3 ms·
You (or rather the writer of that news piece) apparently confused antibodies and immunity. Not only are antibodies not the only mechanism of the adaptive immune
by anoncake 6y ago
You (or rather the writer of that news piece) apparently confused antibodies and immunity. Not only are antibodies not the only mechanism of the adaptive immune system, T cells are harder to test for but equally important. Also it's normal that the body doesn't keep them around indefinitely after an exception. It creates memory cells and quickly recreates antibodies and T cells when needed.
There is evidence that reinfection does occasionally happen, but none that it happens frequently enough to worry about. The paper you've linked mentions four cases.
- chaostheory 6y agoYou're right, but are there any peer reviewed papers that back up your argument? > The paper you've linked mentions four cases. Those are confirmed cases. That doesn't mean there's only 4 total.
- anoncake 6y agoI don't know if there are any papers for Covid in particular but it's how the immune system works in general. AFAIK there is no reason to assume it Covid differs in that respect. > Those are confirmed cases. That doesn't mean there's only 4 total. I'm sure there are more, but how many? There have been hundreds of millions of infections (according to the WHO). If there are a few dozen or even a thousand reinfections among them, it's not a phenomenon we need to worry about. We could assume that reinfections are common even without any evidence for or against, but then we are playing something akin to Pascal's wager. Also, I think if reinfections were common, by now we would very likely have evidence for that by now.