4 ms·

I remember reading they expect immunity to last as little as 6 months for Covid-19, found this paper about the SARS outbreak of 2002 which was also a type of co

• ohazi 7y ago
  Wikipedia-grade non-biologist here, so again, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. As far as I'm aware, antibodies don't stick around after they're no longer needed... They're produced by B cells when an infection is detected, and after an initial infection, some B cells that learned how to make effective antibodies stick around in your body as "memory B cells" - these will produce the same antibodies again upon reinfection. Counting antibodies a few years after a SARS infection doesn't seem like it would tell you much about immunity.
  • Pepe1vo 7y ago
    It's correct that the memory cells in your body will last a long time. However, (I think) what the parent is getting at is that within a relatively short amount of time the virus will have mutated just enough to evade detection by those memory cells.
    • PaulKeeble 7y ago
      The other four coronavirus' that form part of what we call the common cold all mutate readily and come back and reinfect us year after year. This one could be different but there is plenty of good historical reason to believe it will be like the others.
• ShorsHammer 7y ago
  Just to note if you are going to use SARS as a comparison: SARS-CoV-1 completely disappeared after two flu seasons and hasn't been seen in decades now.