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It's interesting reading about things other than antibody levels now in Nature as well. T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory until recent

It's interesting reading about things other than antibody levels now in Nature as well. T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory until recently. I try to avoid conspiracy theories and think this was probably down to the way governments think and are advised, antibody levels mean an instant response in humans to a virus, so keeping them high during a pandemic probably made sense to advisors and politicians. But that ignores so much about the immune system. I hope this narrative shift leads to some more nuanced decisions being made.

Mikeb85 5y ago
> T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory until recently. It's funny how the pandemic caused people to toss our decades of understandings of viruses out the window because it was politically expedient. It's always been known that if your immune system allows you to recover from a virus, you will have some level of lasting immunity.
- api 5y ago
  One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic. They did do so every once in a while, but it was so throughly mixed with shit that it became contaminated. If Trump said the sky was blue, suddenly it would have to be red and if you were a red sky denier you were a racist. We are still dealing with the echoes of this and will be for at least five years. This is why having a super-polarizing troll in office is inherently bad for society. I think that's true regardless of their stripes. An obnoxious troll from the "left" would be no better in this particular regard. There's a reason high office leaders need to carry themselves professionally. Class (of the behavioral sort) is not some old fogie cultural superstition. Leaders that carry themselves like Trump actually damage the cognition of the people in their society.
  - Veen 5y ago
    There's truth in the idea that Trump supporting an idea made it toxic even if it was a good idea, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because the anti-Trump media attacked everything Trump said, whether it was sensible or not. They could have taken a neutral perspective and assessed his speech on its merits, but they did not and they bear some repsonsibility for that. (To be clear: I'm not a Trump supporter and I think that when he was right it was by accident rather than design. However, many media organizations shamed themselves by embracing partisanship and abandoning even the pretence of neutrality).
    - nonameiguess 5y ago
      This is kind of arguing in circles, though. A big part of the reason media is so hard on Trump is that he is classless and they were embarrassed he was their president. It's not like his public image was any better in 1990 well before he ever openly declared political ambitions and decided he was a Republican. He'd been a sideshow clown for decades. Arguably, the ridiculous level of polarization we already had is the only reason he got to where he is. Even most Republicans were embarrassed of him until he won the nomination and they rallied to the only option left that wasn't a Democrat. But thanks to having way too many candidates in the primary, he didn't need the support of "most" Republicans. He just needed more than Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush.
    - kenjackson 5y ago
      Are there a lot of examples of this? In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard. The most obvious example was about vaccination itself. While people were worried that he would push out a vaccine that wasn't ready, people were on board with vaccination. That said, I do think that Trump's brand was largely about division on social issues. So to that extent he often put at the forefront of his narratives positions that forced you to take a side. E.g., should Kaepernick be fired or not. Etc...
      - naasking 5y ago
        > In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard. I'd say those aren't the problem so much as the borderline cases where there are true and untrue interpretations of a certain statement, but of course they ran with the most uncharitable possible interpretation because they're convinced Trump is a ruthless dictator in the making.
  - anshorei 5y ago
    As someone who considers themselves an outside onlooker, I disagree. Trump allowed all of the tribal people to out themselves. It's made it a lot easier to find people who stick to their principles and praised/criticized him where appropriate.
  - kerneloftruth 5y ago
    One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic. That wasn't the worst thing about trump.... it's the worst thing about the media coverage of him. You're blaming him for how media covered him.
    - kingsloi 5y ago
      What about things said by them directly, their Twitter, etc?
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      Why not both? Trump behaved in a provocative way for a reason - it's not like he was a poor misunderstood thing and the media picked up on him for no reason.
      - themaninthedark 5y ago
        Preface by saying the I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things. Lets look at this from a parenting perspective. If i have a child who misbehaves often, is it appropriate for me to punish them when they do something good? Holding the media to the same accountability, if Trump is saying stupid/outrageous/provocative things, then lambast him when he says those things. But if the media lambasts him when he is saying something reasonable, then that is on the media. I think most of the annoyance I see in the thread is because there was blame being assigned to Trump or even someone on the same stage as him because they were on that stage with him. >One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic. So rather than examining an idea based on the merits, ideas were discarded due to the messenger or the who the messenger associated with.
        hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        Yes, I fully agree: criticizing Trump when when he was saying/doing something that makes sense just because it's Trump was very stupid.
  - mynameishere 5y ago
    You just described one of the many problems with the media and then blamed it on Donald Trump. Why couldn't you have said "One of the problems with the media is..."
  - 62951413 5y ago
    70M people would like a word with you. Don't confuse legacy media propaganda with what regular people think. Especially when you hear newspeak.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - krapp 5y ago
      And 230M people would like a word with you. Trumpists seem to forget that neither their movement nor their President have ever had the support of the American majority, much less of all "regular people." Never even the popular vote.
      - TMWNN 5y ago
        >Trumpists seem to forget that neither their movement nor their President have ever had the support of the American majority, much less of all "regular people." Never even the popular vote. Neither did Hillary, who won 48% of the popular vote in 2016 to Trump's 46%. Does the fact that not until 2020 did Trump's opponent win a majority of the popular vote invalidate the validity of the opposition until then?
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    I don't recall that happening. Can you give examples? That sounds like Trump's behavior, not others.
- ben_w 5y ago
  While true, “some level of lasting immunity” is not necessarily all that useful. Norovirus infection and recovery for example, only last 6-24 months. I don’t know what the long term immune system response is for covid, but I do know that planning in general needs to be for the more pessimistic end of what is seems possible, and that quite a lot seemed possible in the early days of the pandemic.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    Why the "only" wording? Seems like the covid vaccines don't even last this much, and they are praised.
