NICHOLAS ELIAS CONTRIBUTORJuly 13, 2020 12:19 PM ET
A study released Saturday by King’s College London shows that people may lose their immunity to COVID-19 within months and could be susceptible to reinfection on a yearly basis.
Scientists at King’s College London analyzed the amount of antibodies in 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy and St. Thomas’ NHS trust, per the study. The analysis found that antibody production peaked three weeks after symptoms began and then declined rapidly. (RELATED: Phoenix-Area Hospitals Run Out Of Morgue Beds As Coronavirus Deaths Surge)
The study found that 60% of patients developed a “potent” response with antibodies at the peak of their infection with the virus, but only 17% retained the potency three months later. Antibody levels dropped so sharply in some patients that they became undetectable.
“People are producing a reasonable antibody response to the virus, but it’s waning over a short period of time and depending on how high your peak is, that determines how long the antibodies are staying around,” Dr. Katie Doores, lead author on the study, told The Guardian.
Doores also told The Guardian that a vaccine for the virus might also potentially fall short after a few months. “People may need boosting and one shot might not be sufficient,” Doores explained.
A vaccine created by the University of Oxford shielded test animals from serious infection, but they were still infected enough to be able to pass the virus to other hosts, per The Guardian.
The study by King’s College London also found that those with severe infections produced the most antibodies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) names seven different types of coronavirus currently spreading across the globe, most of which create the common cold. Two other strains create MERS and SARS, while the newest strain creates the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19.
“One thing we know about these coronaviruses is that people can get reinfected fairly often,” Prof. Stuart Neil, a co-author on the study, told The Guardian. “What that must mean is that the protective immunity people generate doesn’t last very long. It looks like Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, might be falling into that pattern as well.”
Antibodies are one thing, T-Cells are an entirely different matter and retain the memory of Coronavirus for seemingly long after anti-bodies are lost. That is why a significant percentage of people carry T-Cells which through past exposure to the Common Cold ( a coronavirus) are able to identify and destroy the Covid-19 Coronavirus.
Studies in the USA and France have demonstrated this. Public Health England have confirmed this but as yet there is no study that I am aware of in the UK that is seeking to determine what percentage of the UK population have T-Cells which destroy Covid-19; that seems to be an abject policy failure as without that knowledge the Covid-19 policy of lockdown, masks etc cannot be based on a valid scientific assessment of actual need or a value-based assessment of the policies..
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
Rahm Emanuel
Virus lies matter, and are very important at this point.
Quite right. Having worked in immunology related businesses it is common for specific antibodies to decline after infection however during the infection process b-cells are produced which either synthesise antibodies or mutate to become memory b-cells which reside in the bone marrow. after infection is controlled circulating antibody synthesising b-cells die by apoptosis and hence antibody levels fall. However, the memory b-cells are long lived and produce a low level of circulating b-cells which will rapidly re-synthesise antibodies again in response to a new infection with the same pathogen. This is also true for th2-t-cells which are helper cells in the antibody production process.
With regard to cytotoxic t-cells these cells specifically target infected cells and are generated via similar process to helper t-cells. Again the bone marrow contains memory t-cells of all types just like retained b-cells
This is avery simple description of the adaptive immune system.
It is therefore common for IgG antibodies to be lost when infection ceases (why synthesise antibodies if you don’t need them) as indeed the number of infection specific cytotoxic b-cells falls also. However, the bone marrow retained cells can respond much more quickly to a ‘know’ infective agents and hence it is rare to see symptoms from an infective agent second time around. It seems to me that this nonsense of falling antibody response is just that nonsense and poor science; but still you get to publish topical stuff
Yes, the first thing that struck me reading this was that they do not say how antobody level progress during any other viral infection. Such statements without context are just used to make whatever position the speaker wishes to push.
“People may need boosting and one shot might not be sufficient,” Doores explained.
Ah , that’s where she’s going. The whole world population on permanent mandatory injection program.
Is Bill Gates funding her research centre by any chance. Worth looking at her funding and investment profile….
Moderna, which seems to be out front right now, does not show up on Gates investment disclosures. The other thing that struck me is how Moderna is pricing this, they are assuming massive numbers at a reasonable per-dose cost … crap my daughters spend more at Starbucks than the $30 cost for the Moderna vaccine, (granted that’s still a bit steep for the 3rd world).
Being cheap and relatively easy to produce are the theoretical advances of mRNA vaccines, which have never ever been used before though.
So we have to wait and see how good they work in the long run. Just no data there yet.
Ron,
You are out of date.
Moderna’s RNA covid vaccine has passed the US FDA phase 1 tests.
Moderna is the first covid vaccine to pass the phase 1 covid vaccine tests, and the RNA design, has an unbelievable advantage in cheap, safe, no risk high volume production.
Moderna had a perfect phase 1 vaccine results, all patients who received the vaccine, developed an immunity, no serious side effects, and it appears a low dosage vaccine is possible. There are has never been a better phase 1 vaccine test.
A paper with Moderna’s results was published in New England Journal of Medicine.
There is a link a non pay wall paper below and a link to a free article from the high quality US Science Magazine, Science discussing the Vaccine science and progress, including Moderna.
Moderna has been given a $500 million, speed up loan, from the US government and they are making unbelievable progress.
A major Pharmaceutical company is leading the team (Moderna is on the team) who will be manufacturing Moderna’s vaccine (as per Moderna press release.)
Moderna say the team will be able to produce 500 million dose per year, increasing to 1 billion doses a year, in 2021.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483
An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — Preliminary Report
Here is a free link to an excellent article, that summaries the different vaccine techniques and the who is working on what.
This is a great article and it would normally be pay to view (Science). Science has because of covid made all of their covid related articles free to view.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/record-setting-speed-vaccine-makers-take-their-first-shots-new-coronavirus
Still a new strategy, no mRNA vaccine has yet reached a phase III clinical trial, let alone been approved for use.
But producing huge numbers of vaccine doses may be easier for mRNA vaccines than for traditional ones, says Mariola Fotin-Mleczek of the German company CureVac, which is also working on mRNA vaccine for the new coronavirus. CureVac’s experimental rabies vaccine showed a strong immune response with a single microgram of mRNA. That means 1 gram could be used to vaccinate 1 million people. “Ideally, what you have to do is produce maybe hundreds of grams. And that would be enough,” Fotin-Mleczek says.
Moderna Phase 1 results show coronavirus vaccine safe
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/moderna-phase-1-results-show-210000747.html
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO, July 14 (Reuters) – Moderna Inc’s experimental vaccine for COVID-19 showed it was safe and provoked immune responses in all 45 healthy volunteers in an ongoing early-stage study, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
@William Howard Astley
There is no mRNA based vaccine on the market. For none disease. That is what I meant.
This time is different. It appears we have the first good news story which could end our fear of covid.
A conventional vaccine is about 60% effective and sometimes because it takes so long to develop, the virus strain has changed and effectiveness is reduce to 30%.
This new technology enables rapid ‘vaccine’ development and higher than 60% best effectiveness and due to the speed of development, consistently better than 60% effectiveness.
This new system enables a vaccine package to be quickly change and produced to ensure it protects against the current virus dangers.
What else could we want?
Moderna has been waiting with a breakthrough that could not seem to get funding and approval to move on to mass production.
