8 ms·

Mild Covid-19 induces lasting antibody protection

108 points by dsr12 5y ago

IceWreck 5y ago
How does it compare to a vaccine ?
- rimliu 5y ago
  Anecdata: I had a very mild case at the end of last October. Three weeks ago I got my first jab of BioNTech/Pfizer. Ten days after that I did antibodies test. The amount was 750 times of that required to be seropositive. Much as I expected. Just got my second jab, but won't be doing antibodies test anymore.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Indeed, in France, if you had COVID within a certain time period, one jab counts as fully vaccinated. Who knows what, if any, differences there are in long-term immunity, but so far, infection + 1 vaccine is looking like it produces very good immunity, even against known variants and even against the original SARS. In a petri dish anyway.
  - tomp 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, what was the number (and unit) you got, and which antibodies were tested? I still had antibodies in March, 1 year after having Covid, but the doctors didn’t want to say if the level was indicative of immunity or not...
- Vecr 5y ago
  Probably depends how many boosters you get, and the vaccine type. All the vaccines in widespread US use don't contain the whole virus, so it could have a reduction in T-cell protection, but that's not what's being talked about. It's quite possible the antibody levels in blood after five years would no longer be neutralizing after five years, looking at other subunit-ish vaccines.
  - novaRom 5y ago
    Yes, the vaccine type is very important. Currently, of the Seychelles, Israel, the UAE, Chile and Bahrain—respectively the world’s five most vaccinated countries—only Israel is not fighting to contain a dangerous surge in Covid-19 infections. source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/05/11/covid-surges-in-4-of-5-worlds-most-vaccinated-countries-heres-why-the-us-should-worry/?sh=3a659cc0d677 https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/05/11/covid-sur...
    - donogh 5y ago
      What those four countries have in common is their use of Sinopharm. It seems safe to assume that the efficacy of Sinopharm has been significantly exaggerated. It is unfortunate that it has been elevated to the same level as vaccines that have been rigorously tested and validated. For countries using US/EU-approved vaccines —- Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and Astra Zeneca —- increasing vaccination rates are clearly showing a “decoupling” of cases and hospitalisations. That prevention of severe disease is their stated objective, that’s all we need to end the pandemic, and they are clearly a huge success story.
      - gher-shyu3i 5y ago
        > It seems safe to assume that the efficacy of Sinopharm has been significantly exaggerated. Didn't the CCP even admit its lack of efficacy?
dustinmoris 5y ago
Personal anecdote: My wife and I got COVID very early in 2020 (she’s a health care worker and picked it up at work) and we both had a very mild illness, only one week of flu symptoms then back to normal ourselves. 11 months later a family member got ill and we both were in close contact for hours with that person as we admitted them to hospital for a check up and were in a tiny unventilated room for hours. That person had high fever and a coughed the entire time and we were up in their face because that person needs care with drinking and so on. Long story short, we both expected to get ill again but it didn’t happen. Not a tiny bit. Clearly we had an amazingly strong immune response to the virus still almost an entire year later, contradictory to what most news outlets tried to make us believe. EDIT: People who downvote my real life experience are literally just poor tiny internet trolls who feel offended by other people’s positive experiences. I haven’t said anything which isn’t mentioned in the article itself, just confirmed that my personal experience makes me believe that it’s quite plausible. Clearly some people feel offended by just life itself. LOL to those losers.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  news outlets until very recently were selectively quoting worst case scenarios very consistently. it made many members of my family anxious and some friends thought it would never end. dozens of times i would repeat that most likely the immunity would be lasting and would protect against variants but i think the whole time they thought i was an idiot to be contradicting actual experts. but i wasn’t, these were the worst case scenarios that could be found among experts. not likely scenarios.
  - rimliu 5y ago
    Not only news outlets. Anywhere you'd see some positive news there would inevitably be comments about long covid and what not.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      Without any evidence matching their claims, of course.
bserge 5y ago
Encouraging, maybe it will be accepted by the slowpokes in governments I won't name. Even with a recent positive antibodies test I still had to get negative CV tests.
- hef19898 5y ago
  With all the fuck ups the German government had regarding Covid, at least we have one free PCR test and two anti-gen tests per week. With those, life is, besides shopping and culture, almost normal. Assuming you test negative. If getting the test is all it takes, we really don't have much to complain about. Unless of course the PCR test costs you 100+ Euros, then it is different.
shoto_io 5y ago
It insane how people/media outlets simply ignored what has happened in our past. We had many pandemics. Why should this virus now be radically different? Our immune system would not have survived so long if we kept getting critically sick from virii our system has seen before.
- _Microft 5y ago
  There is a huge difference between assuming or believing something and actually knowing it. (I am talking about scientific knowledge that other knowledge can - and hopefully will - be build upon.)
  - anoncake 5y ago
    Only if you're of the mindset that any risk, no matter how small, is unacceptable. > (I am talking about scientific knowledge that other knowledge can be build upon.) This was added later. When talking purely about scientific knowledge, risk isn't a factor of course. But we have, at times, behaved as if we had no idea if Covid would behave like literally any other coronavirus in existence. Even if we didn't strictly know that Covid had not mutated into something like HIV, it was irrational not to assume it.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Pyramus 5y ago
      Leaving aside that I don't know who is "we" and how "we have acted": A theme of the current pandemic has been that the societies/governments that had faced a coronavirus outbreak in the past, e.g. SARS in Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, have acted a lot more swiftly and decisively relative to most Western nations. It is hard to ignore that this approach has been more successful in terms of fatalities and economic costs (ignoring personal rights and freedoms).
      - anoncake 5y ago
jeofken 5y ago
A Dutch newspaper keeps an updated list of reinfections worldwide. Interestingly, there has only been 82 cases and 3 death, which is a tiny amount. https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...
- jwr 5y ago
  Hmm. I'm somewhat doubtful of those numbers as I personally know someone who has been reinfected and isn't in that table. Not sure if this sort of data is being collected and rigorously reported on all levels.
  - irq11 5y ago
    No, the point is, you probably don’t. Most anecdotal “reinfections” are from people who think they were infected, but never had it confirmed. These stories are also typically second- or third-hand, and resemble whatever story was most recently in the news: “my ‘friend’ had a bad cold in March 2020, then got tested in July and had Covid. He was reinfected!” Stories that are heavy on hearsay, but light on details. When we actually go and look for reinfections using rigorous standards, we find that they’re incredibly rare. It’s highly unlikely that there’s a huge wave of reinfections that we’re simply not seeing after hundreds of millions of infections and months of effort to find them.
    - jwr 5y ago
      > No, the point is, you probably don’t. Most anecdotal “reinfections” are from people who think they were infected, but never had it confirmed. Not sure what you mean by "confirmed", but this particular case had positive PCR results for both the first infection and the subsequent re-infection after 4 months.

