T-cells from common colds can provide protection against COVID-19 - study

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Amity Island

Amity Island

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At the beginning of the pandemic, we were told nobody had any prior protection against Sars-cov-2. High levels of T-cells from common cold coronaviruses can provide protection against COVID-19, an Imperial College London study published on Monday has found

www.reuters.com

T-cells from common colds can provide protection against COVID-19 - study

High levels of T-cells from common cold coronaviruses can provide protection against COVID-19, an Imperial College London study published on Monday has found, which could inform approaches for second-generation vaccines.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

www.nature.com

Cross-reactive memory T cells associate with protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in COVID-19 contacts - Nature Communications

While cross-reactive immunity between human coronavirus and SARS-CoV-2 may contribute to host protection, validating evidences are still scarce. Here the authors assess a cohort of 52 donors with immediate-early contact with SARS-CoV-2 to correlate higher frequency of cross-reactive T cells with...
www.nature.com www.nature.com
 
As the study concludes,

"Our study complements the small but growing body of evidence that T cells may protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection and supports the potential utility of second-generation vaccines targeting core proteins"

Roll on the second generation vaccine to compliment the first generation vaccine.
 
Well, as a quarter of our common colds are due to coronaviruses, this is hardly surprising. And I think there's only @Amity Island and me that regard T-Cell immunity as more important than antibody levels, which are transient. T-cells, like elephants, never forget.
 
www.bmj.com

Covid-19: Do many people have pre-existing immunity?

It seemed a truth universally acknowledged that the human population had no pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2, but is that actually the case? Peter Doshi explores the emerging research on immunological responses Even in local areas that have experienced some of the greatest rises in excess...
www.bmj.com www.bmj.com
 
With 5.5 million deaths from covid, it would seen pre existing immunity sucks.
 
That 5.5 million is worldwide. You have no idea how much natural immunity has been operating to keep that level down to such a small number. Last year there were 241 million cases of malaria, with three quarters of a million dying from it. Not much different to every year. And since the world population is around 7 billion, 5.5m million cases of Covid deaths is astonishingly small for such a “deadly” pandemic. The flu epidemic at the end of the First World War originated in America and by 1920 had killed 20 million.
 
mikeyB said:
That 5.5 million is worldwide. You have no idea how much natural immunity has been operating to keep that level down to such a small number. Last year there were 241 million cases of malaria, with three quarters of a million dying from it. Not much different to every year. And since the world population is around 7 billion, 5.5m million cases of Covid deaths is astonishingly small for such a “deadly” pandemic. The flu epidemic at the end of the First World War originated in America and by 1920 had killed 20 million.
Click to expand...
FWIW, 5.5M is certrainly an under-count. Eg: it seems India is probably more like 3M than its official ~500K number, and there are several other countries with large-scale & probably deliberate under-reporting.

https://www.cghr.org/2022/01/covid-mortality-in-india/
https://twitter.com/x/status/1480988306242473984

So figure at least 10M dead so far, I would guess.

Mortality rate not as bad as the best estimates for Spanish flu, but how to unpack that between differences in vaccine availability, acquired resistance, virus severity, age distribution, population health and health care effectiveness - who knows? It's certainly doesn't seem obvious to me that COVID-19 is very much less deadly than Spanish flu, all else being equal.

Anyway, it's way way worse than "normal" flu.
 
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Eddy Edson said:
FWIW, 5.5M is certrainly an under-count. Eg: it seems India is probably more like 3M than its official ~500K number, and there are several other countries with large-scale & probably deliberate under-reporting.

https://www.cghr.org/2022/01/covid-mortality-in-india/
https://twitter.com/x/status/1480988306242473984

So figure at least 10M dead so far, I would guess.

Mortality rate not as bad as the best estimates for Spanish flu, but how to unpack that between differences in vaccine availability, acquired resistance, virus severity, age distribution, population health and health care effectiveness - who knows? It's certainly doesn't seem obvious to me that COVID-19 is very much less deadly than Spanish flu, all else being equal.