    - darkcha0s 5y ago
      I'm guessing because they give you protection without actually catching the potentially harmful virus in the first place?
      - chucksta 5y ago
        No they used "only" as in "not very long". The question is asking how can you say it's not very long when the covid vaccination lasts less than a year in comparison
        ben_w 5y ago
        6 months is pretty short in both cases, but I think darkcha0s has me right, the cost is much lower in the vaccination case. For a much most positive example of how that matters: “How long did he retire for?“ “Only six months“ vs. “How long did he go on holiday for?“ “Only six months“
    - SigmundA 5y ago
      Covid vaccines have less side effects than the virus so are still superior option, hence the praise.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  Calling Covid a "novel" virus was a mistake. Technically it's true but that didn't mean we needed to toss out everything we learned about viruses and start from first principles. Even from way back in March of 2020 even the most basic things we knew about viruses felt controversial. People were seriously thinking you could catch and transmit covid after like 3 months or something--like you'd just constantly get re-infected over and over again. And people flipping out about outdoor transmission... like when has catching a virus outside ever been a real thing? Everything we knew about the subject had to be re-proven. It was and still is completely crazy.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Many people got Delta and then Omicron even 1 month later. Kai Ryssdal from NPR for example, and one of my friends did too. So this isn't crazy; it literally happens to many respiratory viruses. Viruses mutate
    - enchiridion 5y ago
      I always wondered how people claim that. Did they have two pcr tests or something else telling them what variant they had?
      - rsynnott 5y ago
        Most PCR tests will discriminate between (B.1) Omicron and things which are not B.1 Omicron, so it's feasible to know this. I mean, strictly speaking all you'd know is that you had B.1 Omicron plus something else, but if you had the non-B.1 Omicron one in October, then in most parts of the world you'd be pretty safe in assuming that was Delta.
      - ddek 5y ago
        I had delta in late October and omicron in early December. I was PCR positive for delta, although I had a mild case. I wasn't allowed to take a PCR test for the December infection, because it was too soon after my delta test and my symptoms were very mild. I did test positive multiple times on LFT, my symptoms matched the 'ultramild' omicron (scratchy throat, slight cough, lower back pain). The day I tested positive for omicron was 4 days after my friends had gathered in a pub, of the 30 of us in attendance 27 tested positive on the same day. The group chat was wild. Some of those that got PCR's were informed they had omicron.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  But did it? I don’t ever remember T-cells being considered anything close to conspiracy theories, nor their importance being downplayed.
perardi 5y ago
Ignored? By whom? I am not a virologist, but actual virologists sure talked about T-cells in public forums. Or moreover, that we have to have some degree of humility about exactly what are the correlates of immunity for this disease. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/ And this podcast had Fauci on, so it’s not like they weren’t some degree of notable within the immunological academic sphere. I think it’s time for Hanlon's Razor here. Antibodies were easy to measure. Antibodies probably meant people wouldn’t get sick and wouldn’t spread this. So policy makers, being in a tremendous rush, really glommed onto antibodies, and just got stuck in that mindset, because it’s hard to turn a ship around. I don’t know where there would be a conspiracy—it’s just that this whole thing is complex, and politicians are not virologists.
- cloutchaser 5y ago
  > it’s just that this whole thing is complex, and politicians are not virologists What's really really really bad is that the entire narrative has been built on "we are science, follow us, if you don't, you are an idiot, you are endangering others" Except science is much more nuanced, and hey, it turns out t-cells do things too not just antibodies (of course this was known pre 2020). Maybe if communication on this issue wasn't turned so black and white, and us vs them, by the media and politicians, we'd be in a better place now. But they didn't do that, they turned this into politics too.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Yes, thank you! Just because I only have a high school degree does not mean my opinion is not as valid as a medical professional's. Wait. No, that doesn't make sense at all actually... Hm.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      I believe it was Asimov that lamented "the problem with democracy is that my ignorance is as valuable as your knowledge".
  - VikingCoder 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
packetlost 5y ago
I don't know what you're talking about, I recall learning about T-cell immunity in middle-school biology class like 15 years ago. Just because politics causes you to cloud your judgement and memory does not mean the research and knowledge wasn't already there.
- brippalcharrid 5y ago
  The problem is that to the extent that messaging about immunology was provided by public health authorities to the general public or used to develop policy, it was almost always about antibodies as a correlate of protection, lack of antibodies as evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was novel and not yet endemic (providing justifications for lockdowns/the CARES Act/EUAs and mass vaccinations including children), or about falling antibody titers as a justification for booster shots. There was hardly even any mention of very basic things like Vitamin C, D and Zinc, let alone T cell immunity. T cell studies exist in the literature, of course, but our understanding of T cells and Natural Killer cells seems to have been allowed to contribute very little little to the public health response in many countries in contrast to patented vaccine candidates and antivirals.
jamesblonde 5y ago
Next, we'll start talking about innate immunity. But, maybe it's too early for that for too many people.
neuronic 5y ago
I don't get this take but that's because I am not from the US I suppose. Here, politicians and virologists have publically explained immunity in multiple layers. Antibodies as first line of defense to intercept viruses and keep them from initially docking to cells. Then, at the bottom, there is long-term T-cell immunity which is essential in preventing severe disease. The vaccines train the immune system to recognize and respond quicker to the virus so that it cannot dock to cells and replicate as fast as it could if the immune system had never seen it before. The immune system does not need to catch up first so it gets a running start instead of a cold start if not vaccinated.
bigodbiel 5y ago
Reading this article feels like science experiment on a global scale was run. And that too was a conspiracy theory, once.
jpeloquin 5y ago
> T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory until recently. This surprised me, so I checked my cell biology books. The role of memory T-cells in the adaptive immune response is clearly described in Garland, "Molecular Biology of the Cell", (c) 2002. Not sure in what sense T-cell immunity is a conspiracy theory, unless it's being used as code for something else.