108 points by dsr12 5y ago

IceWreck 5y ago

How does it compare to a vaccine ?

rimliu 5y ago
Anecdata: I had a very mild case at the end of last October. Three weeks ago I got my first jab of BioNTech/Pfizer. Ten days after that I did antibodies test. The amount was 750 times of that required to be seropositive. Much as I expected. Just got my second jab, but won't be doing antibodies test anymore.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Indeed, in France, if you had COVID within a certain time period, one jab counts as fully vaccinated. Who knows what, if any, differences there are in long-term immunity, but so far, infection + 1 vaccine is looking like it produces very good immunity, even against known variants and even against the original SARS. In a petri dish anyway.
- tomp 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what was the number (and unit) you got, and which antibodies were tested? I still had antibodies in March, 1 year after having Covid, but the doctors didn’t want to say if the level was indicative of immunity or not...
Vecr 5y ago
Probably depends how many boosters you get, and the vaccine type. All the vaccines in widespread US use don't contain the whole virus, so it could have a reduction in T-cell protection, but that's not what's being talked about. It's quite possible the antibody levels in blood after five years would no longer be neutralizing after five years, looking at other subunit-ish vaccines.
- novaRom 5y ago
  Yes, the vaccine type is very important. Currently, of the Seychelles, Israel, the UAE, Chile and Bahrain—respectively the world’s five most vaccinated countries—only Israel is not fighting to contain a dangerous surge in Covid-19 infections. source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/05/11/covid-surges-in-4-of-5-worlds-most-vaccinated-countries-heres-why-the-us-should-worry/?sh=3a659cc0d677 https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/05/11/covid-sur...
  - donogh 5y ago
    What those four countries have in common is their use of Sinopharm. It seems safe to assume that the efficacy of Sinopharm has been significantly exaggerated. It is unfortunate that it has been elevated to the same level as vaccines that have been rigorously tested and validated. For countries using US/EU-approved vaccines —- Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and Astra Zeneca —- increasing vaccination rates are clearly showing a “decoupling” of cases and hospitalisations. That prevention of severe disease is their stated objective, that’s all we need to end the pandemic, and they are clearly a huge success story.
    - gher-shyu3i 5y ago
      > It seems safe to assume that the efficacy of Sinopharm has been significantly exaggerated. Didn't the CCP even admit its lack of efficacy?