They have not demonstrated immunity, but they did note a antibody response in all who go the vaccine that is something like five times as strong as people who go the virus.
The next phases of testing will try to determine how well those antibodies protect.
There is good reason to be very optimistic at this point.
As for this article up top, notice how they said the people who were the sickest had the strongest antibody response.
Well no kidding!
People who dis not get very sick, or who had no symptoms at all, obviously fought off the virus with their innate immune system…they did not need to produce much of an antibody response because their innate immunity cleared the virus before the acquired immunity had much time to ramp up.
It also says the people who got the sickest had the strongest antibody response. Meaning their body had a harder time getting rid of the virus, and hence had more time for, and need to, build up a strong antibody response.
But note it also said that 17% of people did not have any drop off in their antibody count.
It did not say specifically, but these may be the same ones who got very sick, and are now protected by antibodies and memory cells.
It also seems plausible, perhaps likely, that those who did not get very sick, those that did not have a strong or lasting antibody count, had a small infective dose. So it was easy for their innate immune system to mop up that small amount of virus before it was able to reproduce very much, or infect very many cells. The immune system reacts to the strength of the threat.
Something that does not become widespread or last long will not induce much of an antibody response.
The way this article was phrased by whoever wrote it up is very negative.
The same observations and findings could have been phrased like this instead:
“People who got the sickest produced a very strong antibody response that remained strong even months later, with 17% of these patients having no diminishment in the number of circulating antibodies.
Some patients did not show a strong or lasting immune antibody response, but these were the people who did not get very sick or have much if any symptoms to begin with.
Thus, those who have been exposed have an acquired immune response which is proportionate to the severity of their illness.”
It is very easy to take this study as good news, like so:
17% of people had a robust AND lasting level of antibodies.
Since these are the people with the highest peak response, it seems most people and maybe everyone has a level of protection proportionate to how badly they were affected.
60% of people had a potent response it says.
This sounds like the same as the amount of people who are at all symptomatic.
17% have a lasting potency of response.
This sounds like the same as the number of people who become severely ill.
normal corona that gives common cold does the same antibodies last short time and that why you get another cold a few mths later
and why their vaccines prob wont work either
older you are the less immune kick you get
thats why they ramp up the older age flu vax to stupid levels and still around 30% at best useful antibodies for a short while
Who gets a cold again after a few months?
If someone does, what reason is there to think it was the same virus again?
There are at least 4 entire families of corona virus that cause colds.
But this is a small proportion of all colds people get.
Most are caused by rhinoviruses, of which there are a large number.
Some are caused by adenoviruses, and some by one or more of several less common virus types.
In fact there are over 200 KNOWN viruses that cause the common cold, and I know for sure I have never had most of them, because even when I used to get colds when I was younger, I never got more than one or two a year, and by the time I was 25 or so almost never got one again. I do not even recall the last cold I had.
We have been talking about immune system health here for months.
I think it is widely considered likely that the people who get colds are those who pay no attention to making sure they have all of the vitamins and minerals a healthy body needs, people who tend to be less active, spend less time outside, etc.
And colds are mild, very likely because we have been exposed to them many times, but usually do not even get sick, and if we do, the average cold last a few days, and has easily treated symptoms.
So far I have not heard of a single case of someone getting sick, recovering, and then becoming symptomatic again.
I have seen several reports that a large number of people who thought they have had it, have no antibodies, and probably had one of those other 200 viruses…which there is no reason to think stopped infecting people when this new one popped up.
The common cold is caused by at least 137 different viruses in 3 separate families. Only 4 of those viruses are from the family of Corona Viruses.
Just quoting the CDC figures:
“Causes
More than 200 viruses can cause a cold, but rhinoviruses are the most common type. Viruses that cause colds can spread from person to person through the air and close personal contact”
https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/community/for-patients/common-illnesses/colds.html
Tony,
thanks for putting some ‘flesh on the bones’ of my layman’s take on this.
OE
See https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809
Yes, there is not one single test that can answer all the questions at once. BUT you can answer all these questions using a couple of methods.
Seems people have just a very poor understanding how biomedical research works in general.
Yes, don’t expect definitive answers in most cases.
Yirgach’s linked article appears to be correct, i.e. our immune response is stronger than everyone thought, although there likely were some people who had it correct.
We’re about a half year into this and global excess deaths account for no more than 3 days of typical rates. There are still many questions, such as, what are the long term impacts for those infected, will there be subsequent waves of infection, etc.?
“BUT you can answer all these questions using a couple of methods.”
To the satisfaction of inferential science, but not science based on rigorous scientific method.
@icisil
Could you explain what you understand by “inferential science”?
I have a feeling you might be confused what “inferential” means in the scientific context.
And if you would be so kind, could you please give an example where what you called the “rigorous scientific method” was successfully used?
Many thanks in advance.
An example of rigorous science would be the application Koch’s postulates (as a logical whole; altered they are meaningless) to prove disease etiology: a pathogen must be abundant in a diseased organism; it must be isolated and grown in pure culture (no contaminants); it must cause the same disease when introduced to a healthy host; it must be isolated from the newly diseased host and be identical to the original pathogen. That’s testable, observable, reproducible and logically sound.
Inferential science is based on inductive reasoning. Sometimes the conclusions are correct, sometimes not. Inferences are based on consensus and are susceptible to peer pressure and incomplete knowledge.
For example, you might claim that all cases of covid are caused by a virus. That has never been scientifically proven; it’s an inference (based on other inferences) that is established by consensus. That claim is not scientifically sound, for one reason, because much of the pathology observed in covid can be caused by treatments used for the disease, and therefore they might be responsible for causing (at least some of) the disease. Using your method, how do you separate viral pathogenesis from iatrogenic pathogenesis? Inferential science simply ignores that evidence because it disagrees with its conclusion.
I told you before why Koch’s 2nd postulate doesn’t apply to obligate microorganisms therefore also to viruses.
Your persistence about denying that fact is not critical thinking but just ignorant about scientific progress.
Bogus. There are a lot of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, viruses) that can cause multiple conditions depending on context. It’s not something unique to SARS-CoV-2.
The argument is bogus. A lot of diagnoses done by doctors on routine basis don’t do that. They are just going by symptoms. Now as testing is more easily available SARS-CoV-2 a diagnose for that is actually more rigorous and accurate than for many other things.
You really think people w/o low blood oxygen levels were put on ventilators routinely and that is the one and only reason for deaths, don’t you?
But the reality is that nobody knew beforehand about the blood clots and pneunomic thromboembolism before dead patients were finally investigated via autopsy. Nobody could easily foresee that. Hospitals have standard of care for ARDS and that was applied. Now they have new standard of care for COVID-19.
And the most important: would they haven’t done a thing to patients suffering from hypoxia all of them would be dead. Not 40, not 60, not 80%. 100%.
If you have an interest to know how bad it can get take a look at South Africa. People don’t even get oxygen. I am not talking about ventilators. Just oxygen. They literally fighting about getting a mask.
I’m not going to address the rest of your comment because it’s just the same old same old. But this:
“You really think people w/o low blood oxygen levels were put on ventilators routinely and that is the one and only reason for deaths, don’t you?”
just proves you’re ignorantly out of touch. Yes, that is exactly what happened. Not everybody was, as you falsely insinuate I claim; and no, of course not, it is not the only cause of death. It is a major cause of death, and best case it exacerbates the out-of-control immune response and hyper inflammation. Anyone can find studies and doctors’ remarks explaining these things.
