Potential Good News On the COVID Front
So, this is a country agnostic comment. I can't stop anyone from going off track but can't promise I won't respond if someone does.
The point is more from my view as a kind of country agnostic person (I feel like I could live anywhere other than countries where you are not allowed to speak freely) is understanding how all of us get past covid. That's not just countries with infection, but letting countries with low rates out of the cage. If you're in a country anywhere that exposure has been low, then until or unless there's a useful long term vaccine or treatment, this hasn't gone away.
Lead time between small problem and big problem is only a couple of months.
There was an article in the news here lately that explains a lot of mysteries here in the states where infection rates have been pretty high:
* why isn't antibody testing more accurate or reliable (I don't know how accurate the antibody tests are, there may be two aspects to this)
* stories coming out that antibodies fade fairly quickly
* negative tests for people with covid that come back to positive later (I think this is a testing issue and not that people are "re-getting" the same thing). I don't have HIV but when I was younger, I read about it out of curiosity. I remember seeing that you can have low viral loads (can be undetectable) in some parts of the body and the virus can reside elsewhere (gones, especially) and then recur if you drop your guard. Actually, I don't know that I've ever known anyone who has HIV or had it, but for some reason, I found the information fascinating. If someone is swabbing your nose and you have covid virus in concentration elsewhere bobbing up and down above detectable levels, then by all means.
So, here's the point. fading antibodies is bad because if you're going to provide people with antibodies and they don't last, what good are they? If someone gets the virus and their antibodies fade, then they're going to get it again at some point. Figure the news will always make it sound worse than it is, so if they can find someone who loses their antibodies to any detectable amount in 3 months, then they'll just love a story like that. People seem to love to click on scary stories. Pro wrestling psychology - show someone something they really like or they really hate. Anything in the middle will be forgotten.
It turns out that there may be some immunity from T cells for two reasons (in the absence of antibodies or after loss of antibodies)
1) some people have T cells that are reactive to covid that exist much longer than antibodies (17 years so far for SARS patients)
2) a separate story suggested that when lab samples were checked from prior to the COVID outbreak, some samples have T cells that are reactive to COVID even though it's suspected that those cells weren't exposed to the current COVID round
Why is that? I don't know. Was there a virus strain in the past that wasn't recognized or maybe as severe, but was similar?
Whatever the case may be, it means immunity may last longer, and another cohort may never be easily infected in the first place.
That's good news.
Apparently, immunizations can be tailored to elicit T cell response, and if vaccines intended to make antibodies aren't long lasting, then a different type of vaccine may be.
And we may be as a population (especially in places who have weathered it, US, western europe, Sweden) further ahead of it than we think.