they dunno if covid antibodies means you're immune? (x-ray, infected, blood pressure)
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I think the problem is that this virus is still so new that we haven't seen the full effects yet. Who knew kids could test positive, not be sick in the conventional sense, but then go on to develop devastating symptoms like full cardiac arrest later. In the beginning the word was that it was barely effecting kids. This makes reopening schools even trickier.
West Nile is a virus with similar symptoms. Fever, headache, fatigue, rash. Some people get infected with devastating results (I've seen it at work and yes, he died.) Others never know they have it. Your chances of dying from West Nile is about 1 in 1,500 but a little higher if you're elderly. Are you immune for a lifetime if you get it? Some say yes but with the caveat that immunity may wane in later years.
Okay I know you're sick of hearing about RSV, but you can catch it year after year. Been there done that.
Covid-19 makes these two viruses look like child's play. Most likely we have all had a corona virus. Some strains cause the common cold. Once you have a certain strain you are immune to that strain. So why can't we cure the common cold? Because there are 200 types of virus that cause the common cold. If you have had influenza are you immune? No, you're not. Flu viruses mutate. Cold viruses mutate.
Will Covid mutate? Yes it already has. "Viral mutations are a normal part of a virus's evolution and can alter the severity of the disease they cause. In the case of SARS-Cov-2 (Covid) the finding is of interest because the nature of the mutation suggests it may have an association with a less severe form of the disease. A less virulent virus may have a selective advantage over other strains." Source Medical News Today "Scientists discover unique mutation of new coronavirus." Can you be infected more than once with Covid? We do not know. If you are infected a second time, will it be worse? We do not know. It might depend on which strain you're exposed to. The more virulent or the less virulent.
What do we know? Some people are asymptomatic, never get sick, but can spread it. Some people have survived it as old as 100 years old and some children as young as a few months have died from it. Why does this happen? We do not know.
We may have a little good news with Covid mutating into a less virulent strain. Will it have complications? We do not know.
Should we experiment with the lives of children, elders, and healthy adults by "putting them together in a room?' Only if they volunteer to be part of the experiment.
Meanwhile, until we know all there is to know about this and until the freezer trucks full of body bags ceases to be. I'd recommend giving this SARS virus the respect and distance it deserves.
You have your opinion and others have theirs. Let's just face it, we all think and are reacting differently to the virus and what really will or is working. No one knows much of anything at this point.
No, I do not accept the false premise that all sets of facts or opinions are equally valid. Political paranoia adds nothing of value in this health crisis.
I don't quite understand why this is even a question. Unless, of course, the question is concocted for political reasons like most everything else today.
Put simply, I thought the presence of antibodies produced (at least a degree of) immunity essentially by definition. Antibodies fight off the infection, no?
If we're not sure about antibodies, how could we be sure about a vaccine (that we may or may not ever see)?
I think this is pure (actually anything but) politics used to expand political damage to the greatest extent possible.
The presence of antibodies proves nothing except that antibodies were made. It says literally nothing about the effectiveness of these antibodies to fight any particular disease.
In the case of tests currently available, there is some cross-reactivity to antibodies made from exposure from OTHER coronaviruses (the 4 that cause milder, minor colds and have been around a long time).
So you could have a positive antibody test, but it's just reacting to an antibody that has nothing to do with SARSCOV2.
Even with a test (say from Abbott) that has very high specificity, there are still false positives. With a prevalence of disease of 2-5% (this varies by region, but lets use this as an example), the tests available will likely give as many false positives as true positives.
You ask an excellent question (and make a great point), actually, with regards to the vaccine. We don't know if a vaccine that we may or may not ever see will confer any immunity.
It's been 5 months since our government has known about this threat and we still don't have adequate testing or PPE. I'm amused that anyone thinks they could be organized enough to cobble together a plan for any sort sophisticated political machinations.
I don't quite understand why this is even a question. Unless, of course, the question is concocted for political reasons like most everything else today.
Put simply, I thought the presence of antibodies produced (at least a degree of) immunity essentially by definition. Antibodies fight off the infection, no?
If we're not sure about antibodies, how could we be sure about a vaccine (that we may or may not ever see)?
I think this is pure (actually anything but) politics used to expand political damage to the greatest extent possible.
I won't speculate on whether or not antibodies against Covid19 are protective, but there are antibodies produced against a number of other pathogens that are known not to be protective against infections with those pathogens.
In some cases it may be due to the rapid mutation of a microorganism (generally viruses) that change their antigenic sites frequently enough so any antibodies formed against a particular strain don't recognize the mutated viruses (the common cold-another coronavirus caused illness ) may be an example of that. You might be protected against future infection with the strain against which you produced antibodies, but what are the odds with the mutation rate of cold coronaviruses, you'd meet up with just that strain again?
HIV is another disease that produces antibodies which don't play a major role in protecting the host, as is Mycobacterium tuberculosis, (and other Mycobacterium sp.), which causes tuberculosis. I just looked up information about "nonprotective antibodies", and found, in general, a number of viruses, pathogenic fungi and parasites can produce antibodies that don't protect the host once the organism has invaded. In some cases the purpose of the antibodies aren't known.
In general, the cellular components of the immune system, such as natural killer lymphocytes, T cell lymphocytes (under the direction and with the help of other components of the immune system, provide the host with the "fighting tools" against these foreign invaders ( viruses, fungi, parasites) even though antibodies may be produced. Those antibodies may be among those that "direct" the T cell lymphocytes to go after the pathogen, but it seems not all antibodies produced in response to the pathogen may do this or be protective. Or their function is as of yet unknown.
