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Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive immunity after Covid

nature.com

81–90 of 285 posts

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

#81

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…

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…

You've been downvoted, but you're not wrong. Witness the number of people who have left California.

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

#82

Serious question: should we let this more infectious but less dangerous run its course to achieve natural immunity? What are the arguments for and against this strategy? I know that if it is 5 times less likely to put people in hospitals but 10 times more transmissible then there will be 2 times more people in hospitals, but are there more arguments?

Yes. We should do that. We won't.

Pro: everyone is fine, the hospitals aren't overwhelmed, the anti-vaxxers will be fine along with everyone else.

Con: can't speak with disgust and disdain anymore to those who disagree with your medical opinions, or have concerns with how quickly you're forcing your experimental medications on the entire planet.

Not going to happen. I've already seen the usual suspects talking about how we need bigger, better, stronger vaccines for Omicron.

We're pretty excited by this RNA vaccine tech, and we're going to use it, no matter what happens.

There's too much money and too much political power on the pro-vax anti-immune-system side of things.

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

#83
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.

Can you provide some data about this?

Others replying to you have provided links showing that very few children die of Covid. Do you have specific links about long term disability DUE TO covid (not a disability caused by a car accident where the child was also found to have covid, for example).

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

#84
post #71
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would seem to make sense if covid displaced flu entirely. But flu + equivalently harmful covid is twice as bad as historical flu.

Influenza B is thought to have been made extinct recently due to the pressures introduced by SARS-CoV-2 https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211025/covid-pandemic-may-...

Wow, webmd made it really hard to find the primary source for that.

To be clear, they are attributing this drop off of this flu strain to be likely due to pandemic mitigation efforts, as well as maybe lucky timing and some specifics of how this strain spreads

Since it doesn’t seem plausible to repeat the wide scale pandemic mitigation controls any time soon, I doubt we can keep wiping out flu strains, but we could certainly reduce the damage the flu does if we want to

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4

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

#85
post #45
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hopefully... the history of diseases before vaccines (polio, measles, smallpox, black plague, etc) doesn't exactly fill me with a lot of hope for it just becoming less deadly naturally, even if there are examples (Spanish flu) where they have.

What are the histories of the other coronaviruses? And would those histories be more relevant than histories of non coronaviruses?

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

#86

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…

The primary concern form day one has been the capacity of our healthcare systems. "Peak pandemic mortality" includes scores of people dying from unrelated illness due to lack of care. Does anyone truly think its acceptable to let people die in ambulances outside of hospitals because a highly contagious disease filled all the hospital beds and medical staff is too fatigued to work? Maybe people with a political axe to…

I think the real problem is that in most countries the healthcare system was "optimized" to such extent that even seasonal flu was almost clogging it every year. And now SURPRISE, any disease, even a tad bit more deadly and contagious than the seasonal flu would make it collapse. TOTALLY UNEXPECTED.

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

#87
post #52

So it's the same as other coronaviruses like HCoV-OC43. There's no vaccine available for those other ones so most of us get infected as youths, and the resulting immunity protects us as we age. But they can still be dangerous to immunologically naive older patients. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

it's been obvious since march of last year that this was the inevitable outcome of covid, yet we've spent nearly two years hand-wringing and fearmongering over it. it's the novelty of the virus combined with the general unpreparedness of our immune systems (obesity, sickness of all sorts, and age correlate with lowered immune preparedness) that's created this wave of initial severity as the virus works it's way to a steady-state similar to other coronaviruses.

most people had, and still have, very little idea about how these things work, yet grandstand and moralize on about ineffective but distruptive remediations like masks and lockdowns that they hear about via propagandized media. even vaccines need only be seriously considered by the aforementioned immune-deficient (obese, elderly, etc.), not everyone (this article providing that evidence for children specifically).

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

#88
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But hey, grandma gets to live another year now. Who cares if the poor family never recovers after financial crisis.

That sounds like a good reason to re-think ouf current medical and insurance industry, not a good reason to throw grandma to the wolves.

Otherwise, the inevitable end of this logic is folks committing plausibly deniable suicide to get an insurance payout.

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

#89

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…

The primary concern form day one has been the capacity of our healthcare systems. "Peak pandemic mortality" includes scores of people dying from unrelated illness due to lack of care. Does anyone truly think its acceptable to let people die in ambulances outside of hospitals because a highly contagious disease filled all the hospital beds and medical staff is too fatigued to work? Maybe people with a political axe to…

No, lots of people do actually think that, but we believe that three main methods can be employed to mitigate this:

1. aggressive triage based on chances and QALY remaining

2. increased healthcare funding

3. voluntary isolation of individuals who see lockdown as being preferable to their personal coronavirus risk

Will it result in more deaths than February 2020? Sure. But we don't have that choice because sars2 exists now.

We think it's better to ration healthcare and therefore doom an unlucky minority, versus rationing life itself for everyone (via lockdowns and restrictions) and slow killing everyone.

As far as I can tell, most of the lockdown debate centres around an erroneous idea that we can just do X, Y, Z, and then immunosuppressed Harriet can rejoin the world and avoid contracting coronavirus.

But she just can't. Even the original strain would have eventually infected her with high probability unless we continued to cycle lockdowns or she voluntarily isolated.

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

#90
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully... the history of diseases before vaccines (polio, measles, smallpox, black plague, etc) doesn't exactly fill me with a lot of hope for it just becoming less deadly naturally, even if there are examples (Spanish flu) where they have.

What are the histories of the other coronaviruses? And would those histories be more relevant than histories of non coronaviruses?

Another coronavirus probably caused a worldwide pandemic starting in 1889. It killed a lot of people, but the survivors gained natural immunity which gave them significant protection against symptomatic reinfections. The same virus HCoV-OC43 is still endemic today. This seems relevant to the current pandemic.

https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/175...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

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