Live data from Hacker News

Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

nature.com

31–40 of 285 posts

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

#31
post #16
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biochemist here: your claim that vaccination puts children in a worse position is neither supported by this paper, nor substantiated by any other data point to the best of my knowledge.

The paper itself asks the question I’ve suggested if you read between the lines: “COVID-19 vaccines are now being administered widely to adult populations and are also being delivered to children in some countries. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the profile of SARS-CoV-2-specific immune responses in children after natural infection to inform vaccination strategy.”

You can "read between the lines" many different things, none of which are said explicitly. Scientists love to be explicit whenever they can.

I don't see this as being indicative of any particular policy, but I see it as a data point which could inform decisions such as:

- whether boosters should be given to children, or whether they should be given them last in line

- whether we should allocate limited supplies to children, or to other vulnerable populations (eg.: vaccine inequity around the world)

- whether we need the same schedule for children and adults

- ...

Again, I don't think this paper pushes too hard either way on any of these types of questions, it's a data point in a sea of data.

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

#33

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…

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…

I disagree.

I think the endgame is clear in the US. Most states have dropped all restrictions and those that haven’t will suffer economically and politically until they drop their restrictions. The only question is how much economic and political suffering individual cities and states will tolerate.

Virginia voters threw out their entire Democrat government and governor and will likely join the list of states banning restrictions.

In the end I don’t think it will be about Covid at all. One by one we’ll move on because the people will demand an end to restrictions.

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

#34

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…

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…

> what level of risk and mortality are we prepared to accept

IMO, the rational answer to this question is 'the same risk and mortality that we have already accepted from influenza.' There is a lot of variability there, of course, but it is way above zero in any case.

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

#35
post #4
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.

Biochemist here: your claim that vaccination puts children in a worse position is neither supported by this paper, nor substantiated by any other data point to the best of my knowledge.

Boys at least appear to be more in danger from the vaccine than the virus.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...

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

#36
So one of the main conclusions is that SARS-CoV-2 in children produces antibody responses to all the other human coronaviruses (this happens in adults too, but the effect is stronger in children)

In the discussion section they speculate that maybe recent infection with these other coronaviruses could give some level of protection against SARS-CoV-2, and that this could possibly explain some of the unusual-ness of the age-severity relationship, I.e. that very young children are not hit as hard by SARS-CoV-2 as by other diseases like the flu (relatively). That would be really interesting to see investigated carefully

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

#37

We're going to look back on our treatment of children these past 2 years as one of the greatest blunders in the history of public health policy.

We sacrificed the mental health of the young for the physical health of the old.

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

#38
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.

Quoted post unavailable.

And the most unverifiable scare tactic comment of this post award goes to...

Newborns with serious post-covid issues, eh? Do you have any proof whatsoever of this or your other claims or are we just taking your word on it.

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

#39
post #27
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 transmi…

This is completely unrealistic. Effective continuous monitoring for animal to human transmission would never be cheap. In much of the developing world it's not even remotely feasible. Have you ever been to places like rural Mexico?

The virus is here to stay. Eradication is a total fantasy, just a distraction and waste of time.

Post reply on HN