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Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

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Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#291

Post by qqqwerty »

ultralite wrote: post #286
qqqwerty wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the 3.5 million deaths were used as justification for certain societal responses. But if you like attacking straw men, who am I to stop you. It is a free country after all!

I expect it works both ways: I expect a weak natural immunity to COVID-19 would have been considered a political loss to some. I don't have sufficient expertise on the matter to hold strong positions either way.

As far as I am concerned, there was only one side that was trying to score political points. The other side was trying to do what was right based on the best evidence that we had at the time.

https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-covid-19-plan-maybe-...

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#292

Post by hanklazard »

pengaru wrote: post #245
seren wrote: post #86

From my understanding if you had an mRNA vaccine, your body was only exposed to an artificial spike protein, so effectively you have spike specific antibodies. On the other hand, if you had a real infection by the virus, you likely have antibodies for the spike protein and other part of the virus like the shell. So from my layman understanding, the immunity should be more resistant to a mutation of the spike protein.…

I thought it was sort of the other way around; that your immune system is keying into some fairly random and subjective set of dna features on the specific viral strain you've been infected with. But that with the mRNA vaccines, your body is being explicitly taught about the spike protein, nothing more, nothing less. So provided any future infection employs a spike protein, you have immunity. The question is, what ar…

Based on work from similar coronaviruses, the spike protein was quickly identified at the beginning of the pandemic as an important component for viral binding to the ACE-2 receptor. It is one protein component of the viral shell, but has proven to be an excellent target, given its induced immune response to the mRNA vaccines.

Covid will not be able to mutate away from using the spike protein, but it will continue to evolve mutations within the protein as it responds to selective pressure. Fortunately, when the body creates an adaptive immune response through antibody or the T-cell receptor, this response is polyclonal. Think of it as not a single antibody to spike but rather a population of antibodies, all targeting a variety of residues on the protein. This is why most immunologists are not terribly worried about the variants that have emerged wrecking all of our immunization efforts—those variants are usually based on just a couple of mutant residues and so will not (generally speaking) be able to evade the population of antibody and t-cell responses that have been generated. You may have heard about monoclonal antibody therapies to covid ... those, unfortunately, are very susceptible to mutation because if a critical targeted residue mutates, you could lose all efficacy of the drug.

The only answer to rapidly mutating pathogens is an entire inducible population of neutralizing proteins in each of us and it’s no coincidence that we have this defense. If we didn’t, our species could not be here right now.

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#293

Post by sdsaga12 »

Guvante wrote: post #269
xienze wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It almost seems like a lot of people don't want the data to indicate that natural immunity is strong and long lasting, even though the data shows that reinfection is extemely rare. I too remember when the concept of "natural immunity to Covid" was a wild, dangerous conspiracy theory, along with the "came out of the Wuhan lab" theory. Funny watching the narrative change in real time.

Technically the wild and crazy ones were "it was bio engineered" and "let's ignore it and gain herd immunity". The former was being touted as justification for violence against Asians and the latter would involve millions of deaths in most countries. Tens of millions world wide.

Approximately 3.5 million globally have died from covid according to the WHO: https://covid19.who.int/

If you include deaths from related factors, like increased poverty or unrest, I'm sure the numbers go up a bit, but not to tens of millions.

I don't state this as an attack, by the way. Covid and its entangled cultural and political issues are enormously emotionally charged, and, one way or another, that tends to skew our perception of even relatively simple facts.

One thing I think the Hacker News community does well, at least aspirationally, is try to keep sight of the fundamental technical details of issues. For a pandemic, having an accurate intuition of its scale falls into this category IMO.

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#294

Post by [deleted] »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #262
seren wrote: post #86

From my understanding if you had an mRNA vaccine, your body was only exposed to an artificial spike protein, so effectively you have spike specific antibodies. On the other hand, if you had a real infection by the virus, you likely have antibodies for the spike protein and other part of the virus like the shell. So from my layman understanding, the immunity should be more resistant to a mutation of the spike protein.…

> It is still possible it was a defective test the second time, and something else than Covid. Now that the whole world has gone banana over a virus outbreak, it's really important to look at and understand how these tests work. Just because she tested positive does not mean she was really sick with covid, nor does it mean that the test was defective if we assume she didn't have it. It's not an on/off thing, it depen…

[deleted]

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#295

Post by [deleted] »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #112
heyflyguy wrote: post #40

I am being shunned by my family because of my lack of interest in the vaccine. I've had COVID and recovered. I also don't get a flu shot each year. I really like not putting things into my body, especially when year after year I may or may not "catch" these things but if I do, I always recover. I act responsibly and do not go out when I am sick. However, none of these facts or articles such as this will ever effectiv…

People talked about 'saving granny' to get you to comply with Covid restrictions but now there's literally granny's dying in India and we're giving the vaccine to perfectly healthy people in America and no one gives it a second thought! Meanwhile, under 55 age group has a fatality chance of Covid that is less than dying in a car accident and will develop immunity after natural infection. And the under 55 age group ma…

[deleted]

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#296

Post by joemazerino »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #288
loveistheanswer wrote: post #189

It almost seems like a lot of people don't want the data to indicate that natural immunity is strong and long lasting, even though the data shows that reinfection is extemely rare. Similar to how so many people have been unwilling to even consider a lab leak was a possibility, until just now it seems, because that idea was heresy to the orthodox dogma that ordained Scientists are Saviors. Humans have equated sickness…

Or maybe some people thought that serious accusations like this require evidence and looked askance upon Trump's xenophobic blame-shifting and hate-mongering. "the China virus" he likes to say. And we see the consequences with old Asian ladies being punched in streets by young white thugs. I've personally always held it as a possibility. But no way I'll defend the Trump administration on this.

