[carlmr]

I had that exact experience for 12 days after a fever and a light cough in March. I couldn't even smell Thai fish sauce.

They wouldn't test me because it wasn't on their list of symptoms in Germany, even though South Korea, UK and China were already reporting it as a strong indicator for Corona.

[philippoi]

I had some symptoms in mid-March as well, and actually on my birthday noticed I couldn't smell or taste nearly as well as normal. It was very apparent because I work as a barista, so naturally I rely on my sense of smell quite a lot, and I had really enjoyed the same green tea the day before and the day of my smell loss; it just tasted incredibly flat. My birthday meal and birthday wine were just a waste on me. My wife and I were tested for antibodies about 6 weeks later, when our son was born, and neither of us was found to have antibodies. It wasn't until around the first week of April that I first heard loss of your sense of smell was a symptom of COVID19. In spite of the antibody test, I suspect I had the virus. About how quickly does the antibody count drop if you develop specific antibodies to COVID19? I read somewhere that some people recovered from their infections without developing antibodies tailored to COVID19 and it was thought that these individuals overcame the virus due to their body's already existing store of antibodies for other types of Corona virus. I can't remember where I read that article now.

[nradov]

There is a huge variance in antibody response and duration between patients. It seems to correlate with symptom severity but there are other factors still not understood (possibly genetic). In some cases the innate immune system fights off the infection before antibodies are generated. In other cases the antibodies fade away quickly, but a high level of immunity is retained through memory T cells. Unfortunately there's no quick or easy way to do a specific T cell assay.

There is a hypothesis that prior exposure to other similar viruses provides a limited degree of immunity from SARS-CoV-2. It's plausible and fits some of the case patterns but we don't know yet if it's a significant effect.

[rindalir]

Same thing happened to me -- and I also tested negative for antibodies about five weeks later. My partner (who had more of a flu-like illness) did test positive for antibodies though, so I'm very certain I had it. My hypotheses are: test was not specific enough, i fought it off quickly with t-cell immunity, or my antibodies fell off very quickly since I really was not sick (I had fever of 100 for about three hours and some burning pain in my nasal cavity and that's it)

[ed25519FUUU]

I really wish they would get in gear and start rolling out widespread serologic testing. Many people have similar stories to you. For a lot of people symptoms were before there was any testing available.

With widespread serologic testing, we can at least get some waypoint data, and for people like you some peace of mind.

[remote_phone]

Current serological tests aren’t effective after a few months because antibodies counts decrease very quickly.

[lostlogin]

What is the peace of mind aspect about? Are you meaning that a reliable test that was negative would tell people they hadn’t infected anyone?

[_jstreet]

There's currently no evidence to suggest that you're immune after an initial infection (as far as I know!?)

[nradov]

The best evidence we have indicates that most recovered patients will retain a significant level of immunity for at least several years.

https://www.jimmunol.org/content/early/2020/09/03/jimmunol.2...

As with any pandemic there will be a small minority of outliers who experience symptomatic reinfections.

[dhimes]

The paper you cited doesn't supply evidence- according to the abstract it's their best guess based on experience with other coronaviruses.

The evidence is actually scant but there's a decent discussion of it in the Guardian article I linked below and the paper linked from it.

[rootusrootus]

If you didn't gain any immunity, how would you fight off the infection to begin with?

[carlmr]

I'm not a doctor or biologist, but afaik your body has multiple possible responses to a viral infection, and not all of them end with an immunity. The second thing that a virus may mutate more or less quickly, evading your previous immunity.

[mlavin]

Is there evidence to suggest that standard immune response to coronaviruses doesn't apply to this particular strain?

[jlokier]

There was concern initially, and still somewhat, that it might not confer long-term immunity. Not everything does, even if your body fights something off in the short term.

This novel coronavirus is different enough from others, and the human body's response to it is very unusual, so it's reasonable to ask whether infection confers immunity.

People were quick to assume immunity at first, because that's what people want to be true. But it was recognised as a dangerous assumption, which has a realistic prospect of being wrong.

Some people end up with antibody levels too low to measure after infection, which adds more weight to the idea that they might not be immune afterwards. You could think of that as a level of evidence; certainly it comes under "we should take this seriously". (Fortunately the human body has other mechanisms for long-term immunity (T-cell memory), but that still needs to be studied.)

The difference between assumption and evidence on this is important because it strongly informs our models of its propagation, how many people will get it how fast, how best to contain and limit it, and whether people who have had can safely (for themselves and others) behave differently afterwards.

If you've had Covid-19 and you're still struggling with Long Covid 3-6 months later, you're going to want to know if there's a realistic chance you could catch it a second time, especially because by then you know you are one of those susceptible to awful symptoms. It's not enough to assume it's just like other coronaviruses - you will have personal experience that it isn't.

[dhimes]

I believe _jstreet is referring to the case of getting sick again if exposed to the coronavirus a second time. There are limited data, but so far it looks like the re-infection is less severe.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/27/corona...