Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
Once there’s a vaccine in regular use - even one that needs readministering annually - things will be normal. We’re already vaccinated against a ton of stuff, this is just one more. Covid-19 is a problem because there’s no vaccine, no immunity and therefore it spreads rapidly and overwhelms our health care services. Once its ability to spread freely is dealt with it will be no more troublesome than flu.
|
The immunity thing is interesting in light of a paper preview published in Nature on the 15th July (
link warning, very techy!)
In that paper, T-cell responses to different parts of SARS-Cov-2 proteins were tested against the white blood cells of people who were;
- Previously infected with SARS-Cov-2
- Previously infected with SARS (SARS-Cov-1)
- Never infected with either
For the uninitiated, T-cell responses are the immune systems way for killing already infected cells. They also help stimulate the production of antibodies (B-cell response)
Unsurprisingly, people who have had COVID-19 showed a good response to SARS-Cov-2 fragments. So did 100% of people who previously had SARS 17 years ago.
More significant is around 50% of the people who have never seen SARS-Cov-1 or 2 also showed a response to SARS-Cov-2! This suggests, at least in the population tested, that there is some kind of immunity to the current Coronavirus pandemic in naive patients. The follow up needs to be looking at infection rates and outcomes for people who previously showed a response while naive to see if this response translates to real world effects.