dustinmoris 5y ago

Personal anecdote: My wife and I got COVID very early in 2020 (she’s a health care worker and picked it up at work) and we both had a very mild illness, only one week of flu symptoms then back to normal ourselves. 11 months later a family member got ill and we both were in close contact for hours with that person as we admitted them to hospital for a check up and were in a tiny unventilated room for hours. That person had high fever and a coughed the entire time and we were up in their face because that person needs care with drinking and so on. Long story short, we both expected to get ill again but it didn’t happen. Not a tiny bit. Clearly we had an amazingly strong immune response to the virus still almost an entire year later, contradictory to what most news outlets tried to make us believe. EDIT: People who downvote my real life experience are literally just poor tiny internet trolls who feel offended by other people’s positive experiences. I haven’t said anything which isn’t mentioned in the article itself, just confirmed that my personal experience makes me believe that it’s quite plausible. Clearly some people feel offended by just life itself. LOL to those losers.

gameswithgo 5y ago
news outlets until very recently were selectively quoting worst case scenarios very consistently. it made many members of my family anxious and some friends thought it would never end. dozens of times i would repeat that most likely the immunity would be lasting and would protect against variants but i think the whole time they thought i was an idiot to be contradicting actual experts. but i wasn’t, these were the worst case scenarios that could be found among experts. not likely scenarios.
- rimliu 5y ago
  Not only news outlets. Anywhere you'd see some positive news there would inevitably be comments about long covid and what not.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    Without any evidence matching their claims, of course.

bserge 5y ago

Encouraging, maybe it will be accepted by the slowpokes in governments I won't name. Even with a recent positive antibodies test I still had to get negative CV tests.

hef19898 5y ago
With all the fuck ups the German government had regarding Covid, at least we have one free PCR test and two anti-gen tests per week. With those, life is, besides shopping and culture, almost normal. Assuming you test negative. If getting the test is all it takes, we really don't have much to complain about. Unless of course the PCR test costs you 100+ Euros, then it is different.

shoto_io 5y ago

It insane how people/media outlets simply ignored what has happened in our past. We had many pandemics. Why should this virus now be radically different? Our immune system would not have survived so long if we kept getting critically sick from virii our system has seen before.

_Microft 5y ago
There is a huge difference between assuming or believing something and actually knowing it. (I am talking about scientific knowledge that other knowledge can - and hopefully will - be build upon.)
- anoncake 5y ago
  Only if you're of the mindset that any risk, no matter how small, is unacceptable. > (I am talking about scientific knowledge that other knowledge can be build upon.) This was added later. When talking purely about scientific knowledge, risk isn't a factor of course. But we have, at times, behaved as if we had no idea if Covid would behave like literally any other coronavirus in existence. Even if we didn't strictly know that Covid had not mutated into something like HIV, it was irrational not to assume it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    Leaving aside that I don't know who is "we" and how "we have acted": A theme of the current pandemic has been that the societies/governments that had faced a coronavirus outbreak in the past, e.g. SARS in Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, have acted a lot more swiftly and decisively relative to most Western nations. It is hard to ignore that this approach has been more successful in terms of fatalities and economic costs (ignoring personal rights and freedoms).
    - anoncake 5y ago

jeofken 5y ago

A Dutch newspaper keeps an updated list of reinfections worldwide. Interestingly, there has only been 82 cases and 3 death, which is a tiny amount. https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...

jwr 5y ago
Hmm. I'm somewhat doubtful of those numbers as I personally know someone who has been reinfected and isn't in that table. Not sure if this sort of data is being collected and rigorously reported on all levels.
- irq11 5y ago
  No, the point is, you probably don’t. Most anecdotal “reinfections” are from people who think they were infected, but never had it confirmed. These stories are also typically second- or third-hand, and resemble whatever story was most recently in the news: “my ‘friend’ had a bad cold in March 2020, then got tested in July and had Covid. He was reinfected!” Stories that are heavy on hearsay, but light on details. When we actually go and look for reinfections using rigorous standards, we find that they’re incredibly rare. It’s highly unlikely that there’s a huge wave of reinfections that we’re simply not seeing after hundreds of millions of infections and months of effort to find them.
  - jwr 5y ago
    > No, the point is, you probably don’t. Most anecdotal “reinfections” are from people who think they were infected, but never had it confirmed. Not sure what you mean by "confirmed", but this particular case had positive PCR results for both the first infection and the subsequent re-infection after 4 months.