Anyway, it's way way worse than "normal" flu.
Click to expand...
The main point here is not trying to work out the exact numbers, it's the fact that the reasons we were given for lockdowns and restrictions was that there was no prior immunity (also ignoring innate immunity too) and asymptomatic transmission, along with deeply flawed modelling. There is a huge list of things we have been told which were plain wrong or misleading. It's evident they wanted to bring in lockdowns and restrictions and they had to come up with reasons (true, acccurate or not) to justify them.
 
mikeyB said:
That 5.5 million is worldwide. You have no idea how much natural immunity has been operating to keep that level down to such a small number. Last year there were 241 million cases of malaria, with three quarters of a million dying from it. Not much different to every year. And since the world population is around 7 billion, 5.5m million cases of Covid deaths is astonishingly small for such a “deadly” pandemic. The flu epidemic at the end of the First World War originated in America and by 1920 had killed 20 million.
Click to expand...

On balance being dead in a small pandemic wouldn't be a choice I'd make either.
And, as you say, you have no idea how much natural immunity exists, so on the balance I'll still take the vaccine and the alledged natural immunity on top.
 
travellor said:
On balance being dead in a small pandemic wouldn't be a choice I'd make either.
And, as you say, you have no idea how much natural immunity exists, so on the balance I'll still take the vaccine and the alledged natural immunity on top.
Click to expand...
Of course, yes. This shouldn't cause anybody to decline vaccination. That would be crazy.

What happened early on causing hospitals in one region of Italy to be overwhelmed happened though they had this prior immunity (and innate immunity, of course). If they'd known at the time they had this immunity it wouldn't have helped because (obviously) that prior immunity isn't that protective.
 
travellor said:
On balance being dead in a small pandemic wouldn't be a choice I'd make either.
And, as you say, you have no idea how much natural immunity exists, so on the balance I'll still take the vaccine and the alledged natural immunity on top.
Click to expand...
Innate and prior immunity is all that was available in 2020 when we went into lockdown. This immunity is not alleged either, it's completely natural for humans to build and acquire immunity.
 
Amity Island said:
Innate and prior immunity is all that was available in 2020 when we went into lockdown. This immunity is not alleged either, it's completely natural for humans to build and acquire immunity.
Click to expand...

Many things are natural.
For everything else there is progress.
 
Eddy Edson said:
FWIW, 5.5M is certrainly an under-count. Eg: it seems India is probably more like 3M than its official ~500K number, and there are several other countries with large-scale & probably deliberate under-reporting.

https://www.cghr.org/2022/01/covid-mortality-in-india/
https://twitter.com/x/status/1480988306242473984

So figure at least 10M dead so far, I would guess.

Mortality rate not as bad as the best estimates for Spanish flu, but how to unpack that between differences in vaccine availability, acquired resistance, virus severity, age distribution, population health and health care effectiveness - who knows? It's certainly doesn't seem obvious to me that COVID-19 is very much less deadly than Spanish flu, all else being equal.

Anyway, it's way way worse than "normal" flu.
Click to expand...
And see that The Economist estimates 12.1M - 22.7M excess deaths.

www.economist.com

The pandemic’s true death toll

Our daily estimate of excess deaths around the world
www.economist.com www.economist.com
 
Eddy Edson said:
And see that The Economist estimates 12.1M - 22.7M excess deaths.

www.economist.com

The pandemic’s true death toll

Our daily estimate of excess deaths around the world
www.economist.com www.economist.com
Click to expand...
Eddy, I don't have an account with the economist. Does it come to any conclusion on what percentage of the excess deaths during the pandemic were caused due to missed diagnoses and missed hospital appointments (whether out of fear of attending or lack of capacity/availability)?
 
Amity Island said:
I'm not sure all is good, at some point, just about everyone is going to catch sars-cov2, vaccinated or not.
Click to expand...

Very true, I will most likely catch it.
I don't expect the vaccine to stop that, I expect, as you say, it's going to give my natural defences a (very long) head start, and my T cells can jump in as well, so the old memory effect you said will still be there, the little elephants stamping on Covid next time.
The major benefit is I'm not expecting to be dead before that memory effect can be used.
(Unless the T-cell vaccine you linked to comes along, then I have two defences, and the T-cell vaccine will still give my T-cells a natural memory, so hopefully even better)
 
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