COVID-19: Immunity & reinfection

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Eddy Edson

Eddy Edson

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Great NYT opinion piece today by Marc Lippsitch @mlipsitch giving state-of-play summary of what experts like him know about immunity (and reinfection) so far: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immunity.html

Immunity: It's complicated! But by analogy with other coronaviruses, you'd expect at least some degree of post-infection immunity.

Reinfection: The "But the Koreans have found people getting reinfected!" stories aren't taken very seriously by most experts, but the Koreans are rechecking in light of the doubts which have been raised & I guess we'll know more soon.
 
Saw one mention on MSN yesterday that China had reported 106 more CV19 deaths the day before after Nil for a while, but nowt else seem so dunno where or anything.
 
I thought they had been saying the new cases were from citizens returning following the lifing of sanctions.
 
I've always been a bit suspicious of the Chinese figures, although at the time they sounded horrific. But having seen what's happening in other countries, and I'm thinking in particular of Germany where they've mass tested and locked down very early, everybody else seems to be following a much worse path and even Germany is starting to follow the same path as well. England records all the people who die in hospital with a positive COVID-19 test (whether symptomatic or not), as opposed to those who actually die of it or where it is a major contributing factor. Other countries have different recording protocols - some have the facilities to test and record illnesses and deaths outside the hospital, which England does not. And how do you record as a positive case where suspected but not proven? So are we comparing apples with rump steak? Or is this a warning of what to expect when restrictions are lifted? Singapore has already seen a surge, and it will be interesting to watch Italy and Spain, as no doubt everyone freed of restrictions will go and immediately mass socialise. Perhaps it has been wiser to take more time to phase in restrictions, and then to phase them out. Only time will tell. I know where I'm staying until there are more facts than rumours.
 
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Neither Spain nor Italy has relaxed their lock down though?
 
trophywench said:
Neither Spain nor Italy has relaxed their lock down though?
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Not yet - but supposed to be shortly. So it will be most informative to see if there is a spike in cases and deaths there 2 - 4 weeks after the relaxation. It could provide valuable information to other countries.
 
Indeed, @Felinia, let the rest of the world play with that idea first. It’s the first step to making this virus endemic, part of the furniture of our lives.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
I fear we can assume that's going to happen regardless, now.
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Indeed.

In my little Brigadoon, another day of zero new cases, but what hapens when the mists part and we rejoin the world?

The best new theory I've heard for why we are doing so exceptionally well here is because of sunlight - apparently it's a great natural virus-killer & we have a whole lot of it at this time of year. Maybe explains why California, South Africa, other sunny places are also doing better than you might expect.

Anyway, it's better than my previous theory, which involved kangaroos.
 
New zealand has been praised for their handling of the situation. About 11 deaths last time i looked. They shut the borders. so should we have. Still 15,000 people a day arriving at airports going unchecked. Absolute madness.
 
Hepato-pancreato said:
New zealand has been praised for their handling of the situation. About 11 deaths last time i looked. They shut the borders. so should we have. Still 15,000 people a day arriving at airports going unchecked. Absolute madness.
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Closing the borders and doing rigorous contact tracing & case isolation from January seem to have been the main elements in NZ and Oz's success in (so far) containing the thing.

The UK abandoned contact tracing in early March. Hancock said yesterday that the plan is to reintroduce it. A bit harder when you have 5,000+ new cases per day, versus a few dozen.
 
seems that the medical professions can't even agree now if one is immune after getting covid-19, jeese
 
mikeydt1 said:
seems that the medical professions can't even agree now if one is immune after getting covid-19, jeese
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Well it’s new, how can they possibly know how long any immunity lasts until it’s been around a while?
 
Bruce Stephens said:
There's a lot of uncertainty. By coincidence I listened to the most recent episode of a podcast on exactly this: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/94hww45/coronavirus-can-you-get-it-twice

(There's a transcript with citations on the web page.)

(The overall feeling seems to be that it's most likely we get some kind of immunity.)
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FWIW, all the virologists I follow on Twitter think there will probably be months/a couple of years immunity. But nobody can be certain yet.
 
If you don’t develop immunity, there would be little point in trying to develop a vaccine. But we do develop immunity to those coronaviruses that cause the common cold. Trouble is, there are more than a hundred viruses that cause colds, so you can’t get immune to all of them. You don’t catch the same cold twice.
 
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