Honestly, I was not expecting anything different. It’s futile to discuss with a person who basically thinks the whole field of virology is a scam.
That is plainly wrong. The cause of death is hypoxia. If there would have been no treatment the patients would have died anyway. It was definitively not the best way to safe people’s lives in all cases (though in some cases the only way) but what really killed was the virus.
People with intact lungs are put into induced comas and on ventilators all the time and they don’t die from the ventilators if done correctly but we are not talking about medical malpractice anyway bc that applies to everything and can happen with everything even removing an appendix.
Please enlighten me with your medical knowledge what that pathology would be and which treatments would induce it.
Where does the innate immune system fit into this? The first line of defence are the mucosa, (could this explain the change of taste &/or the loss of sense of smell?).
Then I believe it is the T-cell and finally the antibody parts of the adaptive immune system.
The significant part of the adaptive immune system is that it can go into overdrive, resulting in a cytokine storm.
The innate system is promoted by vitamin D whereas the adaptive immune system is modulated by vitamin D, which suggests a vitamin D deficiency means an inadequate innate response and a potential runaway adaptive immune system as there is little modulation.
whats your take on this??
———————————
The autopsy study also showed the noteworthy appearance of large bone-marrow cells called megakaryocytes. Rapkiewicz said these cells “usually don’t circulate outside the bones and lungs”.
“We found them in the heart and the kidneys and the liver and other organs,” she told CNN. “Notably in the heart, megakaryocytes produce something called platelets that are intimately involved in blood clotting.”
According to CNN, researchers plan to determine the connection between the large bone-marrow cells and small blood vessel clotting in the coronavirus.
tps://www.sciencealert.com/covid-19-patient-autopsies-show-blood-clots-in-almost-every-organ-pathologist-says
@ozspeakup
First stop watching CNN. Every single “News” organizations are now own by Hollyweird Studios. It is mostly theater these days.
Let’s not forget who CNNLOL is: They have been known for years to make up and stage events and news stories, going so far as to hire people to stand in front of a camera and claim it is a large gathering of protestors.
Examples of them caught out red handed doing this, blatantly in broad daylight, over amny years, all over the world.
For train wrecks, interviews, protests…all sorts of stuff.
https://youtu.be/QuURFUyrG_A
Who can forget the footage of David Hogg going over the details of what he was supposed to say after school shooting?
Banfield herself:
https://newspunch.com/cnn-msnbc-fake-live-interview/
My question is: Can these blood clots form early in the disease process?
The patients they studied obviously died of the Wuhan virus disease so we know blood clots occur late in the process, but if they occur early in the process, then this may have ramifications for future long-term health effects, even if a person gets over the initial disease.
So how long after the initial infection does the blood clot forming activity start?
Medcram says yes the clot form early in the disease process.
@ozspeaksup
I had the blood clotting on my radar since April. It just explains the variety of symptoms perfectly. First measures of D-dimer in severe cases early in the pandemic were already hinting in this direction.
The clotting of micro-vasculature in the lung would explain the low effectiveness of ventilators as well as the “happy hypoxics” – people who have low blood oxygen but no liquid in their lungs and no apparent breathing issues. People have died who never coughed once. That’s not your typical pneumonia.
Let’s not forget who CNNLOL is: They have been known for years to make up and stage events and news stories, going so far as to hire people to stand in front of a camera and claim it is a large gathering of protestors.
Examples of them caught out red handed doing this, blatantly in broad daylight, over amny years, all over the world.
For train wrecks, interviews, protests…all sorts of stuff.
https://youtu.be/QuURFUyrG_A
Who can forget the footage of David Hogg going over the details of what he was supposed to say after school shooting?
Banfield herself:
https://newspunch.com/cnn-msnbc-fake-live-interview/
Thank you.
I had to come hear to get needed perspective that was missing elsewhere in the short run.
I’m with Greg here: I want the “WHY”, not just the fact that the antibody levels drop off.
It isn’t just like a cold virus: those bugs shift all the time and constantly get people sneezing and coughing. But it acts like one, so I think “WHY” is more important than anything else.
Dr. Tony. Very helpful explanation. You should write an article on this.
That is not what the study have shown and not how T-cell responses work.
The first open question even if antibody levels are declining is if sufficient memory B-cells are produced that could fight a second exposure.
The second open question is if vaccines are able to generate a different immune response that lasts longer bc of multiple injections and boosters.
We just don’t know yet. There are reports out there that are concerning about the natural immune response through infection bc they can now only be explained by either circulating virus in the body for months or real second time infections.
The initial – and most likely – explanation for “re-infections/second time infections” reported in the past, fluctuations in detection bc of waning viral load at the end of an infection, doesn’t translate to these new cases. Too much time separation. The first cases were only weeks, the new ones are 3-4 months.
Something researchers should have a look at. It is crucial to know for achieving immunity in the population either through vaccines or even the herd immunity gamble.
“Herd immunity gamble.”
Why is it a gamble?
Because we don’t know if there is a lasting immunity and what the real IFR is.
no worse than the flu …
The Dark Lord July 15, 2020 at 5:59 am
no worse than the flu
——————
That’s why I think all those covid parties are a good idea. taking a bet on who catches it first – brilliant
(CNN)Some young people in Alabama are throwing Covid-19 parties, a disturbing competition where people who have coronavirus attend and the first person to get infected receives a payout, local officials said. (possibly fake news)
Get it over and done with and receive a prize – unbeatable!
or is it?
A 30-year-old patient died after attending a “Covid party”, believing the virus to be a hoax, a Texas medical official has said.
“Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said ‘I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not,’” said Dr Jane Appleby, the chief medical officer at Methodist hospital in San Antonio.
The Dark Lord wrote, “no worse than the flu …”
That depends on which flu you’re talking about:
● COVID-19 might not be as bad as the 1918 flu pandemic (which is believed to have killed at least 2% of the world’s population)
● COVID-19 is obviously much worse than typical seasonal flu (which kills an average of 35K-40K Americans per year)
Ghalfrunt, even the New York Times admits these supposed COVID parties aren’t a real thing
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/12/us/30-year-old-covid-party-death.html
Regarding the 30 year-old man that supposedly died in San Antonio…I can’t imagine the chief medical officer at a hospital can just speak freely about the details of an actual patient like that.
Michael J, I think you are exactly right. It was a doctor relaying a story from a nurse, i.e. second or third hand information. Coming from the NYT makes it even less credible.
“no worse than the flu”
Well… define worse.
WuFlu has devastated the economies. Season Flu is considered background. In that context WuFlu is worse than the flu by many magnitudes to the extent the question has to be asked just how much of the misinformation and contradictions offered back at the start of the year were deliberately economic warfare against the West.
Clear observation is that no one knows how to respond. Here in Sunny Oz we have the state of Victoria going into apocalypse level panics because after deciding to try and do 30000 tests a day they are finding nearly 200 new cases. Scary stuff. 180 cases yesterday! 200 today! WuFlu is REAL!!!
200 from 30000 is less than 1%. WHO suggest that provided your area is getting less than 5% for more than a week then there is no need for restrictions.
The reactions are… inconsistent. Inconsistent is inefficient and what is inefficient is pointless waste.
