Now there is a study in Australia of a family, where it appeared that both parents caught the virus, but the children tested negative. When the children were tested for antibodies, the same antibodies that their parents had were found, but the virus was never found. Apparently the immune system response of the children was fast and strong enough to prevent the virus from establishing itself.
The real problem is that we don’t fully understand the disease. Hopefully the vaccines knock it down long enough so that we can trace and eliminate spread. Of course, the vaccines are worthless if people won’t take them.
]]>In short, in the few case studies we can find that do appear to be true re-infection, it’s unknown whether long-term IgG antibodies had formed in the first place.
]]>Badtux, I’m talking about cases involving two different strains of COVID in the same individual. The studies on antibodies are on hundreds of thousands individuals (thanks to national health systems in Europe) showing the decline in antibodies. Trump could catch it again before January 20th as many of the antibodies he had were from that monoclonal cocktail and he is in the group shown to lose the antibodies the fastest. I’m hoping the vaccines succeed, but I’ll continue wearing a mask even after getting the injection.
]]>This is due to two things:
1) False negatives result from bad sampling. The test requires sticking a *long* q-tip way back into your nasal passages. This is extremely uncomfortable and if the person twitches just right, you can fail to get the sample. The end result is a false negative.
2) False positives result from the PCR process amplifying non-viable viral RNA. Antibodies work by marking virus capsules for destruction, then white blood cells come by and destroy the virus capsules, leaving naked non-viable RNA floating around in your tissues. This naked RNA has no ability to enter into cells and make you sick — the capsule is what lets it do that. Your body sheds this naked RNA over time. The PCR process doesn’t care whether RNA is naked or non-naked, it will zip the RNA with its mirror image into DNA, then amplify the DNA until it has something it can test. If you’re still shedding the viral RNA it’ll give a false positive even though there’s no actual active infection.
In short — I don’t think we know enough yet to know how long immunity lasts, or whether you can catch COVID-19 again after you’ve already caught it once. The small numbers that seem to have caught it twice could be just a testing artifact cause by the fact that even PCR tests, the most accurate tests we have, are only 99% accurate.
]]>