Another issue that makes antibodies more or less "useless" is when a virus, fungus or parasite invades a host cell-often for the life of the cell, and becomes inaccessible to antibodies, or other host defense mechanisms. Like other viruses, the Covid19 virus invades its host cells, and like other viruses, it's up to the host's cell-mediated immunity to "get" the virus, but if this virus stays in the host long term, (kind of like Herpes does), the host's immune processes may not be as effective.
I think in the case of the covid19 virus the jury is still out about how it's handled by the immune system, and whether or not those antibodies are protective or just along for the ride.
There's a lot they don't know, and people will shout down things that are likely to be true but unproven as of right now. As an example, they haven't been able to establish to what degree and what time frame immunity is conferred. But its probably fair to assume some immunity, at least for awhile. I've heard a lot of "well we don't know that for sure.." wich is correct but its a fair assumption.
I don't quite understand why this is even a question. Unless, of course, the question is concocted for political reasons like most everything else today.
Please, don't start!
Quote:
Originally Posted by CrownVic95;
Put simply, I thought the presence of antibodies produced (at least a degree of) immunity essentially by definition. Antibodies fight off the infection, no?
If we're not sure about antibodies, how could we be sure about a vaccine (that we may or may not ever see)?
I think this is pure (actually anything but) politics used to expand political damage to the greatest extent possible.
They're saying, that some people may have antibodies, but at too low a level to protect them adequately. That's all I know, based on an article I saw recently.
Stay tuned for further developments. They're cranking out the research as fast as they can. There will be updates.
Whether antibodies increase a person's resistance or immunity to CV or not, I think it makes sense to think that if a person was healthy enough to ward off the disease the first time they caught it, they probably would be the next time they caught it too unless something had happened to weaken their immune system.
I suppose it's possible they could catch a stronger strain of the CV on the second go-round, but it's also possible it could be a weaker strain too. Kind of like the common cold... sometimes it hits you harder than other times. It might be due to the strain of virus or it might be due to your health and resistance level at that time.
Regardless how many ways we want to slice it and dice it and how many different scenarios we can conjure up, I think it's true that NO country has had greater than a 0.1% of their population die from the disease... and most countries have had far fewer than 0.1% of their population die from the disease. That figures out to 1 death per 1,000 population for those who are mathematically challenged. In the US, we currently have about 1 coronavirus death for every 5,000 people.
Now if you are old, obese, have high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, or heart problems, then your odds of dying are likely greater than 1 in 1,000 but I'm pretty comfortable knowing that my chances of living through this CV pandemic are at least 999 out of 1,000 or perhaps even greater. That's pretty good odds in my opinion.
I think we may look back on this in a couple of years and decide that the medical experts lead us down the wrong path for the best outcome for the overwhelming majority of people in the country. That's not intended to diminish the concern for a fairly small group of at-risk people, but for the huge majority of people who are cooped up in their house watching re-runs of The Price Is Right, our time, family, and country would have been better spent going to work or going about our daily activities whatever that might be.
Yes, old, obese, HBP, diabetes...you're talking about 100 million people. Yep. I'm glad you're not one of them, but look around. If the next guy isn't - his wife is.
It's a LOT of people. And while dying may not be your concern - being jobless should be. It does not discriminate on age (who gets infected). If you have symptoms and test positive - you will be jobless for a while, and so will anyone that lives with you. So ya might wanna re-think the mathematically challenged part.
But FYI - 0.1% of our country is 325,000 - roughly twice what we lost in WWII - and people still seem to think that was a significant amount.
This will be too. The percent is barely useful. Actual numbers help. Using the "percent" logic - not sure how many millions around the world would have to die in a three month span before it was enough of a percent to bother you.
Wouldn't it be easy to put recovered people in the same room as new cases and see if they get corona again?
Actually, that is already being done, since health care workers who were infected and recovered are going back to work taking care of COVID-19 patients. It will be interesting to see if any get reinfected. That will take time, though, since they will still be using PPE.
Yes, old, obese, HBP, diabetes...you're talking about 100 million people. Yep. I'm glad you're not one of them, but look around. If the next guy isn't - his wife is.
I don't know if your numbers are correct, but even if they are, that argues strongly against what you're trying to advocate. One hundred million people is roughly 1/3 of our total population. So if we have 100 million people who are among the most vulnerable, how is it that we've had only 82,000 deaths so far?
That means that even among the most vulnerable 1/3 of our population, the death rate is only 0.08%, or roughly 8 people in 10,000 which is even less than 1 in 1,000. If this virus is so deadly for the 100 million people who you say are most vulnerable, why is it that fewer than 1 in 1,000 have died from this "deadly" virus? Maybe this virus isn't as "deadly" as you would have us believe.
BTW, heart disease and cancer combined kill about 4 people per 1,000 EVERY YEAR in the US which is four times greater than the death rate among our most vulnerable population from CV, yet that doesn't seem to concern most people enough to change their eating habits, exercise habits, or whatever other lifestyle choices might affect those diseases. Yet it seems that a huge number of our population is willing to torpedo our entire economy and our way of life over something that is far less deadly that either of those diseases. ?????
Last edited by Chas863; 05-12-2020 at 05:49 PM..
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