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Meta: your comments on this thread imply a degree of certainty that isn't justified by the evidence as I understand it. I am just a lay person here, but that's my impression as someone who has done a lot of reading. As far as coronaviruses go, there are four mild human coronaviruses that are responsible for about 15% of common colds and for which humans do not develop any long lasting immunity. There are also the three severe human coronaviruses: MERS, SARS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. AFAIU, long-lasting immunity to these is not well understood. I do not understand how you can make such an authoritative statement about re-infection risk based on the limited data we have about SARS-CoV-2. Here's what immunologists have to say: > In summary, progress since January 2020 has been impressive, but there is still so much more to learn. Are T cells protective and if so which are the key antigens and and cytokine effector programs to focus on? Are all T cell responses beneficial, or are some contributory to immunopathology and to be avoided? If it is indeed the case that antibodies are transient and T cell memory is more durable (though, how durable?), what can we learn about anomalies of T follicular helper-B cell interactions in germinal centers? In the short to medium term, we need to ensure that all of this T cell toolkit and knowledge is brought to bear on robust, comparative evaluation of the different vaccine platforms, their immunogenicity, efficacy and safety. Entering the next part of the battle, there are many thousands of people suffering the chronic aftermath of infection posed by chronic, so-called ‘long-COVID’ cases, characterized by diverse symptoms including fatigue, joint pain and dyspnea (19). A more detailed understanding of the T cell immunology will be valuable in deciphering this pathogenesis. https://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/5/49/eabd6160.full What I read there is a lot of "we're not sure yet." |
At a minimum, we can agree that in the event of re-infection, the subsequent infection will hit a lower peak viral load and therefore theoretically a much milder outcome with reduced transmissibility, right? This is called immunological memory and arises due to memory b cells and memory t cells which persist across decades.
Anyway, please see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
It establishes that those exposed to SARS-1, which structurally and functionally is incredibly similar to SARS-2 and thus is our best model of how to think about SARS-2, have long-lasting immunity. Their t-cells not only react to SARS-1 after 17 years, they also have immunity to SARS-2, which is a testament to how similar they are structurally speaking.
Additionally exposure to those common cold human coronaviruses you mentioned almost certainly confers immunity to SARS-2 based off that same paper. We're still hashing out the details, of course.
Immunology is incredibly complex and there is still plenty to learn about as far as the exact specifics of what unfolds here, yes. But we should assume reinfection isn't possible, because:
- It doesn't happen in SARS-1 which is by far the best model we have
- If it did happen, given the MILLIONS of cases of COVID-19 worldwide, we would have seen THOUSANDS of rigorously documented examples of the phenomenom happening
- Those arguing for reinfection tend to not make any mention of immunological memory
- Those arguing for reinfection do so to in an attempt to scare us into staying locked down until "the vaccine", which I am opposed to because I am opposed to any public health policy that banks on a future technological innovation that does not yet exist, particularly when I fear that the environment of irrational fear and anxiety and outright hysteria is going to be used to mandate vaccines, which is highly unethical under my moral framework
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As far as me sounding over-certain, frankly it's cognitive draining to be arguing against a horde of people whose priors have been completely screwed up by programming from a media that takes delight in knowingly lying to citizens, and even our trusted public health officials like Fauci don't have the courage or perhaps the desire to break out of the collective mass delusion we are all trapped in.
So yes, if I had infinite time and energy I agree, I could do a way better job of capturing uncertainty. I've written an 8000+ word writeup on COVID that does a much better job capturing the uncertainty, but it's very difficult to do without...writing 8000 words.
Also this doesn't justify it but I do feel the need to point out that those arguing for the "doom" scenario are even more egregiously overstating certainty, and tend to not be called out on their ridiculous statements. So that's why I tend to come into these threads guns blazing, with the predictable result of getting hammered by downvotes. C'est la vie.