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The absense of evidence is not evidence of absense. The article didn't provide any actual evidence of anything, just speculation. Surely studies have been done

The absense of evidence is not evidence of absense. The article didn't provide any actual evidence of anything, just speculation. Surely studies have been done by to test for antibodies vs immunity by now.

SidenKniffsBids 6y ago
"Dr Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist, doubted the value of antibody tests" I'm no expert, but usually antibodies mean your body can fight the virus, right?
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  From episode 594 of This Week in Virology[1]: Rich Condit: This raises the issue, again, just briefly, that I was going to comment on earlier. It came up two letters ago, the phrase "correlates of protection", which is a really slippery concept, because it's really easy to make the assumption that "oh, you make antibodies and that's it". No. Or, "you make antibodies to this particular protein, that's all you got to do." No. Immunity that confers protection can be much more complicated than that. Alan Dove: Everybody with HIV produces antibodies against HIV and they're great antibodies against the virus, and guess what: you still have HIV. So the antibodies in that case are not a correlate of protection. They're just something your body has done. On the other hand, if you're producing great antibodies against measles virus, you're probably protected. That's a very good correlate of protection. Condit: So figuring out what actually protects you with any particular pathogen is a critical issue and not straightforward. Brianne Barker: There have been a few times where we've mentioned "neutralizing antibodies" today. Neutralizing is one of the things antibodies can do. That means they can block viruses from getting in to cells or interacting with cells. And so sometimes the correlate is you have to make neutralizing antibodies, not just any old antibodies. [1] - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-594/ http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-594/ from about 1 hour and 7 minutes in

SidenKniffsBids 6y ago

"Dr Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist, doubted the value of antibody tests" I'm no expert, but usually antibodies mean your body can fight the virus, right?

pmoriarty 6y ago
From episode 594 of This Week in Virology[1]: Rich Condit: This raises the issue, again, just briefly, that I was going to comment on earlier. It came up two letters ago, the phrase "correlates of protection", which is a really slippery concept, because it's really easy to make the assumption that "oh, you make antibodies and that's it". No. Or, "you make antibodies to this particular protein, that's all you got to do." No. Immunity that confers protection can be much more complicated than that. Alan Dove: Everybody with HIV produces antibodies against HIV and they're great antibodies against the virus, and guess what: you still have HIV. So the antibodies in that case are not a correlate of protection. They're just something your body has done. On the other hand, if you're producing great antibodies against measles virus, you're probably protected. That's a very good correlate of protection. Condit: So figuring out what actually protects you with any particular pathogen is a critical issue and not straightforward. Brianne Barker: There have been a few times where we've mentioned "neutralizing antibodies" today. Neutralizing is one of the things antibodies can do. That means they can block viruses from getting in to cells or interacting with cells. And so sometimes the correlate is you have to make neutralizing antibodies, not just any old antibodies. [1] - http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-594/ http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-594/ from about 1 hour and 7 minutes in