
'No Evidence' yet That Recovered Covid-19 Patients Are Immune, WHO Says - btilly
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/25/844939777/no-evidence-that-recovered-covid-19-patients-are-immune-who-says
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rogerkirkness
WHO are such a worthless disaster at this point. There are three options:
immune for life, immune for X period, where X is the period where antibodies
exceed viral load of inbound virus, or permanent viral latency. Look at other
coronaviruses, take a best guess, rapidly pursue clarity, make the right trade
offs in you area based on available data. Given how easily spread this thing
is, it won't take long for the answer to be obvious.

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eesmith
Those three options can be very blurred.

Some people may have different responses, including due to different age,
genetics, and health.

Some strains may have different results than others.

Reducing all those variations to one of three fundamental descriptions may
therefore be highly misleading.

While I agree with your statement "look at other coronavirus ... based on
available data", I'll point out that there simply isn't enough data to
determine if an "immunity passport" is operationally meaningful because, to
quote the NPR piece quoting WHO, "No study has evaluated whether the presence
of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity to subsequent infection by this
virus in humans."

What do you do when there isn't data? Issue immunity passports on the untested
hypothesis that it will be fine?

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danieltillett
There literally massive evidence - second infections with SARS-CoV-2 are rare.
This would only be the cases if the initial infection provided protection.

What is more of a question is how long this immunity lasts. The evidence to
date is not long just like the other coronaviruses.

