Can you or can’t you? That is the big, big question.
Researchers have been looking for whether you may also be inflamed with Covid-19 coronavirus more than once. After all, who needs a sequel to a bad experience, like watching Grown Ups 2 after the film Grown Ups? In addition, the response to this consultation can help address so many other things, such as whether it is safe to resume normal activities, how effective a vaccine could be, and how long this stinking pandemic can last.
So what’s the answer now? Well, as with Kanye West’s run for the Presidency, things are not yet completely clear. In fact, they can seem downright confusing. However, some recently published scientific studies have offered some more pieces of evidence.
For example, there are the Rhesus pieces from a study published in the journal Science. This study involved deliberately infecting a set of Rhesus macaques with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) and then seeing if they could get deliberately infected again. Macaque rhymes with hacky sack, Monterrey Jack, and Nordic Track and is a species of monkey. This species has a lot of similarities with humans, except for perhaps the whole eating-termites-and-beetles thing and the expose-your-genitals-when-threatened thing. Well, the latter two at least aren’t similarities with most humans.
For the study, a team of studies at Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China, led through Chuan Qin, intracanally caused six MACa with SARS-CoV-2. Now, if it tells you they need to challenge you intratraly with a virus (or anything else like doughnuts), stay in your brain what that would mean. Basically, this is about sticking a tube down your throat in your trachea and then hitting the virus on it. It’s a way to make sure he’s infected.
The research team then confirmed that the macaques got sick from the virus. This included testing them up the wazoo, literally. They regularly checked the macaques’ rectal temperatures and their rectums, throats, and nasal cavities for the virus. Additionally, the research team followed the macaques’ symptoms and took chest X-rays that revealed signs of pneumonia.
Blood tests of macaques showed that the infection, macaques developed antibodies opposed to protein spikes on the surface of SARS-CoV2. If you remember, Covid-19 coronavirus looks like a small bristle massage ball and uses the spikes to join and enter your cells. It was evidence that the immune formula of macaques was reacting to the virus.
Eventually, the six macaques survived infections and recovered from their symptoms. However, the demanding situations did not end there for 4 of the macaques. Twenty-eight days after their first intravecheal challenge, they had, guess what, challenge of this kind. The other two macaques were saved from infection at this time and remained as controls for comparison.
After being questioned, the 4 macaques developed fever for short periods of time, but also showed no additional symptoms of reinfection in two weeks, in chest x-rays and tests, back in wazoo. In fact, the 4 reexposed macaques collected even higher degrees of antibodies against complex proteins than in the first infection.
So 28 days after the initial infection, the macaques still had some kind of immunity opposite the virus. Good news if you’re a macaque and you’re reading this. But what if you’re not a macaque? What if you’re human? Are you similar enough to macaques, whether you raise your tail or not when you’re intimidated? Do these effects apply to you?
Unfortunately, similar challenge studies have not yet been conducted in humans. A World Health Organization (WHO) document dated 6 May defined a diversity of moral hazards and demanding situations similar to conducting studies on demanding human situations in which volunteers are intentionally exposed to SARS-CoV2. As you can imagine, being exposed to a life-threatening virus is not the same as being exposed to something like doughnuts. There are genuine immediate dangers involved. Besides, if you haven’t figured it out yet, humans have a long history of doing very bad things. This includes discrimination opposed to other races and taking credit for those perceived to have a state of decline. For example, who will volunteer precisely for such challenge studies? Will other people be able to jump on personal yachts when it’s time to distance themselves socially? Or will other people be more demeathed?
A scientists’ organization filed a petition with Frances Collins, MD, director of the National Institute of Health (NIH), to “undertake immediate arrangements for human provocation trials,” arguing that this will help expand and control a Covid-19 vaccine. From a clinical point of view, studies on demanding human situations would help answer many questions about immunity much more directly and quickly. But as discussed above, conducting such studies on demanding human situations in a moral way is not so easy. Like the name of a 2009 film, it’s complicated.
In the meantime, everyone will have to rely on more oblique human studies, such as the exam published on June 18 in Nature Medicine. For this exam, a research team at Chongqing Medical University in Chongqing, China, drove through Ai-Long Huang, traced what happened to 74 other people inflamed with SARS-CoV2, part of which never developed symptoms. Therefore, 37 were asymptomatic infections and 37 were symptomatic infections.
When it first swells with a virus, its immune formula takes a while to expand an antibody’s response, assuming that its immune formula can even generate such a response. Not all viruses can cause an immune response. The first type of antibody that your immune formula can produce in your blood is immunoglobulin M or IgM if you don’t have time to say immunoglobulin. This antibody does not last for long, production temporarily expands and then decreases. To do this, use the mnemonic “M” for a moment.
Before IgM disappears, the production of a type of antibody at the moment, immunoglobulin G or IgG, increases and remains for an extended period of time. IgG is the antibody that can contribute to persistent immunity. Just think, “Hey, is the IgG still here?”