Mikeb85 5y ago

> T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory until recently. It's funny how the pandemic caused people to toss our decades of understandings of viruses out the window because it was politically expedient. It's always been known that if your immune system allows you to recover from a virus, you will have some level of lasting immunity.

api 5y ago
One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic. They did do so every once in a while, but it was so throughly mixed with shit that it became contaminated. If Trump said the sky was blue, suddenly it would have to be red and if you were a red sky denier you were a racist. We are still dealing with the echoes of this and will be for at least five years. This is why having a super-polarizing troll in office is inherently bad for society. I think that's true regardless of their stripes. An obnoxious troll from the "left" would be no better in this particular regard. There's a reason high office leaders need to carry themselves professionally. Class (of the behavioral sort) is not some old fogie cultural superstition. Leaders that carry themselves like Trump actually damage the cognition of the people in their society.
- Veen 5y ago
  There's truth in the idea that Trump supporting an idea made it toxic even if it was a good idea, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because the anti-Trump media attacked everything Trump said, whether it was sensible or not. They could have taken a neutral perspective and assessed his speech on its merits, but they did not and they bear some repsonsibility for that. (To be clear: I'm not a Trump supporter and I think that when he was right it was by accident rather than design. However, many media organizations shamed themselves by embracing partisanship and abandoning even the pretence of neutrality).
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    This is kind of arguing in circles, though. A big part of the reason media is so hard on Trump is that he is classless and they were embarrassed he was their president. It's not like his public image was any better in 1990 well before he ever openly declared political ambitions and decided he was a Republican. He'd been a sideshow clown for decades. Arguably, the ridiculous level of polarization we already had is the only reason he got to where he is. Even most Republicans were embarrassed of him until he won the nomination and they rallied to the only option left that wasn't a Democrat. But thanks to having way too many candidates in the primary, he didn't need the support of "most" Republicans. He just needed more than Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush.
  - kenjackson 5y ago
    Are there a lot of examples of this? In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard. The most obvious example was about vaccination itself. While people were worried that he would push out a vaccine that wasn't ready, people were on board with vaccination. That said, I do think that Trump's brand was largely about division on social issues. So to that extent he often put at the forefront of his narratives positions that forced you to take a side. E.g., should Kaepernick be fired or not. Etc...
    - naasking 5y ago
      > In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard. I'd say those aren't the problem so much as the borderline cases where there are true and untrue interpretations of a certain statement, but of course they ran with the most uncharitable possible interpretation because they're convinced Trump is a ruthless dictator in the making.
- anshorei 5y ago
  As someone who considers themselves an outside onlooker, I disagree. Trump allowed all of the tribal people to out themselves. It's made it a lot easier to find people who stick to their principles and praised/criticized him where appropriate.
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
  One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic. That wasn't the worst thing about trump.... it's the worst thing about the media coverage of him. You're blaming him for how media covered him.
  - kingsloi 5y ago
    What about things said by them directly, their Twitter, etc?
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    Why not both? Trump behaved in a provocative way for a reason - it's not like he was a poor misunderstood thing and the media picked up on him for no reason.
    - themaninthedark 5y ago
      Preface by saying the I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things. Lets look at this from a parenting perspective. If i have a child who misbehaves often, is it appropriate for me to punish them when they do something good? Holding the media to the same accountability, if Trump is saying stupid/outrageous/provocative things, then lambast him when he says those things. But if the media lambasts him when he is saying something reasonable, then that is on the media. I think most of the annoyance I see in the thread is because there was blame being assigned to Trump or even someone on the same stage as him because they were on that stage with him. >One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic. So rather than examining an idea based on the merits, ideas were discarded due to the messenger or the who the messenger associated with.
      - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        Yes, I fully agree: criticizing Trump when when he was saying/doing something that makes sense just because it's Trump was very stupid.
- mynameishere 5y ago
  You just described one of the many problems with the media and then blamed it on Donald Trump. Why couldn't you have said "One of the problems with the media is..."
- 62951413 5y ago
  70M people would like a word with you. Don't confuse legacy media propaganda with what regular people think. Especially when you hear newspeak.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - krapp 5y ago
    And 230M people would like a word with you. Trumpists seem to forget that neither their movement nor their President have ever had the support of the American majority, much less of all "regular people." Never even the popular vote.
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      >Trumpists seem to forget that neither their movement nor their President have ever had the support of the American majority, much less of all "regular people." Never even the popular vote. Neither did Hillary, who won 48% of the popular vote in 2016 to Trump's 46%. Does the fact that not until 2020 did Trump's opponent win a majority of the popular vote invalidate the validity of the opposition until then?
- wolverine876 5y ago
  I don't recall that happening. Can you give examples? That sounds like Trump's behavior, not others.
ben_w 5y ago
While true, “some level of lasting immunity” is not necessarily all that useful. Norovirus infection and recovery for example, only last 6-24 months. I don’t know what the long term immune system response is for covid, but I do know that planning in general needs to be for the more pessimistic end of what is seems possible, and that quite a lot seemed possible in the early days of the pandemic.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Why the "only" wording? Seems like the covid vaccines don't even last this much, and they are praised.
  - darkcha0s 5y ago
    I'm guessing because they give you protection without actually catching the potentially harmful virus in the first place?
    - chucksta 5y ago
      No they used "only" as in "not very long". The question is asking how can you say it's not very long when the covid vaccination lasts less than a year in comparison
      - ben_w 5y ago
        6 months is pretty short in both cases, but I think darkcha0s has me right, the cost is much lower in the vaccination case. For a much most positive example of how that matters: “How long did he retire for?“ “Only six months“ vs. “How long did he go on holiday for?“ “Only six months“
  - SigmundA 5y ago
    Covid vaccines have less side effects than the virus so are still superior option, hence the praise.
spookthesunset 5y ago
Calling Covid a "novel" virus was a mistake. Technically it's true but that didn't mean we needed to toss out everything we learned about viruses and start from first principles. Even from way back in March of 2020 even the most basic things we knew about viruses felt controversial. People were seriously thinking you could catch and transmit covid after like 3 months or something--like you'd just constantly get re-infected over and over again. And people flipping out about outdoor transmission... like when has catching a virus outside ever been a real thing? Everything we knew about the subject had to be re-proven. It was and still is completely crazy.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Many people got Delta and then Omicron even 1 month later. Kai Ryssdal from NPR for example, and one of my friends did too. So this isn't crazy; it literally happens to many respiratory viruses. Viruses mutate
  - enchiridion 5y ago
    I always wondered how people claim that. Did they have two pcr tests or something else telling them what variant they had?
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      Most PCR tests will discriminate between (B.1) Omicron and things which are not B.1 Omicron, so it's feasible to know this. I mean, strictly speaking all you'd know is that you had B.1 Omicron plus something else, but if you had the non-B.1 Omicron one in October, then in most parts of the world you'd be pretty safe in assuming that was Delta.
    - ddek 5y ago
      I had delta in late October and omicron in early December. I was PCR positive for delta, although I had a mild case. I wasn't allowed to take a PCR test for the December infection, because it was too soon after my delta test and my symptoms were very mild. I did test positive multiple times on LFT, my symptoms matched the 'ultramild' omicron (scratchy throat, slight cough, lower back pain). The day I tested positive for omicron was 4 days after my friends had gathered in a pub, of the 30 of us in attendance 27 tested positive on the same day. The group chat was wild. Some of those that got PCR's were informed they had omicron.
ViViDboarder 5y ago
But did it? I don’t ever remember T-cells being considered anything close to conspiracy theories, nor their importance being downplayed.

