Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid • Hacker News Board

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#21

Post by kiba » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #5

mikeyouse wrote: post #2

Finally some glimmers of hope in moving past Covid.. if Omicron continues on its current track of highly infectious but less serious —- and infection confers reactive immunity to a variety of strains, we could be closer to the endemic but manageable end game. Good vaccines + mild severity illness are basically the best case. What a stroke of luck that we are here vs a more infectious strain of Delta or some other nig…

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown. Delta also had lower mortality than the first wave: this was confirmed by some fact-checkers and not by others (depending on how alarmist the fact-checker is) but looking at numbers, i…

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown.

A lockdown is probably impractical at this point, but we are stuck with a disease that will be a health burden on humanity that will be difficult to eliminate.

For example, if a disease kills 40,000 people per year. That's 400,000 people in a decade. A drop in the bucket of humanity for sure, but that's about a city size population. That's not counting the collectively lost days in term of feeling terrible.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#22

Post by epgui » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #19

epgui wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what you mean. I believe (and at least I was hoping that) my comment was helpful.

Your comment was made intending to shut down discussion by appealing to authority rather than engaging in the substance of the discussion. Note that the last large paragraph you wrote which does engage with the discussion was added via an edit. This was the entirety of your original post: “{{citation needed}} My point is that this is unsubstantiated.”

I was not "appealing to authority". The fact that I'm an expert in the field is, imo, valuable meta-information.

I weigh people's opinions differently if they're rooted in expertise than if they're random anonymous people on the internet. Do what you want with that information, and please forgive my hasty edits: sometimes when I read back what I wrote, I notice that I'm missing something. There's no bad faith there.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#23

Post by ummonk » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #12

mikeyouse wrote: post #2

Finally some glimmers of hope in moving past Covid.. if Omicron continues on its current track of highly infectious but less serious —- and infection confers reactive immunity to a variety of strains, we could be closer to the endemic but manageable end game. Good vaccines + mild severity illness are basically the best case. What a stroke of luck that we are here vs a more infectious strain of Delta or some other nig…

>What a stroke of luck that we are here vs a more infectious strain of Delta or some other nightmare that would keep this rolling. How do we know we won't end up with that? Omicron evolved from Beta, which had pretty well disappeared when Omicron sprung up.

The better omicron is at spreading the more people it will confer natural / hybrid immunity to, reducing the dangers of a future variant.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#24

Post by jawns » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #3

So the long Covid we’ve been afraid of for our children this whole time has actually been long term immunity? How ironic that our own push to vaccinate and save our children could put them in a worse position immunity-wise. Like rain on your wedding day.

Is there any reason to assume that initial infection with Covid can't cause both immunity against subsequent infection AND long Covid symptoms?

Think about how chicken pox works. You get infected, you deal with (usually but not always) mild symptoms, and then you don't get chicken pox again. But you are susceptible to shingles later in life.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#25

Post by ummonk » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

epgui wrote: post #13

Amezarak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question ever since it became clear that this coronavirus was endemic has been what a "manageable end game" is: that is, what level of risk and mortality are we prepared to accept, given that deaths from Covid will never be zero. This is, in my opinion, the primary underlying disagreement. Some people think that no amount of deaths from Covid is acceptable. Some people believe that even the peak pandemic mortalit…

And from my point of view as someone in the field, arguments on either side are almost always based on an intuitive gut feeling about morality. Very few people actually try to wrangle with putting numbers on the cost (in dollars) of a human life, or the economic burden of disease. There are no right or wrong numbers, but only if you begin there can you say you're rationally considering the economic or political trade…

I think you overestimate our ability to “eradicate it in absolutely no time”. Eliminating it from both human and animal reservoirs (and permanently quarantining any immunocompromised carriers) worldwide would be a long and arduous process.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#26

Post by ummonk » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #5

mikeyouse wrote: post #2

Finally some glimmers of hope in moving past Covid.. if Omicron continues on its current track of highly infectious but less serious —- and infection confers reactive immunity to a variety of strains, we could be closer to the endemic but manageable end game. Good vaccines + mild severity illness are basically the best case. What a stroke of luck that we are here vs a more infectious strain of Delta or some other nig…

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown. Delta also had lower mortality than the first wave: this was confirmed by some fact-checkers and not by others (depending on how alarmist the fact-checker is) but looking at numbers, i…

Delta had equal or higher severity per infection than alpha which in turn had higher severity than the original variant. It just had lower mortality than the first wave because people had higher preexisting immunity, treatment had improved, and some of the most vulnerable had already been culled from the herd.

