
No evidence that people who have survived coronavirus have immunity - pmoriarty
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/17/no-evidence-people-have-survived-coronavirus-have-immunity-says/
======
FlyMoreRockets
The absense of evidence is not evidence of absense. The article didn't provide
any actual evidence of anything, just speculation. Surely studies have been
done by to test for antibodies vs immunity by now.

~~~
SidenKniffsBids
"Dr Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist, doubted the value of antibody
tests"

I'm no expert, but usually antibodies mean your body can fight the virus,
right?

~~~
pmoriarty
From episode 594 of _This Week in Virology_ [1]:

Rich Condit: _This raises the issue, again, just briefly, that I was going to
comment on earlier. It came up two letters ago, the phrase "correlates of
protection", which is a really slippery concept, because it's really easy to
make the assumption that "oh, you make antibodies and that's it". No. Or, "you
make antibodies to this particular protein, that's all you got to do." No.
Immunity that confers protection can be much more complicated than that._

Alan Dove: _Everybody with HIV produces antibodies against HIV and they 're
great antibodies against the virus, and guess what: you still have HIV. So the
antibodies in that case are not a correlate of protection. They're just
something your body has done. On the other hand, if you're producing great
antibodies against measles virus, you're probably protected. That's a very
good correlate of protection._

Condit: _So figuring out what actually protects you with any particular
pathogen is a critical issue and not straightforward._

Brianne Barker: _There have been a few times where we 've mentioned
"neutralizing antibodies" today. Neutralizing is one of the things antibodies
can do. That means they can block viruses from getting in to cells or
interacting with cells. And so sometimes the correlate is you have to make
neutralizing antibodies, not just any old antibodies._

[1] -
[http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-594/](http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-594/)
from about 1 hour and 7 minutes in

------
mrandish
Q: "Can you get Coronavirus twice?"

A: “If you get an infection, your immune system is revved up against that
virus,” Keiji Fukuda, director of Hong Kong University’s School of Public
Health, told the Los Angeles Times. “To get reinfected again when you’re in
that situation would be quite unusual unless your immune system was not
functioning right.”

[https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-
being/prevention-c...](https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-
being/prevention-cures/487436-can-you-get-coronavirus-twice)

* In a hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Thursday, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, was asked if people who have contracted the virus might now be immune. “We haven’t formally proved it, but it is strongly likely that that’s the case,” Fauci said. “Because if this acts like any other virus, once you recover, you won’t get reinfected.”

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?470277-1/federal-health-
offici...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?470277-1/federal-health-officials-
testify-coronavirus-outbreak-response)

* From the paper: "Antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 patients." "The positive rate for IgG reached 100% around 20 days after symptoms onset. The median day of seroconversion for both lgG and IgM was 13 days after symptoms onset. Seroconversion of IgM occurred at the same time, or earlier, or later than that of IgG. IgG levels in 100% patients (19/19) entered a platform within 6 days after seroconversion."

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.18.20038018v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.18.20038018v1)

Study - Reinfection could not occur in SARS-CoV-2 infected rhesus macaques.
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226v1)

------
8bitsrule
_WHO officials say it 's unclear whether recovered coronavirus patients are
immune to second infection_

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/13/who-officials-say-its-
unclea...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/13/who-officials-say-its-unclear-
whether-recovered-coronavirus-patients-are-immune-to-second-infection.html)

"A preliminary study of patients in Shanghai found that some patients had 'no
detectable antibody response' while others had a very high response, said Dr.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's lead scientist on Covid-19. Whether the patients who
had a strong antibody response were immune to a second infection is 'a
separate question,' she added."

------
hatenberg
We don't know yet. Most press articles are reporting experiments or are
clutching at straws of hope.

Is it likely there is at least some protection? Yes. At the same time there is
reason to be cautious - the virus has been observed attacking and successfully
entering T-helper cells and that does carry the potential for some really ugly
long effects.

Now of course the whole herd immunity thing had become a political matter and
in the US that means science goes right out of the window in favour of
left/right blinders

