Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Coronavirus Infection Leads to COVID Immunity? You Don't Say.

Back in July of 2020 I wrote:

So two points here:

1) This is the third time I've read about how having been infected by a Coronavirus in the past, may confer immunity (for however long) against Wuhan.

2) The discussion of T-cells. You hear a lot about anti-bodies and how people who don't have serious symptoms tend to not produce any or a lot of anti-bodies. However; if T-cells can recognize and deal with the virus, then anti-body tests tell a very distorted picture. It also means that herd immunity may be far closer than we think.

Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at Oxford, argues that natural immunity to covid-19 is conferred by infections with seasonal coronaviruses. If correct, this has implications for the level of vaccination needed to reach herd immunity. It is widely assumed that over 50% of people need to be vaccinated to prevent a resurgence of SARS-CoV-2. In a preprint released on July 15th Dr Gupta says this figure could be much lower if a significant part of the population is already resistant to infection.

Of course such writing was considered "misinformation" and "conspiracy theory" and the like. Now here goes the LA Times:


Oh.

"One of the enduring questions of the COVID-19 pandemic is how much immunity people are left with after recovering from a coronavirus infection. New research suggests the level of protection is comparable to getting a vaccine — at least for a few months."

Oh.

“I think we knew this, that immunity [after natural infection] lasts a long time,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist at UC San Francisco who was not involved in the new research. “But it’s still very exciting.” 
Oh. "We knew this"? Strange how this wasn't being told to the public via MSM. I wonder why that was.

"Contrast that to the people who originally tested positive for coronavirus antibodies. Their genetic test results were positive at very high rates in the first 30 days (11.3%), which the researchers said was probably a sign that leftover viral particles were still being flushed from their systems.

However, the positivity rate for the genetic test plunged to 2.7% in the second month after infection, then fell to 1.1% in the third month. And after those 90 days, only 0.3% of people with a past coronavirus infection had another infection that was detected with a genetic test."

It's almost like the immune system can handle stuff it recognizes.  It's like perhaps instead of hiding out and trying NOT to expose yourself to the environment, you should expose your system to other (less lethal) viruses so that your body isn't shocked [to death] by a new more potent strain. You know, like how humanity has been doing it since we've been here.

"That coronavirus infection rate was 10 times lower than for the people who presumably had not been previously infected." 

Oh.

"“Of course, protection induced by a safe vaccine is clearly preferable,” they were quick to add, “as the population-wide risk of a serious outcome from an authorized or approved vaccine is expected to be orders of magnitude lower than that from natural infection.”"

Absolute assumption posing as fact.

"These findings “could have been used two months ago,” she added."

I figured this out over the summer. That was like 6 months ago

"The findings may help explain why new infections have been falling in Los Angeles County in the wake of a devastating holiday surge."

Those of us who actually followed the science called this. We called the the Casedemic. We said that it is likely that cases would rise but deaths would not (to any appreciable degree relative to cases). We said this in late spring into summer. We were called "conspiracy theorists" and "dangerous" who were going to "get people killed". We were right all along.