You have to compare between two variants at the same time, not against previous waves. Omicron is the first major variant to actually be less severe on this metric.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#27

Post by epgui » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #25

epgui wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And from my point of view as someone in the field, arguments on either side are almost always based on an intuitive gut feeling about morality. Very few people actually try to wrangle with putting numbers on the cost (in dollars) of a human life, or the economic burden of disease. There are no right or wrong numbers, but only if you begin there can you say you're rationally considering the economic or political trade…

I think you overestimate our ability to “eradicate it in absolutely no time”. Eliminating it from both human and animal reservoirs (and permanently quarantining any immunocompromised carriers) worldwide would be a long and arduous process.

You make a great point about animal reservoirs, but the transmission bandwidth between humans and animals is afaik much lower than between humans. If you accept this assumption, and if we also assume that we really wanted to eradicate this thing, we could limit human transmission such as to reduce Rt well below 1 by implementing well-coordinated and strict policies.

Then you're left with the "leaky bucket" of transmission between humans and animals... But this is a known vulnerable point which could be monitored effectively and very cheaply.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#28

Post by heurisko » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

chana_masala wrote: post #15

epgui wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"immune response from the vaccine is lower than from just getting covid" {{citation needed}} My point is that this is unsubstantiated. And it does make a big difference, because this reduces the likelihood of children going through multiple periods of infectivity: the fewer times children are infectious to others, on average, the more herd immunity we have, collectively, against SARS-CoV-2.

I would agree with the other sibling reply that asking for citation for natural immunity vs vaccine protection is a bit like asking for a citation for claiming that frozen water floats. Sure, you could prove it but it's a well accepted understanding in epidemiology and virology. It's only lately been.... Politicized.

I was reading this article recently about natural vs vaccine immunity (mostly in adults I think). Didn't seem to reach any strong conclusions either way.

> “It appears from the literature that natural infection provides immunity, but that immunity is seemingly not as strong and may not be as long lasting as that provided by the vaccine...

> But not everyone agrees with this interpretation. “The data we have right now suggests that there probably isn’t a whole lot of difference” in terms of immunity to the spike protein

> Memoli highlights real world data such as the Cleveland Clinic study18 and points out that while “vaccines are focused on only that tiny portion of immunity that can be induced” by the spike, someone who has had covid-19 was exposed to the whole virus, “which would likely offer a broader based immunity” that would be more protective against variants. The laboratory study offered by the FDA22 “only has to do with very specific antibodies to a very specific region of the virus [the spike],” says Memoli. “Claiming this as data supporting that vaccines are better than natural immunity is shortsighted and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the complexity of immunity to respiratory viruses.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#29

Post by tomwojcik » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #3

So the long Covid we’ve been afraid of for our children this whole time has actually been long term immunity? How ironic that our own push to vaccinate and save our children could put them in a worse position immunity-wise. Like rain on your wedding day.

No post body was provided.

Re: Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

#30

Post by indigochill » Fri, Dec 24, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #21

jokethrowaway wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown. Delta also had lower mortality than the first wave: this was confirmed by some fact-checkers and not by others (depending on how alarmist the fact-checker is) but looking at numbers, i…

Indeed! I really hope governments will start recognising this and give us back our freedom. Media messages and restrictions are still pretty negative, despite the lack of severity. I don't know how can they talk about another lockdown. A lockdown is probably impractical at this point, but we are stuck with a disease that will be a health burden on humanity that will be difficult to eliminate. For example, if a diseas…

> For example, if a disease kills 40,000 people per year. That's 400,000 people in a decade. A drop in the bucket of humanity for sure, but that's about a city size population. That's not counting the collectively lost days in term of feeling terrible.

Heart disease kills 659,000 people a year in the US alone (https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm), but for some reason we're not having COVID-level panic about it.

I'm struggling to find annual statistics for COVID, but I did find an article written September '21 stating there had been over 630,000 COVID deaths in the US since the start of 2020, so that's over a year and a half-ish, so a bit less than heart disease.

Of course, heart disease isn't contagious (at least not in the traditional sense - genetics and lifestyle factors could be considered contagious if you're flexible with the term), but it's also a cause of death we've grown disconcertingly accustomed to for how prevalent it is. I expect once this outbreak has run its course, we'll probably see annual COVID deaths settle at a much lower number thanks to vaccinations/immunity. I'm not sure when we'll come to accept it as just another risk of life, though.