[danieltillett]

If only it were that simple. Coronavirus only induce a short lived immunity (40 weeks is the average). With the common cold varieties you basically catch the same virus over and over again as you don’t build up any long term immunity to them.

The end result of all this is you would get sick and then be at risk of getting sick again next year and the year after that all the while putting at risk anyone who is vulnerable.

There is really only one way out of this mess - a vaccine.

[arpa]

I don't think we have any data regarding immunity against this particular coronavirus. AFAIR, the nastier the virus, the longer immunity lasts, e.g. SARS, MERS immunity can last up to 3 years.

[danieltillett]

Yes we do (I have to dig out the reference), but it appears to be the same as other Coronaviruses.

You are right that the worse the infection the longer the immunity, but if we are looking at the young they have a mild disease so we should expect a short immune lifetime.

Edit. Have a look at Figure 3 of this pre-print[0]. This doesn’t encourage me that we can expect a long immune lifetime with SARS-CoV-2.

0. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066407v...