5 ms·

Note that this does not mean that immunity is also fading. Antibodies don't exist all the time in the bloodstream: immunological memory (in the case of antibodi

Note that this does not mean that immunity is also fading. Antibodies don't exist all the time in the bloodstream: immunological memory (in the case of antibodies, in the form of memory B cells) is what can prompt a quick response in case of reinfection. In fact, there isn't enough data to even know how long immunity is. And let's not get started with T cell immunity, which seems to play a role with this virus and is not touched by such a study.

zpeti 6y ago
I am absolutely baffled at how the media is covering this study, it's basically "front page" or I've seen it as the number 1 news item. Yet this doesn't mean anything as they didn't study T-cell response, and many other things. It is absolutely ridiculous fearmongering, and clickbait, by a top university + the press. As far as I know there has been 1 reinfection case in the entire US, and that was questionable as the guy tested positive the second time a few days after testing negative, so its possible it was a false positive. 1 case, in the ENTIRE US. It is ridiculous to suggest there isn't some sort of immunity. The virus has been around for 9 months now.
- sgt101 6y ago
  I listened to the lead of the study on the radio this morning - he certainly didn't suggest that there was "no immunity" and was careful about linking the fall in anti-bodies to immunity. I think it is clear that there is some connection though; not straightforward, but there is a link. On the other hand (as the scientist on the radio mentioned) apparently vaccines often work differently and it may be that they offer longer immunity.
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  The bigger question is how effective the acquired immunity is, and the only way to test it would be to infect a bunch of people who test positive for antibodies or reactive T cells. Pretty dangerous. Then you'd catalogue symptoms shown by those people held in quarantine, with different innoculum doses given including placebo. Somewhat similar to a phase 3 trial of a vaccine too, you can do it at the same time.
  - tim333 6y ago
    >the only way to test it would be to infect a bunch of people That's not actually true. You can get a database of people who've had it and follow up on them to see how they get on in terms of reinfection etc. I'm kind of curious in my own case - I had it in Apr, had a positive antibody test in Jul - if I'm getting further exposure and antibody top ups. Probably I am as a public transport user in London but there's a limited access to test labs and the like.
    - AstralStorm 6y ago
      That's insufficient as you cannot know if people got reinfected but had low symptoms. Further, you cannot know if these same people are infectious during some brief window. (Carriers.)
- DrBazza 6y ago
  The (British) press only ever reports bad news, or speculative good news. Science reporting is a joke at best. Example, the MMR vaccine "causes autism" (it doesn't), was front page news for months. When Andrew Wakefield was conclusively discredited, that barely made the front page in most newspapers, and the damage was done. Bad news sells unfortunately. Scientist: "My findings are meaningless if taken out of context." Media: Scientist claims "Findings are meaningless."
  - jonatron 6y ago
    See also: the Daily Mail's list of things that give or cure cancer. https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/
    - Macha 6y ago
      Put to song amusingly by comedian Russell Howard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3chJN9DCGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3chJN9DCGg
- eznzt 6y ago
  >It is absolutely ridiculous fearmongering, and clickbait Welcome to journalism!
- codeulike 6y ago
  Bad news travels ultra fast in this environment. And good news develops slowly. I've been following 'coronavirus good news' on twitter, it helps https://twitter.com/Coronavirusgoo1 https://twitter.com/Coronavirusgoo1
  - majewsky 6y ago
    This looks like great content, unfortunately with a terrible account name.
  - encom 6y ago
    “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.” ― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
  - bart_spoon 6y ago