> And we see the consequences with old Asian ladies being punched in streets by young white thugs.

Speaking of hate-mongering..are we seeing the same data on anti-Asian attacks?

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#297

Post by Scoundreller »

dmlittle wrote: post #275
loveistheanswer wrote: post #189

It almost seems like a lot of people don't want the data to indicate that natural immunity is strong and long lasting, even though the data shows that reinfection is extemely rare. Similar to how so many people have been unwilling to even consider a lab leak was a possibility, until just now it seems, because that idea was heresy to the orthodox dogma that ordained Scientists are Saviors. Humans have equated sickness…

I’m not sure if all natural immunities are stronger, or even strong. I’m not denying those exists but I also personally know 3 people that have gotten COVID-19 twice. If natural immunity only protects against a particular strain and the vaccine against a group of them I think that’s still a solid reason to continue pushing for people to get vaccinated.

The vaccines (so far) all use sequences of the spike protein from an early sample of COVID-19. They just make spike proteins and your body sees it and becomes immune to it. They've made some modifications, but for better stability/structure outside of the virus, but not (yet) to address variants.

If anything, infection from current circulating virus is more relevantly effective (but obviously more dangerous than the vaccines).

What I wonder is how much post-infection immunity might be from something other than just the spike protein, and therefore a bit more flexible against new variants than our strictly 'detect the spike protein' vaccination programmes.

And how 'flexible' immunity is from infection vs. vaccination.

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#298

Post by treeman79 »

loveistheanswer wrote: post #189

It almost seems like a lot of people don't want the data to indicate that natural immunity is strong and long lasting, even though the data shows that reinfection is extemely rare. Similar to how so many people have been unwilling to even consider a lab leak was a possibility, until just now it seems, because that idea was heresy to the orthodox dogma that ordained Scientists are Saviors. Humans have equated sickness…

Enough time has passed that social distancing, masks, vaccines have become moral issues to many.

“Only bad people don’t wear masks” mentality. Completely separate from if they are still needed or not.

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#299

Post by 8note »

ultralite wrote: post #268
DC-3 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural immunity was never a dangerous conspiracy theory. It was simply the case that it was too early to have blind faith in it. No-one credible ever denied that it was possible or even that it was likely that people would gain natural immunity.

> No-one credible ever denied that it was possible or even that it was likely that people would gain natural immunity. Let's not rewrite history. It was clear that the media (e.g. BBC, below) chose to amplify messages that discredited natural immunity. [Prof Wendy Barclay said:] "On the balance of evidence, I would say it would look as if immunity declines away at the same rate as antibodies decline away, and that th…

The messages I saw were that achieving herd immunity through infections would result in a whole ton of deaths.

Re: Had Covid? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

#300

Post by __blockcipher__ »

Scoundreller wrote: post #297
dmlittle wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if all natural immunities are stronger, or even strong. I’m not denying those exists but I also personally know 3 people that have gotten COVID-19 twice. If natural immunity only protects against a particular strain and the vaccine against a group of them I think that’s still a solid reason to continue pushing for people to get vaccinated.

The vaccines (so far) all use sequences of the spike protein from an early sample of COVID-19. They just make spike proteins and your body sees it and becomes immune to it. They've made some modifications, but for better stability/structure outside of the virus, but not (yet) to address variants. If anything, infection from current circulating virus is more relevantly effective (but obviously more dangerous than the…

Yes exactly this. Naturalistic immunity learns a more diverse set of epitopes. Whereas the artificial-spike-protein immunity is learning just the S protein. The spike is super important but it’s not the only source of epitopes. And I’ve seen some papers on immunology of SARS-2 that do show a lot of activity that’s not based around the spike protein.

This notion that natural immunity is “worse” or won’t be able to handle the “variants” is completely contrary to the evidence as well as just basic napkin immunology. It’s, IMO, purely an idea spread implicitly through media headlines with the obvious intent of convincing people who don’t benefit from the vaccine (those who have already recovered successfully from COVID-19) to get it. I’ve talked to multiple friends in real life who had PCR-confirmed COVID/19, recovered, and got the vaccine anyway (which of course had even worse side effects than the usual second shot syndrome since the immune system had already been sensitized to SARS-2), and upon my prodding they basically all seemed to think they needed the vaccine to be protected against “the variants”.

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