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Okay, first of all: it is 100% true that getting infected with COVID-19 does not provide immunity. There have been two cases identified of people who got reinfe

Okay, first of all: it is 100% true that getting infected with COVID-19 does not provide immunity. There have been two cases identified of people who got reinfected after a full recovery https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/another-covid-19-reinfection-this-time-second-infection-was-more-severe/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/another-covid-19-rei... Second of all, this is not how vaccines work. Recovery from an illness does not mean that your immune system was maximally effective: a weak immune response coupled with anti-viral medication and hospital treatment could mean that your immune system is not equipped to fight the virus a second time. This happens often with flus and colds.

anonymousiam 6y ago
The reinfections were likely from a genetically different strain. So was Trump more right or more wrong with his simplified message? I would say that if he tested negative, he would be unable to transmit infection so that part would be true. I would say that he could not be infected (with the same strain) so that would be also true. I don't believe any sensible person believes that they become immune to all strains after recovering from one, and I do not believe that Trump was saying this. Do you?
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > I would say that if he tested negative, he would be unable to transmit infection so that part would be true. This has not, to my knowledge, happened yet. > I don't believe any sensible person believes that they become immune to all strains after recovering from one, and I do not believe that Trump was saying this. Do you? I certainly do believe that the message trump intends to convey is that he is immune to the coronavirus and can no longer be re-infected period.
- bduerst 6y ago
  Not really, given that the genetic strains are pretty well tracked and regionally locked. It's more likely that the reinfections came from different immune responses, where the first infection was beat with a cytotoxic T-cell response (viral defense) but not an antibody response (viral and bacterial defense), the latter of which increases immunity with antibodies.
  - anonymousiam 6y ago
    Could you please post a source for SARS-Cov-19 genetic strain tracking? Are all of the testing facilities doing gene sequencing on their positive results? The re-infection cases that I read about were shown to have been from different strains. Perhaps this is not the common case, but without more information, I am reluctant to accept your statement at face value.
joshuamorton 6y ago
This isn't a particularly great argument (and is scientifically dubious). There are different strains of flus, colds, and recently, a few different strains of coronavirus. You can't generally be reinfected by the same strain. What can happen is that new strains can infect you. There are tons of cold strains around, and the flu mutates quickly enough that each year we get a new one, so vaccines have to be redeveloped for each new round of mutations. Coronavirus is the same way, except that as far as I know, it mutates much more slowly than cold and flu viruses, meaning that vaccines (and having gotten it once) will be equally and more effective than flu or cold vaccines.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  > You can't generally be reinfected by the same strain. Unless the word "generally" is doing a lot of work in this sentence - YES YOU CAN be reinfected by the same strain. It's called "homologous reinfection": the person's natural immune response is not always up to the task of actually providing immunity to a specific viral strain, and that exact same viral strain can reinfect the patient even immediately after recovery. This idea that the human immune response is always 100% effective (assuming the patient survives) is frankly a bizarre misconception: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3863957/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3863957/
  - anonymousiam 6y ago
    So you are agreeing with the statement, and describing a rare outlier exception. I believe the number of documented Covid-19 re-infections is very small, and that one (1) person has died after re-infection. Statistically speaking, we're still up in the six sigma range of people who have not been re-infected. This (statistics) is the basis of public health policy.
knaq 6y ago
That is not a reasonable way to evaluate the situation. Sure, some people have broken immune systems, and there can be a new and different virus that evolves from the old one but doesn't earn a distinct name. That doesn't count. He is immune. Similarly, we say that cars can cross the Golden Gate Bridge, despite the fact that the bridge could be destroyed (by bombing for example) or that one could call the NASA crawler-transporter a "car" that is 90 feet wide. Absurd, exotic, and rare possibilities don't change the basic truth. Vaccines do work like getting the illness, or less so. The illness is nearly certain to provide long-term immunity, but a vaccine is not quite so likely. Those who can't generate immunity will survive the vaccine but not the illness.

anonymousiam 6y ago

The reinfections were likely from a genetically different strain. So was Trump more right or more wrong with his simplified message? I would say that if he tested negative, he would be unable to transmit infection so that part would be true. I would say that he could not be infected (with the same strain) so that would be also true. I don't believe any sensible person believes that they become immune to all strains after recovering from one, and I do not believe that Trump was saying this. Do you?

joshuamorton 6y ago
> I would say that if he tested negative, he would be unable to transmit infection so that part would be true. This has not, to my knowledge, happened yet. > I don't believe any sensible person believes that they become immune to all strains after recovering from one, and I do not believe that Trump was saying this. Do you? I certainly do believe that the message trump intends to convey is that he is immune to the coronavirus and can no longer be re-infected period.
bduerst 6y ago
Not really, given that the genetic strains are pretty well tracked and regionally locked. It's more likely that the reinfections came from different immune responses, where the first infection was beat with a cytotoxic T-cell response (viral defense) but not an antibody response (viral and bacterial defense), the latter of which increases immunity with antibodies.
- anonymousiam 6y ago
  Could you please post a source for SARS-Cov-19 genetic strain tracking? Are all of the testing facilities doing gene sequencing on their positive results? The re-infection cases that I read about were shown to have been from different strains. Perhaps this is not the common case, but without more information, I am reluctant to accept your statement at face value.

joshuamorton 6y ago

This isn't a particularly great argument (and is scientifically dubious). There are different strains of flus, colds, and recently, a few different strains of coronavirus. You can't generally be reinfected by the same strain. What can happen is that new strains can infect you. There are tons of cold strains around, and the flu mutates quickly enough that each year we get a new one, so vaccines have to be redeveloped for each new round of mutations. Coronavirus is the same way, except that as far as I know, it mutates much more slowly than cold and flu viruses, meaning that vaccines (and having gotten it once) will be equally and more effective than flu or cold vaccines.

ojnabieoot 6y ago
> You can't generally be reinfected by the same strain. Unless the word "generally" is doing a lot of work in this sentence - YES YOU CAN be reinfected by the same strain. It's called "homologous reinfection": the person's natural immune response is not always up to the task of actually providing immunity to a specific viral strain, and that exact same viral strain can reinfect the patient even immediately after recovery. This idea that the human immune response is always 100% effective (assuming the patient survives) is frankly a bizarre misconception: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3863957/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3863957/
- anonymousiam 6y ago
  So you are agreeing with the statement, and describing a rare outlier exception. I believe the number of documented Covid-19 re-infections is very small, and that one (1) person has died after re-infection. Statistically speaking, we're still up in the six sigma range of people who have not been re-infected. This (statistics) is the basis of public health policy.

knaq 6y ago

That is not a reasonable way to evaluate the situation. Sure, some people have broken immune systems, and there can be a new and different virus that evolves from the old one but doesn't earn a distinct name. That doesn't count. He is immune. Similarly, we say that cars can cross the Golden Gate Bridge, despite the fact that the bridge could be destroyed (by bombing for example) or that one could call the NASA crawler-transporter a "car" that is 90 feet wide. Absurd, exotic, and rare possibilities don't change the basic truth. Vaccines do work like getting the illness, or less so. The illness is nearly certain to provide long-term immunity, but a vaccine is not quite so likely. Those who can't generate immunity will survive the vaccine but not the illness.