Here’s a video of Beckman Coulter Diagnostics on IgM and IgG with a very dramatic piano in the background:
For the Nature Medicine study, the study team measured the grades of these types of antibodies 3 to 4 weeks after patients first showed the virus. For IgM, 81.1% of those with asymptomatic infections and 83.8% of those with symptomatic infections ended up testing positive. Similarly, for IgGs, a higher percentage of symptomatic patients (78.4% vs. 62.2%) turned out to be positive. In fact, those who had symptoms tended to have particularly higher degrees of IgG (median of 20.5 versus 3.4) than those who did not.
Approximately 8 weeks after recovering from their infections, peak patients already had a drop in IgG levels, 93.3% of asymptomatic patients and 96.8% of symptomatic patients. These were not only small decreases, but also significant, median minimizations of a minimum of 71.1% in asymptomatic patients and 76.2% in symptomatic patients. It is worth noting that 81.1% of the asymptomatic organization and 62.2% of the symptomatic organization showed minimizations in the neutralization of serum antibody levels. In fact, 40.0% of asymptomatic patients and 12.9% of symptomatic patients no longer had measurable IgG.
Of course, antibodies are only one component of your immune reaction to a virus, even if it’s important. They’re like pants. The fact that you no longer have them doesn’t necessarily mean you’re absolutely exposed, especially if you use Spanx underneath. Some form of immunity to a virus may remain even if you don’t have detectable antibodies in your blood. But locating antibodies in the blood serum is, lately, the easiest way to measure the point of coverage you have.
So how does all this support in the case reports of other people re-inflamed with the virus? For example, the following segment of nine NBC news reports covered the case of a woman who reportedly became inflamed again:
Are these and other similar instances of reinfection? Or are they conditions in which false negative verification effects occurred between positive verification effects? In such cases, what appear to be two different infections may also have been just a very long infection. In addition, a user would possibly test positive and no longer get infected. Testing viral genetic curtains (i.e. RNA) may also stumble upon fragments of the virus instead of the full living version.
In all cases, case reports are case reports, not clinical studies. There are exceptions to each rule, except that macaroni and cheese are delicious and appropriate. If such case reports actually constitute genuine reinfections, then is a primary consultation to what extent are these occurrences common? Are they uncommon enough or not unusual enough to be too worried about them?
His immune reaction and the next immunity would possibly largely count on the type and severity of the infection he had in the first place. Having no symptoms would possibly be wonderful at this time, but it can also cause a weaker immune reaction. As you’ve seen, being a single type of disease, Covid-19 can be provided in many other flavors.
Then there’s the question of how long immunity can last. As I mentioned earlier for Forbes, a review of those who contracted the original SARS during the 2002-2003 outbreak reported that immunity can last about two years. But as a recently published e-book suggests about a circle of relatives whose surname rhymes with a speed stroke or a suction bomb, the fact that it belongs to the same circle of relatives does not mean behaving in exactly the same way. The differences between SARS-CoV2 and sarS virus are not yet clear.
So there is some evidence that your immune response to the SARS-CoV2 may differ depending on factors such as how severe your infection was and how strong your immune system may be. Random chance may play a role too because nothing in life is 100%. If your immune response was not very strong in the first place, then perhaps the door is left wide open for re-infection. Would a subsequent infection then be more or less severe? The other issue is duration of immunity and protection. Is it only a few weeks? A couple months? A year? Longer?
Lots of questions.
Ultimately, immunity to the SARS-CoV2 may be much more complex than “yes you are immune because you had the infection” situation. Immunity is not like a toupee. It’s not either on or off. Different types of infection could lead to different degrees of immunity that could last for different lengths of time. Different can be really good when it comes to leadership, creativity, clothing, and a salad bar but not necessarily with immune responses to a virus. Such complexity could further complicate the heck out of the pandemic and its response. It would make simplistic approaches such as “oh, let’s get everyone exposed to the virus and sacrifice a bunch of lives so that the pandemic can end,” less likely to work.
Thus, the answer to the question of whether you can get infected by the Covid-19 coronavirus more than once may be “it depends.” Stay tuned for more.
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I am a writer, journalist, teacher, system modeler, expert in PC and virtual fitness, lawyer and entrepreneur, not in that order. I’m right there.
I am a writer, journalist, teacher, system modeler, expert in PC and virtual physical fitness, dining lawyer and entrepreneur, not at all times in that order. Currently, I am Professor of Health Administration and Policy at the School of Public Health of the University of New York (CUNY), Executive Director of PHICOR (@PHICORteam), Professor courtesy of the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business and Founder and CEO of Symsilico. The above positions come with the Executive Director of the Global Center for Obesity Prevention (GOPC) at Johns Hopkins University, Associate Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Associate Professor of Biomedical Medicine and Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh, and Senior Manager at Quintiles Transnational, who works at Biotech Equity Research at Securities, and co-founder of a biotechnology/bioinformatics company. My paintings have appeared with approaches, models and PC equipment to help decision-makers about fitness and fitness on each and every continent (except Antarctica) and have received the support of a wide variety of sponsors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, NIH, AHRQ, CDC, UNICEF, USAID and the Global Fund. I have written more than two hundred clinical publications and 3 books. Follow me on Twitter (@bruce_y_lee) but don’t ask me if I know martial arts.