    I highly recommend the r/COVID19 subreddit. It is more strictly moderated than r/coronavirus, and is focused on scientific publications and academic commentary over news articles. You also have a decent amount of users visiting there who have a lot of expertise in various related fields. The mood over there has been cautiously upbeat for a while now, at least in comparison to the tone often set by the mainstream media.
- neuronic 6y ago
  Welcome to 2020 where facts and responsibility are meaningless.
- cheph 6y ago
  > I am absolutely baffled at how the media is covering this study, it's basically "front page" or I've seen it as the number 1 news item. Rather on par with the coverage so far as far as I can tell. The media has been going on about "cases" (i.e. positive) tests and comparing absolute numbers between countries which do not have the same absolute numbers of people.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    Yep and using daily numbers instead of rolling averages. Awful.
    - andybak 6y ago
      Welcome to science reporting in general. Covid reporting hasn't been any worse (maybe even slightly better due to time available to become slightly familiar). Wait until a new paper mentioning Quantum Teleportation is published to see how bad things can really get.
      - js2 6y ago
        https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect
    - lbeltrame 6y ago
      On that topic, I found out that using specimen date instead of reporting date (for those health agencies that do that) gives you a far better picture of the trend, since reports can lag a lot due to testing bottlenecks.
- Vinnl 6y ago
  > As far as I know there has been 1 reinfection case in the entire US Wait, really? A recent article in the Dutch news [1] mentioned the first death by reinfection, and also mentioned that there were at the time 23 other reinfections were known worldwide. Seems odd that there'd be just a single American in there, given the number of infections in the US. [1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2352120-nederlandse-vrouw-overlijdt-na-tweede-besmetting-met-coronavirus.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2352120-nederlandse-vrouw-overlijdt-n...
- dt123 6y ago
  More Antivax fuel. Awesome...
- raducu 6y ago
  Just like "new study shows people are shedding coronavirus for months" when they are just saying people test positive for RT-PCR tests, without trying to cultivate the virus from those tested as "positive for months".
- sjg007 6y ago
  Get your facts straight. They sequenced the strains: 2 different strains. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30783-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
- tim333 6y ago
  I guess it's kind of interesting as a headline though they should point out that it doesn't mean immunity is falling. One thing that give me hope is the Singapore study that SARS 1 victims still had T cell immunity 17 years later.
- orwin 6y ago
  there is ~10 cases of confirmed reinfection in the world, and one death among them. Over what? Hundreds of millions of cases? So the only thing you can deduce is: some people might get reinfected by covid, the reinfection seems to be worse (at least in confirmed reinfection cases, but this is skewed because the only time we get reinfection cases is when people are put in a hospital, so...) Also antibody-based immunity should not fade that quick (less than a month for the elderly that died) so those are fringe cases and nothing else, and trying to make some sort of rule for reinfection less than a year before the patient 0 was even infected for the first time is a bad idea.
kmm 6y ago
Immunological memory has a few aspects, one of which is like you say the memory B cells, which take over from antibodies after a while. If I'm not mistaken however, there are also long-lived plasma cells which keep producing very low levels of antibodies for decades. In fact, with a single drop of blood, they can figure out every infection you've ever had [0] Still, it's perfectly normal for antibodies to wane after an infection. I'm unsure in general what to make of this study, maybe the number just drops under the limited sensitivity of their test. This study [1] finds that antibodies are stably produced for months after the infection 0: https://www.hhmi.org/news/your-viral-infection-history-single-drop-blood https://www.hhmi.org/news/your-viral-infection-history-singl... 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554472/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554472/

