-2 infection of monocytes might have previously been missed in part because researchers often study frozen blood samples, in which dead cells do not show up.
More: https://hms.harvard.edu/news/inflammatory-insights
Apparently the vaccine (that tries to mimic the virus) doesn't do that but can still generally produce that resultant T-cells and antibodies to help fight the infection.
The flu didn't magically disappear overnight, it got to a point where it was less and less lethal but more contagious. The same is happening here. 
Me, hubs and all four of our parents have so far avoided contracting Covid
It took A LOT of nagging on my part 
I've now been tested many, many times and always been negative.
And this is after sharing a bed with my COVID positive husband.