Season flu does not cause that.
On the other hand Flu actually kills people each year. WuFlu’s lethality is open to (passionate) discussion.
@Craig from Oz
What gets me with the Melbourne COVID Panic V2.0 is that the prevalence rate is very low, as you mentioned. Somewhere around 0.3% of people tested return a positive result.
What needs to be taken into account is the specificity of the test. The best I can find is that the tests are somewhere between 96% and 100% Specificity. In reality, none of them will be 100% specific.
What is really interesting is if you calculate the Positive Predictive Value for these tests, to give you an idea of how likely a positive result is to actually be a positive test. If you assume a Specificity of 98% and a Sensitivity of 100% (being VERY generous), then even with a Prevalence rate of 2% the PPV is 50.5%
Rather than accepting a positive test as a confirmed case, any initial positive test should be repeated, and confirmation only accepted upon two positive tests, which would give the specificity of the combined tests to be 99.96%, resulting in a 99.8% PPV (For two positive results from independent tests).
Is that being done in Victoria, or elsewhere, I seriously doubt it. In fact, the opposite appears to be being done. As in the case of the AFL player who was tested something like 6 times before returning a positive result. That single positive result was then taken as confirmation and blathered across the national news for days. Meanwhile follow up tests were also negative, so he tested negative in 7 out of 8 tests. Instead of reporting it as a false positive, the news media reported that he “recovered” from COVID.
—
P.S.: If I’ve stuffed up my calculations in any way, I’m sure someone on the internet will let me know promptly.
There are also several other factors not reported on or not explained clearly in a number of these reports (or at least the way they are portrayed in the media).
1. The PCR test for virus is very sensitive and can amplify and detect viral fragments. This does not mean the person actually has the virus or has caught the virus a 2nd time.
2. Several of these types of papers indicate that it is those with mild cases that don’t have a lot of the Ab they are testing for and that lose it quickly. Since most mild cases are probably due to people who had a Corona virus in the last few years that was similar enough to give protection against Covid-19, this makes sense. If they had a similar virus they will be using older Abs and T-cell immunity from the older infection and will not need to make as many of the newer Abs that this test detects.
The cases I was referring to got not only tested positive via PCR again but also got symptoms. Months after the first infection. The symptoms didn’t seem to be milder either. That is troubling. The first reports weren’t cause they could be explained the way you are describing.
So far it’s only anecdotal single case reports but as the pandemic lasts longer and the virus is spreading more again we will see if there is a common pattern.
There is this case of a fellow having non-covid symptoms for a month, then heading to the hospital when he had trouble breathing. He was treated, got better, tested negative twice and was released. Then a month or two later he got sick again with (what he says were) 100x worse symptoms, and tested positive again.
https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/1280851206190051330
The doctor in the video uses the MATH+ protocol, which includes high dose corticosteroid (methylprednisolone). Some of the symptoms mentioned by the patient are side effects of that drug (e.g., muscle/joint pain, cognitive impairment, blurred vision). He made an interesting comment that it felt like it was running through his bones. Osteonecrosis (death of bone tissue) is a serious side effect of methylprednisolone. Methylprednisolone was one of the primary treatments during the SARS episode.
So iatrogenic factors may be significant in these cases.
What jumps out at me is, he never says he tested positive for COVID the first time he was sick.
He did say he eventually tested negative twice.
Also the timeline.
Banfield says “Dr. Verone told you to get to the hospital on April 29th”
He nods and says yeah.
Then she details exactly how sick he was for over a month, and was then released on March 9th!
So when he got sick a month prior to March 9th, it must have been early February or even January.
Obviously she misspoke and he agreed about April 29th.
How do you get sick on April 29th, spend a month or more in hospital getting your life saved (she also said when Verone told him to get to the hospital, he was already very badly ill.)
A month prior to March 9th, there was no testing going on in the US.
The CDC was keeping a count of cases, and reported not a single person had become sick who had not been out of the country in China, or in contact with someone who had been.
But we also know that during those early weeks and months, the CDC had produced and sent out a defective test kit, and all testing had to go directly through the CDC.
So he initially had a pulmonary embolism.
The he was released March 9th after being tested twice.
Then he got shingles.
Then that cleared up. Shingles often lasts for several weeks.
The he says in June (!), June 21st, his wife and then himself “got it”.
This entire story is suspect and poorly supported.
He never says there was any evidence he had tested negative early on.
What was that about April 29th?
Did she mean to say January?
Why did he answer in the affirmative to this mistake?
We all know people who describe every illness in lurid and extreme terminology like this…everything is a awful nightmare for them.
And the details often do not add up or even make sense some of the time.
Like with this tale of woe and sorrow.
Here is a story detailing the timeline of the first test kits in the US…sent out by the CDC on February 4th, and which were defective.
Also, this guy lives in Texas.
In the early days, the CDC was only authorizing testing of people who had been to China, or in contact with those people who had been.
And there was no known cases in Texas then.
It was Washington and California in those first weeks.
First positive test in Texas was reported on March 4th.
A few days before he was released after being sick for a month.
No one else got sick the first time.
He never had a positive test until late in June.
And now he seems OK.
But this time it was 100x worse than when he was in the hospital for a month with a pulmonary embolism?
I call BS on this whole load of crap.
First CDC tests defective, Feb 4th:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/03/02/how-the-cdc-botched-its-initial-coronavirus-response-with-faulty-tests/#e7d4575670ef
First positive test in Texas, March 4th:
https://www.foxnews.com/health/texas-confirms-first-positive-coronavirus-case
Oh, also, he lives in the middle of nowhere about 50 miles northwest of San Antonio.
First confirmed case in Texas?
Over 250 miles away.
Near Houston in Fort Bend county, and it was a guy who had just returned from overseas.
Story is crap.
Just think about it…no way to know and very unlikely he had it in February.
He was deathly ill.
Survived.
They SAVED HIS LIFE!
Then, boom, he says, on June 21st he got it again, that time 100 times worse!
OMG!
100 times worse the hospital for over a month with a pulmonary embolism, often one of the most painful conditions known?
But this report on CNNLOL is from July 8th!
Exactly two weeks and three days later than the first day he says he got sick, and he is on TV cheerily relating the details of his many brushes with death.
GMAFB!
@Nicholas McGinley
He was admitted to the hospital on April 29th because of respiratory distress. He developed pulmonary embolism but treated successfully.
She says he then was released on March 9th. Which is impossible time-wise. I would guess she meant May 9th.
He developed shingles probably due to steroid treatment afterwards. But we know now that steroids (e.g. dexamethasone) can save lives in COVID-19 so side effects are preferable compared to dying.
He tested negative twice, got better and shingles disappeared.
Then his wife got it with first obvious symptoms on June 21st. Then it hit him three days later.
His statement “100x times worse” is definitively very subjective. But it would be in line with the “happy hypoxics” who don’t feel sick, don’t feel shortage of breath but are basically suffocating by low oxygen blood levels.
It seems he didn’t get that again the second time but he got the other range of symptoms: diarrhoea, fatigue, aching, loss of taste and smell etc.
That might feel worse but it is not as dangerous than the 1st time.
The two lessons might be:
1st) not everybody gets sufficient antibodies that last long. Actually, the population-wide study from Spain suggests that it is quite a number of people where antibodies don’t last long.