zpeti 6y ago

I am absolutely baffled at how the media is covering this study, it's basically "front page" or I've seen it as the number 1 news item. Yet this doesn't mean anything as they didn't study T-cell response, and many other things. It is absolutely ridiculous fearmongering, and clickbait, by a top university + the press. As far as I know there has been 1 reinfection case in the entire US, and that was questionable as the guy tested positive the second time a few days after testing negative, so its possible it was a false positive. 1 case, in the ENTIRE US. It is ridiculous to suggest there isn't some sort of immunity. The virus has been around for 9 months now.

sgt101 6y ago
I listened to the lead of the study on the radio this morning - he certainly didn't suggest that there was "no immunity" and was careful about linking the fall in anti-bodies to immunity. I think it is clear that there is some connection though; not straightforward, but there is a link. On the other hand (as the scientist on the radio mentioned) apparently vaccines often work differently and it may be that they offer longer immunity.
AstralStorm 6y ago
The bigger question is how effective the acquired immunity is, and the only way to test it would be to infect a bunch of people who test positive for antibodies or reactive T cells. Pretty dangerous. Then you'd catalogue symptoms shown by those people held in quarantine, with different innoculum doses given including placebo. Somewhat similar to a phase 3 trial of a vaccine too, you can do it at the same time.
- tim333 6y ago
  >the only way to test it would be to infect a bunch of people That's not actually true. You can get a database of people who've had it and follow up on them to see how they get on in terms of reinfection etc. I'm kind of curious in my own case - I had it in Apr, had a positive antibody test in Jul - if I'm getting further exposure and antibody top ups. Probably I am as a public transport user in London but there's a limited access to test labs and the like.
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    That's insufficient as you cannot know if people got reinfected but had low symptoms. Further, you cannot know if these same people are infectious during some brief window. (Carriers.)
DrBazza 6y ago
The (British) press only ever reports bad news, or speculative good news. Science reporting is a joke at best. Example, the MMR vaccine "causes autism" (it doesn't), was front page news for months. When Andrew Wakefield was conclusively discredited, that barely made the front page in most newspapers, and the damage was done. Bad news sells unfortunately. Scientist: "My findings are meaningless if taken out of context." Media: Scientist claims "Findings are meaningless."
- jonatron 6y ago
  See also: the Daily Mail's list of things that give or cure cancer. https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/ https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/
  - Macha 6y ago
    Put to song amusingly by comedian Russell Howard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3chJN9DCGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3chJN9DCGg
eznzt 6y ago
>It is absolutely ridiculous fearmongering, and clickbait Welcome to journalism!
codeulike 6y ago
Bad news travels ultra fast in this environment. And good news develops slowly. I've been following 'coronavirus good news' on twitter, it helps https://twitter.com/Coronavirusgoo1 https://twitter.com/Coronavirusgoo1
- majewsky 6y ago
  This looks like great content, unfortunately with a terrible account name.
- encom 6y ago
  “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.” ― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  I highly recommend the r/COVID19 subreddit. It is more strictly moderated than r/coronavirus, and is focused on scientific publications and academic commentary over news articles. You also have a decent amount of users visiting there who have a lot of expertise in various related fields. The mood over there has been cautiously upbeat for a while now, at least in comparison to the tone often set by the mainstream media.
neuronic 6y ago
Welcome to 2020 where facts and responsibility are meaningless.
cheph 6y ago
> I am absolutely baffled at how the media is covering this study, it's basically "front page" or I've seen it as the number 1 news item. Rather on par with the coverage so far as far as I can tell. The media has been going on about "cases" (i.e. positive) tests and comparing absolute numbers between countries which do not have the same absolute numbers of people.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  Yep and using daily numbers instead of rolling averages. Awful.
  - andybak 6y ago
    Welcome to science reporting in general. Covid reporting hasn't been any worse (maybe even slightly better due to time available to become slightly familiar). Wait until a new paper mentioning Quantum Teleportation is published to see how bad things can really get.
    - js2 6y ago
      https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    On that topic, I found out that using specimen date instead of reporting date (for those health agencies that do that) gives you a far better picture of the trend, since reports can lag a lot due to testing bottlenecks.
Vinnl 6y ago
> As far as I know there has been 1 reinfection case in the entire US Wait, really? A recent article in the Dutch news [1] mentioned the first death by reinfection, and also mentioned that there were at the time 23 other reinfections were known worldwide. Seems odd that there'd be just a single American in there, given the number of infections in the US. [1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2352120-nederlandse-vrouw-overlijdt-na-tweede-besmetting-met-coronavirus.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2352120-nederlandse-vrouw-overlijdt-n...
dt123 6y ago
More Antivax fuel. Awesome...
raducu 6y ago
Just like "new study shows people are shedding coronavirus for months" when they are just saying people test positive for RT-PCR tests, without trying to cultivate the virus from those tested as "positive for months".
sjg007 6y ago
Get your facts straight. They sequenced the strains: 2 different strains. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30783-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
tim333 6y ago
I guess it's kind of interesting as a headline though they should point out that it doesn't mean immunity is falling. One thing that give me hope is the Singapore study that SARS 1 victims still had T cell immunity 17 years later.
orwin 6y ago
there is ~10 cases of confirmed reinfection in the world, and one death among them. Over what? Hundreds of millions of cases? So the only thing you can deduce is: some people might get reinfected by covid, the reinfection seems to be worse (at least in confirmed reinfection cases, but this is skewed because the only time we get reinfection cases is when people are put in a hospital, so...) Also antibody-based immunity should not fade that quick (less than a month for the elderly that died) so those are fringe cases and nothing else, and trying to make some sort of rule for reinfection less than a year before the patient 0 was even infected for the first time is a bad idea.

kmm 6y ago

Immunological memory has a few aspects, one of which is like you say the memory B cells, which take over from antibodies after a while. If I'm not mistaken however, there are also long-lived plasma cells which keep producing very low levels of antibodies for decades. In fact, with a single drop of blood, they can figure out every infection you've ever had [0] Still, it's perfectly normal for antibodies to wane after an infection. I'm unsure in general what to make of this study, maybe the number just drops under the limited sensitivity of their test. This study [1] finds that antibodies are stably produced for months after the infection 0: https://www.hhmi.org/news/your-viral-infection-history-single-drop-blood https://www.hhmi.org/news/your-viral-infection-history-singl... 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554472/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7554472/