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by xkapastel
2240 days ago
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> It should be stunningly obvious > it should be equally obvious Clearly it is not obvious, considering most people have never spent a significant amount of time thinking about how infectious diseases work. > What's that? Do I hear the "There's no evidence for immunity to covid-19" crowd in the distance? I'm getting a bit tired of that line, but if someone wants me to dismantle that argument (again) I am happy to. Why make a snarky, coy comment like this? If you have something to say about immunity then just say it. In fact the WHO are among those who make this claim[0], so "dismantle" away. [0]: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p... |
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(1) The presence of active circulating antibodies, which in sufficient concentrations should result in literal immunity in the sense of inability to catch the virus
Eventually those circulating antibodies will no longer be actively present, but you'll still have
(2) Memory B Cells which lie dormant, waiting for exposure to viral antigens at which point they ramp up antibody production like crazy.
So in the worst case scenario, immunity in the sense of inability to be infected disappears after X months, but any infection would be much milder and would clear much more quickly than normal with lower peak viral load.
Let's talk about "herd immunity" while we're at it since that's been branded as a "dirty word (phrase)". Herd immunity is just the logical consequence of individual immunity as applied to population-level dynamics. So people that don't "believe" in herd immunity are like people that don't believe in evolution, in that both logically follow from the ground truths.
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Nothing I've said there contradicts the WHO, but it's worth mentioning that at this point it seems inaccurate to say "there is no evidence" rather than to say "there is not overwhelming evidence", and they've sort of given themselves away with this line:
> People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice
So, as always, they carefully shape statements to try to control behavior.
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Anyway, I'm actually not trying to argue against the WHO here, but rather the hordes of people who trot out the "we don't know if there even is immunity" to try to argue that "herd immunity" is a foolish/dangerous proposition when the truth is that it's how we deal with every non-containable pandemic. That is what I was getting at with my needlessly snarky and coy comment.
BTW, just to be clear, vaccines rely on the same principle. So those who point to the uncertainty as an argument "against" herd immunity (which again to me is like arguing "against evolution" since both herd immunity and evolution are logical consequences of some simple ground truths taken to their logical conclusions), are also arguing against hunkering down for 2.5 years while we develop a vaccine.