2nd) these people might be able to get infected twice and develop different symptoms.
But we will see how frequent that is in future. Might be common, might be rare. We just don’t know yet.
“He never says there was any evidence he had tested negative early on.”
Meant to say…he never says he tested POSITIVE the first time he was sick, from which he was discharged on March 9th.
Either that, or instead of April 29th he went to hospital first time on January 29th.
His first go around, he was sick for over a month they said.
April 29th to May 9th is less than two weeks.
Then he was home recovering, and after a while got shingles.
The recovered from that.
Then, later, his wife got sick and three days later he got sick on June 21st.
Shingles typically lasts weeks.
So May 9th timeline makes no sense and was never said.
Then, he was 100 times sicker with happy anoxia, went to hospital again, but only a little over two weeks later he is on TV looking strong and robust?
People who wind up in the hospital have a course of illness lasting several weeks to over two months.
How did he get a pulmonary embolism and spend a month having his life saved and get released less than two weeks later on May 9th?
My BS detector works well.
This story is BS.
He never says he tested positive his first time.
He says he had an embolism.
But you are ready to change the details and buy it?
AFAICT, the only place it says he had COVID the first time is the headline from another news outlet that linked to fake news CNN.
They are shameless, but did not even say he had it the first time, they only implied it for anyone not listening closely.
All he said is he tested negative twice and was then discharged.
Anyone who is willing to accept that someone can be reinfected and get sick again, and use as their reason to think so, this nonsensical interview from Ashley “The Hack” Banfield, on CNNLOL of all places, and in which the details as stated make no sense whatsoever, and it is never even stated he ever tested positive the first time…
Well, that fits my definition of credulous and gullible.
This is not even evidence.
No, he said he was admitted to the hospital on April 29th. That implicates he had symptoms before. End of April everybody got a test who was admitted to hospitals. Scarcity of tests which was a serious problem in March was over mid of April at least for hospitals.
Usually two to four weeks. Nothing which wouldn’t fit into the time frame. Especially if it started already in the hospital due to steroid treatment.
That is completely normal, average stay in hospital is 5-7 days. Embolism is an acute state. You treat this with high doses of anti-coagulants and thrombolytic drugs. When the acute phase is over you will be released from the hospital but will get a continuous medication for three to six months. Short times in hospitals are common for acute states, e.g. after a heart attack you stay only 3-5 days on average.
The continuous medication against embolism is actually something which could have saved him another admission to the hospital in his second round of symptoms. Would be interesting to get more details.
He said it felt like that. That is very subjective und doesn’t have to reflect reality at all.
The mean is actually shorter than expected:
https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/los-systematic-review.html
Most are out after 2 weeks.
Or you don’t know as much about medical care as you think you do?
Anyway, before icisil posted that link it didn’t know about this case at all.
I was referring to other cases I heard of but as I said at the moment they are anecdotal single cases. Nothing with scientific scrutiny but worth investigating cause the implications are important enough to either verify or falsify the reports.
The “shingles” might have been another COVID-19 symptom:
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-skinrash
If Shingles was a symptom, he was never over it.
But there is still no statement of evidence that any test was done that was positive at the earlier time.
And the end he states he gas been going through it for 3 or 4 months>
Which is it?
4 months goes back to March.
I am not buying this as proof of anything.
This is an anecdote with a confused timeline and not even a stated validation of an initial covid finding.
And here he is, seeming hale and hardy two weeks after starting to get the second case which he says was much worse.
What is happening is that anyone who had plausible symptoms was assumed to have COVID and many did not.
Antibody data indicates people who had a bad case had a potent immune response.
This guys story holds no water.
Evidence is evidence, and everything else is a anecdote…an opinion at best.
You should listen more carefully.
He was in quarantine for roughly over three months in total. That’s what made him sick even more. But he was not sick all the time. Like from the beginning from the end. He was healthy in between.
That is something different.
Yeah, that is not validated.
But, if he was not positive, probably nobodywho was positive ended up in the hospital. Which is very unlikely.
But one can feel free to claim that and ignore reality. You’re welcome.
If he was not sick with COVID during his first time in the hospital, then probably no one had it?
Yeah, that is logical.
Thanks for making me aware I can ignore you, as you are neither capable nor willing to be logical.
I for one have not forgotten that people always have and continue to be sick from all manner of infectious illnesses.
At some point we will know if anyone can be reinfected within a few months.
According to you, this interview with this one guy proves it, and so now it is a fact in your mind.
You are now in cognitive dissonance.
Just thought I would let you know.
pcr tests appear LESS than good;
see here;
Health authorities in Australia and across the world have been using the test and trace method in the battle against the deadly disease, but there are fears a disturbing number of cases are being missed.
Research from Johns Hopkins University in the US found people with the virus rarely returned a positive result during the first three days of their infection.
Instead, researchers found testing was more accurate between day six and eight of being infected, but even then it’s missed in one in five cases.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/health/coronavirus-study-reveals-disturbing-number-of-false-negatives/news-story/c980ed1994b816cd977e96169c89a659
The timepoint when you test is important, yes.
But even then the swap tests have often a reliability only 9 out of 11. That’s mainly dependent on how the swap was done. Saliva tests are in the making which seem to be not as dependent on the person who does the swap and are also way more comfortable for the patient.
It was known all the way back in the case of the cruise ship docked in Japan.
Some people got off the ship and tested negative for weeks before testing positive.
How many examples are needed?
There has to be enough virus present for a nasal swab to detect virus with a single random swipe.
This likely does not happen until the virus is reproducing rapidly and copious quantity of virions are being secreted into the nasal mucosa.
“But even then the swap tests have often a reliability only 9 out of 11.”
And yet a single case, related verbally with no documented paper trail of evidence, in which it is not even asserted a test was done at the outset, is proof is recurring infection.
The shear number of people getting infected means that there will be many false positives, and even many people who by chance had more than one false positive.
Not to mention false negatives showing viral clearance/absence.
Amazing how you can consider a single verbal account proof of something, while also knowing a substantial proportion of tests give false results.
BTW…sometimes, people are also wrong, and sometimes, people lie.
good onya
Id also read the T cells reports
more research on that would be good for sure.
mates a vet and he sent some interesting pages
theres around 20 listed(found so far) bat carried SARSlike coronas;-(
the gift that could well keep on giving, till theres no one left to give to;-((
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=Undef&id=11118&lvl=3&keep=1&srchmode=1&unlock
now his comments (edited a tad)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?id=2697049
How f****g interesting…………….
Taxonomically it has no ranking
And they want tom say the thing is NATURAL….???
LIKE F**K IT IS!!!!
Of course it has a taxonomy:
Realm:Riboviria
Kingdom: Orthornavirae
Phylum:Pisuviricota
Class:Pisoniviricetes
Order: Nidovirales
Suborder:Cornidovirineae
Family: Coronaviridae
Subfamily: Orthocoronavirinae
Genus: Betacoronavirus
Subgenus: Sarbecovirus
To get a feeling how complex taxonomy can be maybe reading about homo taxonomy might be educative:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_taxonomy
Antibodies are kept around only so long as they are useful for something. The immune “memory response” can generate a lot of antibodies very quickly as long as the trigger remains viable. This is why people who have had the “common cold” enough times (different viruses) eventually get over colds more quickly, there is a remembered antibody response which ramps up in time to reduce the cold effects (reduce but not prevent usually).