perardi 5y ago

Ignored? By whom? I am not a virologist, but actual virologists sure talked about T-cells in public forums. Or moreover, that we have to have some degree of humility about exactly what are the correlates of immunity for this disease. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/ And this podcast had Fauci on, so it’s not like they weren’t some degree of notable within the immunological academic sphere. I think it’s time for Hanlon's Razor here. Antibodies were easy to measure. Antibodies probably meant people wouldn’t get sick and wouldn’t spread this. So policy makers, being in a tremendous rush, really glommed onto antibodies, and just got stuck in that mindset, because it’s hard to turn a ship around. I don’t know where there would be a conspiracy—it’s just that this whole thing is complex, and politicians are not virologists.

cloutchaser 5y ago
> it’s just that this whole thing is complex, and politicians are not virologists What's really really really bad is that the entire narrative has been built on "we are science, follow us, if you don't, you are an idiot, you are endangering others" Except science is much more nuanced, and hey, it turns out t-cells do things too not just antibodies (of course this was known pre 2020). Maybe if communication on this issue wasn't turned so black and white, and us vs them, by the media and politicians, we'd be in a better place now. But they didn't do that, they turned this into politics too.
- nefitty 5y ago
  Yes, thank you! Just because I only have a high school degree does not mean my opinion is not as valid as a medical professional's. Wait. No, that doesn't make sense at all actually... Hm.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    I believe it was Asimov that lamented "the problem with democracy is that my ignorance is as valuable as your knowledge".
- VikingCoder 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

packetlost 5y ago

I don't know what you're talking about, I recall learning about T-cell immunity in middle-school biology class like 15 years ago. Just because politics causes you to cloud your judgement and memory does not mean the research and knowledge wasn't already there.

brippalcharrid 5y ago
The problem is that to the extent that messaging about immunology was provided by public health authorities to the general public or used to develop policy, it was almost always about antibodies as a correlate of protection, lack of antibodies as evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was novel and not yet endemic (providing justifications for lockdowns/the CARES Act/EUAs and mass vaccinations including children), or about falling antibody titers as a justification for booster shots. There was hardly even any mention of very basic things like Vitamin C, D and Zinc, let alone T cell immunity. T cell studies exist in the literature, of course, but our understanding of T cells and Natural Killer cells seems to have been allowed to contribute very little little to the public health response in many countries in contrast to patented vaccine candidates and antivirals.

jamesblonde 5y ago

Next, we'll start talking about innate immunity. But, maybe it's too early for that for too many people.

neuronic 5y ago

I don't get this take but that's because I am not from the US I suppose. Here, politicians and virologists have publically explained immunity in multiple layers. Antibodies as first line of defense to intercept viruses and keep them from initially docking to cells. Then, at the bottom, there is long-term T-cell immunity which is essential in preventing severe disease. The vaccines train the immune system to recognize and respond quicker to the virus so that it cannot dock to cells and replicate as fast as it could if the immune system had never seen it before. The immune system does not need to catch up first so it gets a running start instead of a cold start if not vaccinated.

bigodbiel 5y ago

Reading this article feels like science experiment on a global scale was run. And that too was a conspiracy theory, once.

jpeloquin 5y ago

> T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory until recently. This surprised me, so I checked my cell biology books. The role of memory T-cells in the adaptive immune response is clearly described in Garland, "Molecular Biology of the Cell", (c) 2002. Not sure in what sense T-cell immunity is a conspiracy theory, unless it's being used as code for something else.