It will be interesting to see how Covid-19 patients fare. If the antibody is disappearing quickly it because it is serving no other useful purpose (not helping against other viruses). This would mean a person could be reinfected, but before severe symptoms occur the immune response should be able to slow down and possibly stop the infection. It will vary between patients – one size does not fit all.
If the remembered response is weak or slow enough then the re-infected person can spread the virus – so this is much more like a common cold virus and will be settled into the population possibly forever. BLEH. But not very surprising.
Yes, that sounds like Public Health England. A body that had no plan for a virus pandemic in spite of warnings since 2005, did not understand to use extra hospital capacity to isolate virus cases from the existing hospitals as the Chinese did and was done in the past for TB etc. and has been trying to manage this as one national outbreak instead of a number of outbreaks best dealt with at a local level even starving local authorities of data. I hear that their days may be numbered and hopefully the lesson of big is not better will be learned.
oh Gawd, the climate change of biology. Just what we need.
Exactly Krudd. Here in the UK we now not only have a thriving “it’s worse than we thought”
CAGW industry, we now have panic-merchants telling us (seemingly daily) that Covid-19 is “far worse than we thought”. The “latest scientific study” – which the BBC trumpeted hugely yesterday – claims that we will have a huge second wave in the winter resulting in 120,000 more deaths. That’s not much less than three times the deaths to date and completely forgets to mention that the c40,000 death figure to date contains vast swathes of people who had significant and relevant pre-existing health issues and/or were very old. Sorry to be callous, but those unfortunate victims can’t die again.
You really can’t make this stuff up and, hopefully, those with a brain cell will be able to disregard it. One can only assume that these “scientists” think that only a small percentage of the population has been exposed to date but that will all change come the winter, regardless of the distancing, masking, washing etc etc measures that now take place. Utter nonsense.
>>> Sorry to be callous, but those unfortunate victims can’t die again.<<<
Hey, dead people can keep voting (here in the states even dead cats can vote) so they can probably die another day as well. (Sorry, LOL)
“Study Finds Coronavirus Immunity Could Be Lost In Months”
And there again, might not. Why don’t these people find out whether it is or not, before wasting everyone’s time
publishing a question?
See my long comments below. GMTA
could be, may lose, could be, might, may, might, can, might
This article could, may, might alarm naive people.
Yes inferential science, means nothing just like most climate studies
Could you have meant ‘infernal science’?
GMTA
…and it’s from the same freakin’ college in England that pushed a computer model that was off by a factor of ten or more, and caused the U.S. economy shutdown…am I right?
What caused the U.S. lockdown was a model that said if the U.S. population practiced social distancing, the death toll from Wuhan virus would be between 100,000 and 140,000, and if no mitigation was taken, then the death toll would be upwards of over 2 million deaths.
The current U.S. Wuhan Virus death toll is just shy of 140,000. The model President Trump used appears to have been accurate, at least for the mitigated death numbers. One of these days we will know if the 2.2 million unmitigated deaths number is a good one.
So, no, the U.S. was not put on lockdown based on a bad virus computer model, contrary to conventional “wisdom” (hysteria)..
There is no evidence that lockdowns make any difference. Where does that leave your model.
The initial Trump model estimated from 100,000 to 140,000 mitigated deaths from Wuhan virus.
The current U.S. death toll from Wuhan virus just exceeded 140,000, which would include deaths not within the scope of the initial estimate because about the time the death toll reached 120,000, the States started opening up their economies which will add numbers to the death toll not accounted for by the initial model. I think the lastest estimate is for over 250,000 Wuhan virus deaths by the end of the year..
I would say the initial model was a pretty good guess. It hit just about right in the middle of the initial estimate of 100,000 to 140,000 deaths.
Lockdowns don’t work? I would say that is a minority opinion going by what all our government officials are doing in an effort to reign in the Wuhan virus. Lockdowns won’t work for herd immunity, but that wasn’t why the lockdowns were put in place, and is not why they would be reimposed, if they are. They were put in place so the hospital system wouldn’t be overwhelmed, thus causing even more deaths for lack of medical attention.
The U.S. hospital system was not overwhelmed, so the lockdown worked in that regard.
Did the modeling account for 1/3 of those deaths to be in one state? If so, I’d say those are some pretty impressive models.
What are they testing for? It sounds like they are looking at IgG/IgM antibodies. But several papers currently in circulation suggest that there is a strong T-cell (CD4+/CD8+) response to the virus also and this may be more important for long term immunity. Anyway, I ask the question since I don’t know all the details.
That is exactly the test…and it s a poor test.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/update-list-dr-faucis-15-deadly-mistakes-contradictions-including-devastation-us-economy-based-garbage-model/
Related?
It’s a waste of time to try to accurately measure a signal when a large unfiltered noise component is present. Filter the noise, then measure. So it’s a spectacular waste of time and effort to try to understand this illness when its iatrogenic component is being ignored. It just leads to unending speculation and the birth of virus mythology, as we see in this video, IMO.
I am reminded of Edward Jenner’s work to scientifically study varioliation and the immunity conferred against smallpox by those who had contracted cowpox.
If another President were in power we would hear from press
“COVID mortality rate dropping”,
“Major progress being made on drugs to fight COVID”,
“Stock Markets resilient to COVID”,
“Nursing homes more effective at stopping COVID”,
“HCQ effective COVID medication”,
“COVID has brought Americans together for in Fight”,
“COVID testing ramped up exponentially”
That is probably true.
The vast majority of research studies are wrong. In this case, because politics and commercial greed are involved, the research is completely unreliable. On top of that, because of the crisis, people are working hard to get research published quickly. That certainly isn’t going to improve anything.
All I can say with any certainty is that Taiwan got it right.
Yes, Taiwan seems to have mastered the isolation approach and successfully quashed any outbreaks. It’s possible, even likely, that Asian countries in general benefit from cross-immunity conferred from other corona viruses.
On the other extreme of approaches. Sweden is beginning to look much better, falling in the ranks of cases and death rates as other countries struggle.
From reading the news, Sweden seems to be doing great or badly on alternate days.
Or they may not. Or the original test was faulty. Or the second test. Or the whole thing was faked to continue the lockdowns to foment a worldwide revolution. Or not.
So, what good would a vaccine do then?
If immunity is really lost in few months this would make the disease different than the other coronaviruses that exist in human population.
No, it would be very much like the coronviruses that exist in the human population:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/27/1000569/how-long-are-people-immune-to-covid-19/
Money quote:
“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.”
‘Tested positive’ is not the same as being ill. Do those who get reinfected get ill to the same extent and intensity as the first time?
The most “severe” symptoms are just a cold anyway so no idea how informative that would be anyway.
But if they could detect the virus it means no long lasting B-cells mediated immunity.
The tests used on the general population cannot distinguish between a non-infectious viral particle that contains the sequence being looked for and whole infectious virus.
The Ct values have predictive propensity for viral load and infectiousness. The virology labs attached to bigger diagnostic labs and hospitals have now a good idea which viral load will definitely translate into active virus which can infect cells. Then there is an area of “maybe” and a an area of “most likely not”.
But anyway, the PCR still measures if there was an infection or not. One doesn’t get viral RNA just randomly on the nasopharyngeal epithelium.
Or it simply means that long term immunity can never be had when a particular virus mutates…it is very hard to hit a moving target.
He is the preliminary results of one vaccine under test released yesterday. Pretty promising. If we can get to a vaccine that could be administered once a year for a couple of years, the incidence of CV-19 will drop significantly aka measles. Just have to get the anti-vaxxers to play along.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483
Is a person considered an anti-Vaxxer if they do not have everyone of the CDCs recommendations?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/adult.html
The church of VAXX cannot think in such nuanced terms.
Derg
What does it mean to “have” a recommendation?
Does it mean to have received a copy of a recommendation? Or to have been informed of one?
Does it mean to agree with a recommendation? Or maybe to disagree?
the reported urticaria in recipients might be an issue
they always use “healthy” subjects”
realworld people with autoimune issues already mght have some problems
I spent ages reading trials and chose to have the child version of a pneumonia vax this yr
and spent a full day in quite bad pain from savage neuralgia/myalgia
I have RA and my imune systems a tad toey
id be very very chary about this vax
@rbabcock
Not an anti-vaxxer, but color me suspicious and skeptical…and well here’s my spot inline.
You, first. I will let you be my guinea pig. I’ll be all back of the bus on this one.
A world wide rush to a vaccine worth hundreds of billions or a couple trillions of dollars.
What could go wrong? Well, everything.
Rushed the testing, rushed the formulation, rushed the manufacturing, etc.
I am going the follow the, “Let thy food be thy medicine”. Frankly, I going to trust evolution to work the way it has always worked.
That first iteration of the vaccine might just be a lethal injection. No, thank you. I have no desire to be the first in the vaccination line.
“You, first. I will let you be my guinea pig. I’ll be all back of the bus on this one.”
I saw a poll the other day that said about 23 percent of those polled would not immediately avail themselves of a Wuhan virus vaccine if one were made avaliable.
I wonder what percentage of people polled would take their cars to auto mechanics who made them sign an agreement absolving them of any responsibility for damage done to their cars?
I can’t deny things can go wrong. All vaccines have the outliers that have strong reactions including death. Phase 1 of the study I referenced was more about dosage and an early look at possible reactions. It looks like the next up in P2 is 600 people at the 100 level dosage. After that, it will probably be a couple or more thousands. P2 is already going on, so P3 will start probably in less than 2 months. That puts P3 results in November.
That will give us probably 3000 or more people that have been injected and with at least 60 day results. Based on how these turn out, I would either feel the way you will or I’ll take it. Personally my risk to CV-19 is low, but the way people die from this is thrombosis across the entire body. Pretty lethal as well.
OMG. This is becoming another Climate Emergency. More grant money for another study, please. It is worst than we thought! Hopefully no vaccine soon to stop this manna from heaven.
The CV19 situation is much about “FUD” fear- uncertainty and doubt .
FUD is a common disinformation strategy.
It’s easy to recognize once you understand the common usage in business.
I recently bought an external harddrive and the sales clerk fud-ed me at checkout for
an add on warranty plan telling me how fragile the HD was. I laughed at her and
said the previous 3 I bought were doing just fine..I should have said “you’re FUDing me–right? ,
maybe next time.
This study is the laughingstock of even the climate turned covid modelling crowd. Below their “money” graphic. While all pandemics undergo a process of transformation to the dominant seasonal flu, and this one may already have begun be endemic in this sense, there is still way too much fresh meat out there for immunity loss to be a problem.
About 50% of the infected have no symptoms which means they have effective immunity due to T-cells recognizing the invader and neutralizing it before it can make them sick.
The question nobody is asking is how can a person who isn’t sick be carrying an infectious viral load? The justification for stay at home, social distancing and mask wearing is that asymptomatic carriers can spread it unknowingly. Is this really true??
Gyan, Liu, et al, did a study on asymptomatic carriers, available here.
They looked at 147 people who tested positive for the corona virus. Of these, 16 (11%) developed symptoms within the following 14 days. So, 89% of the people carrying the virus didn’t develop symptoms.
Those 147 covid-positive people had 1150 close contacts. Among those contacts, 47 later tested positive for Covid, for a 4.1% overall transmission rate.
These 16 people who developed symptoms had 236 close contacts, which produced covid detection in 9.7% (23) of them.
The 136 people who were positive for the virus but did not develop symptoms had 914 close contacts. Among those, 2.6% (24) later tested positive for the virus.
Asymptomatic carriers, then, are people who have been exposed to the virus, have it in their bodies, and transmit it in their exhales during speech. They may have it on their hands, and transmit by touch. However, they don’t yet have any symptoms.
And 89% or so will never get symptoms, i.e., won’t get sick. They get infected and go on to successfully throw off the virus before it can multiply enough to make them sick.
Once people fight off the virus, and become virus-free, there’s nothing left to transmit.
Thanks Pat!
Those are the first statistics I’ve seen isolating the groups like that and tracking. My understanding is that you have to receive a significant viral load to become infected. It doesn’t make sense to me that someone who’s immune system prevented symptoms could be carrying a sufficient load to do that? I’m guessing there is no way of knowing if the 2.6% were actually infected by the asymptomatic carriers or could have contracted it elsewhere?
The stats clearly show that symptomatic carriers are far more infectious.
I found the answer to my question of how asymptomatic carriers can be infective.- “It is believed that a single virion can be enough to induce illness in the host”
Great review of the science on mask wearing-
https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/masks-dont-work-covid-a-review-of-science-relevant-to-covide-19-social-policy
The one question to ask is how many people who developed CV-19 that came into contact with asymptomatic individuals actually got it from them, or did they get it from somewhere else? You really don’t know where you got it unless you live on a mountain and never leave your house.
This finding from Kings College London is extremely important. That immunity to covid19 might last such a short time as to be unimportant as a factor in the long term, only serving to perhaps slow infection and transmission rates locally.
This destroys a big part of the narrative on covid19 that has become established and endlessly repeated in the last half year. It could totally change the landscape in regard to strategies for dealing with the virus.
– It means that trying to develop a vaccine is a total waste of time.
– It means that the term and concept of “herd immunity” is meaningless in regard to the virus.
– It means that at best people’s temporary immunity to the virus can damp the spread of the virus but cannot prevent its periodic or yearly recurrence.
This makes sense, it’s like a cold coronavirus. Immunity does not stop it recurring continually, only damps it’s spread.
We’ll know in the coming months, but there does seem to be some innate immunity, as well as cross-immunity. For kids, perhaps they should wear helmets because they have a greater chance of being hurt in an accident.
I agree that this result appears to make “herd immunity” impossible (rather than merely catastrophically costly).
However, it does not necessarily mean that an effective vaccine is impossible. Not all vaccines work exactly like infection with the disease, itself. Even if a single-dose vaccine is only briefly effective, vaccination with series of “boosters” might still provide long term protection. Maybe.
However, this result does make it hard to imagine how an effective vaccine could be developed and tested adequately in just a few months, for manufacture and mass deployment before the end of this year. Testing to determine whether a vaccine will be effective for, say, six months, obviously will take at least six months.
It still appears that the best approach — and perhaps the only workable approach — to stopping this epidemic is the old-fashioned approach, which has been employed by all the countries which have been successful at stopping the spread of the disease:
Identify and quarantine everyone who has the disease, including those who are asymptomatic, by the use of intensive testing and contact-tracing.
That’s all. It’s not rocket science.
The fact that almost all of America’s political leaders, from both parties, seem to be incapable of grasping that simple, obvious fact, is very depressing.
All we need to do is have one million testers each take samples from 350 people real quick.
Who gets to force a test on the people who decide to kill someone, stab people, or go on a murderous crime rampage, when they are asked to put a piece of cloth over their mouth and nose for a minute or two while in a store?
Of course, all of the test ever given to date in the entire world does not add up to anything close to enough for one test for everyone in the US.
My wife asked this question. ” would the general public of know anything about COVID 19 if the WHO had not announced a pandemic and there was no specific test for COVID 19 and the world was satisfied with a general corona virus test” The general public were not aware about the big surge in unspecified viral pneumonia admissions in Oct-December 2019. Nor did the general public know about the outbreak of unspecified viral pneumonia that sickened 300 and killed 24 in nursing homes in Springfield Virginia in July 2019. Why not… because it is the normal course of things. Corona viruses come a go. Some waffle through populations and some stabilizes and break bad for a while. Cosmic radiation mutates viruses like mad who knows. Now the press just keeps jumping on every little piece of infectious fear they can find and whipping into dystopic terror. Meanwhile the debt of broken hearts just keeps piling up.
Weirsinga, et al, 2020 published a review on Corona virus, available here.
The table below shows that death from corona infection becomes a serious possibility only after age 65.
Age bracket (yrs)____Fractional death rate from Corona
<18____________________0.0004
18-29___________________0.0011
30-39___________________0.0035
40-49___________________0.0086
50-64___________________0.0300
65-74___________________0.105
75-84___________________0.211
≥85_____________________0.305
Weirsinga, et al., also say that, “Among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, 74% to 86% are aged at least 50 years. … Although only approximately 25% of infected patients have comorbidities, 60% to 90% of hospitalized infected patients have comorbidities.”
Given the low mortality rate in a population with no prior exposure to SARS2 corona virus, it seems that there is an innate immune resistance to the virus. So, whatever the study says about the presence of antibodies, the cautionary tone does not seem to recognize the evidence for natural immunity.
The link:
https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.12839
Thanks, Sy.
I surmise that older people >65 are mostly retired, mostly don’t have as many contacts as <65, and are therefore less likely to get each season's viri, thus are probably not going to have as much resistance as the general population, if they somehow manage to contract Covid19.
Granted, Gov. Cuomo helped kill-off tens of thousands of the most vulnerable people in his state.
But if this were true and anything close to 83% were vulnerable 3 months later, NY and other states that were hit hard in March and Apr should be taking-off again. They aren’t.
As I’ve been hearing about reinfections and loss of immunity, I’ve been wondering how any vaccine would be effective.
So what now, an annual vaccine?
An embargo for at least 12 months on the reporting of any research paper, lifted only if there at least x number of papers replicating the results, might be a cure for the pandemic of fear.
The only reliable thing emerging from British universities is virulent anti-white racist propaganda.
This whole thing has become immersed in so much politics and vested interests that I don’t care about it.
There are the Fear Mongers and the Wuhoo Fluers.
The former create fear about lethality, duration, immunity and inexpensive treatments to get at Trump or argue for Vaccines or more expensive treatments
The latter say “Ho hum” the disease is like a bad Flu and the cure is worse than the disease.
I had my comments about T-cells censored in the Australian newspaper The Advertiser.
“May lose”
But no proved cases of reinfection.
The UK government cabinet advisors like to keep people worried about second infections:
https://www.bi.team/blogs/dont-say-it-makes-you-immune-how-you-frame-coronavirus-anitbody-results-matters/
If one of the many SARS CoV-2 strains doesn’t repeatedly get you maybe one of the common corona-viruses might make you ill enough to call your doctor or throw you into a panic. You might test positive for COVID 19 but what if it is something else that is actually making you sick, like a rhinovirus or a common corona virus or some other nasty respiratory virus….many of which are unknown. And what about infections from multiple co-occurring or piggybacking corona-viruses and rhinovirus? And what about high blood sugar, hypertension, genetics from neanderthal man, or the wrong blood type? What about immuno-suppressant drugs and monoclonal antibodies and ACE II inhibitors and obesity? What about COPD? There are 200,000 million cases of viral pneumonia a year around the world. We won’t be free of this fear mongering until November.
Coronavirus: Why everyone was wrong
The immune response to the virus is stronger than everyone thought https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809
What we need is some bacteriophage that loves nothing more than to munch on Covid19.
Let the banners fly and the bells ring. Early late fall possible ‘cure’ for covid.
Those in the know say this, new artificial antibody technology for covid, is the highest probability real covid game changer.
Based on the success of the artificially produced antibodies treatment for the deadly Ebola which was 90% effective, with room for additional optimizing.
The covid antibody treatment could be effective for 90% of the patients. Close to 100% if the treatment is very early in the covid disease progression.
The artificially designed and produced antibody cocktail, is injected into people who are sick with covid, or would like to have roughly 4 weeks of immunity to covid.
The injected antibody will leave the person close to virus free in roughly 48 hours.
There are three other antibody designing companies that are working with the US Military to develop a covid antibody.
I believe all the companies that are working with the US military have had very good success with phase 1 and 2 trials.Regeneron has moved on to phase 3 trials of their new antibody.
Regeneron has received, $450 million to manufacture, the covid artificial antibody therapy. This is the same technology, that Regeneron and a second company, who is also working with the US military to develop artificial antibodies to defeat covid, used to stop Ebola.
https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/regeneron-announces-start-regn-cov2-phase-3-covid-19-prevention
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/health/regeneron-coronavirus-antibody-drug-bn/index.html
“Regeneron starts Phase 3 trial of Covid antibody drug
About REGN-COV2
Regeneron scientists evaluated thousands of fully-human antibodies produced by the company’s proprietary VelocImmune® mice, which have been genetically-modified to have a human immune system, as well as antibodies isolated from ….
..to create REGN-COV2 and have scaled up this dual-antibody cocktail for clinical use with the company’s in-house VelociMab® and manufacturing capabilities.
REGN-COV2’s two antibodies bind non-competitively to the critical receptor binding domain of the virus’s spike protein, which diminishes the ability of mutant viruses to escape treatment and protects against spike variants that have arisen in the human population, as detailed in recent Science publications.
More recent research also demonstrates coverage against the now prevalent D614G variant (William of covid)
…to enroll 2,000 patients in the U.S.; the trial will assess SARS-CoV-2 infection status. The two Phase 2/3 treatment trials in hospitalized (estimated enrollment =1,850) and non-hospitalized (estimated enrollment =1,050) patients are planned to be conducted at approximately 150 sites in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico and Chile, and will evaluate virologic and clinical endpoints, with preliminary data expected later this summer. “
Uh, yeah… This is a research article in search of a follow up research grant to prove what many posters have already mentioned — antibodies are not the end-all of how the immune system works…
Perhaps it’s clever research grant marketing to push this article about a partial truth of how immune systems work (or don’t work) into the mainstream science news in hopes that there will be a grant coming to pay for more research.
IMHO, science isn’t supposed to be like a strip show where this is the first half of a show about stuff that most everyone in an experienced audience knows what the final product is going to look like…