Immunity after Covid ?

[Artclub]

I keep reading scientists saying that they don't know if you are immune after having Covid19.

Now, I'm just wondering, if you don't have some immunity after it, how will a vaccine work?

Hopefully someone with proper knowledge can explain it to me.

I've had it and it was brutal.

[Jules-and-Boo]

it's because of the different strains.

A vaccine would have to cover all of them, whereas your own immunity would only cover the strain you've had.

Glad you;re feeling better

[seenbeen]

Artclub Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I keep reading scientists saying that they don't

> know if you are immune after having Covid19.

> Now, I'm just wondering, if you don't have some

> immunity after it, how will a vaccine work?

> Hopefully someone with proper knowledge can

> explain it to me.

> I've had it and it was brutal.

Every year the Department of Health monitors the 'flu strains going around the world and then prepares a vaccine for the new ones to be given to us in September. (Cold viruses and 'flu viruses mutate and you only have immunity to the ones you have already had or have had a vaccine.)

The current Covid 19 which is a SARS virus has had its DNA mapped and appears to be the SARS from 2002 but with 5 mutations which have made it a lot worse and more contagious

I wish I didn't know anything about this stuff- it makes me very angry and sad but at least I know exactly why we have to follow the scientific guidelines- although I was appalled to see the crowds on the tube trains at the start of the lockdown

[Tipsyleprachauns]

...

[seenbeen]

Tipsyleprachauns Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> In response to SeenBeen - Please don?t talk

> rubbish about something which you obviously know

> nothing about.

>

> The virus is related in so far as it?s a

> coronavirus. It is NOT a mutation of the 2002 SARS

> virus and it is not worse, though it is more

> infectious. Don?t try to pretend to be ?in the

> know? just to stoke up fear.

>

> Source: WHO

>

> ? No. The virus that causes COVID-19 and the one

> that caused the outbreak of Severe Acute

> Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 are related to

> each other genetically, but the diseases they

> cause are quite different.

>

> SARS was more deadly but much less infectious than

> COVID-19. There have been no outbreaks of SARS

> anywhere in the world since 2003?

FYI

https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/24/dna-sleuths-read-coronavirus-genome-tracing-origins-and-mutations/

https://www.contagionlive.com/news/can-we-beat-sarscov2-lessons-from-other-coronaviruses

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200131114755.htm

And you think we should not be afraid- the world has been thoroughly let down by the WHO for allowing the wet markets- the source of both SARS viruses to exist at all. And if you're so 'in the know' then explain it 'properly' ....

In fact the last reference there has another piece of worrying information

[sand12]

Hope you are taking it easy Artclub. It is really hard to swift through all the emerging science and find any definitive answers. I would say though that this might be the best read if you want a layman?s explanation:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-14/do-coronavirus-survivors-have-immunity-from-reinfection-maybe

In short we just don?t know and it will take time for the scientists to do the science. We need time to run the experiments and trials. Anyone, politician or economist, saying otherwise or offering a magic test or pill is basically a snake-oil salesman at best.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Report any medical issues to your GP and insist on CT scans to check your lungs if you feel worse. The post-symptom period is really important too. We don?t know what this virus does long term to the body.

And, seenbeen, it wasn?t the WHO which let us down. It was our government. It was a PM too lazy and filled with hubris to attend multiple COBRA meetings or listen to his scientists that let down this country. The WHO was warning governments back in January. Many countries listened & prepared: Greece, Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand and Germany. How do they compare in #dead versus the UK?

[Blackcurrant]

Artclub Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I keep reading scientists saying that they don't

> know if you are immune after having Covid19.

> Now, I'm just wondering, if you don't have some

> immunity after it, how will a vaccine work?

> Hopefully someone with proper knowledge can

> explain it to me.

> I've had it and it was brutal.

The uncertainty is over the degree of immunity, not whether it exists at all. If you've had covid or a vaccine, you'll have some resistance and would be more likely to have mild symptoms if infected in the future.

It's possible we'll have effective antiviral drugs before a vaccine. They would also make the disease less deadly.

[Tipsyleprachauns]

...

[Artclub]

Thankyou all.

I have been so frustrated and angry with our Government for letting us down. There is so much data on this virus they could have been gathering that is lost (and they know how to collect data!)

I am 99.9% sure that I and most of my extended family have had it because we got it from Grandpa who was hospitalised and therefore tested and sadly died.

4 of us had it very seriously but luckily no real cough and avoided hospital but only just. Of the other 6 infected, 4 had very mild symptoms and 2 had no symptoms.

It is interesting stuff, but no testing in the community means we are all terrified. I suspect the number of people who have had it in london is really high and a lot of those have it mildly or no symptoms.

We have, and still are being let down by our glorious leaders.

I am hoping to be able to donate blood plasma to help a new study, when I'm feeling back to normal which is taking a bit of time.

[Blackcurrant]

On Andrew Marr today, the Oxford university vaccine scientist who has developed a vaccine for testing said her previous vaccine against the MERS coronavirus gave a much stronger and longer lasting response than the infection itself. So if you've had covid, you're now partially resistant but it's still worth getting the vaccine when it becomes available. Herd immunity unlikely to work without the vaccine.

[seenbeen]

Blackcurrant Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> On Andrew Marr today, the Oxford university

> vaccine scientist who has developed a vaccine for

> testing said her previous vaccine against the MERS

> coronavirus gave a much stronger and longer

> lasting response than the infection itself. So if

> you've had covid, you're now partially resistant

> but it's still worth getting the vaccine when it

> becomes available. Herd immunity unlikely to work

> without the vaccine.

The animal testing for the first SARS virus resulted in either the symptoms getting worse, or severe liver damage. The first SARS virus and this SARS 2 virus both act on the same cell receptors so a vaccine is going to be very difficult to develop if that is the case.

Interestingly the Cambridge Virology team are saying that the DNA of the current virus is more like the DNA of a similar virus found in horseshoe bats 1,000 miles South of Wuhan.....

How exactly are we being let down by our so-called glorious leaders? All I hear from the media is implied blame- this is a PANDEMIC- all countries are vying for PPE...How come Turkey did not deliver the PPE today- did they get a better offer? The Government is being led by the scientists.

The problem with this WHOLE scenario is that when the outbreak happened in Wuhan, China STILL allowed flights out of the area.....WHY?

[JohnL]

Blackcurrant Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> On Andrew Marr today, the Oxford university

> vaccine scientist who has developed a vaccine for

> testing said her previous vaccine against the MERS

> coronavirus gave a much stronger and longer

> lasting response than the infection itself. So if

> you've had covid, you're now partially resistant

> but it's still worth getting the vaccine when it

> becomes available. Herd immunity unlikely to work

> without the vaccine.

Why did he say "will Britain get this first" - surely work has been an international effort not only UK based research and other countries aren't sitting around doing nothing - that came across so badly.

Also hearing reports that even if you are asymptomatic - damage to the lungs, heart and kidneys (and maybe brain) can happen - that means people are vulnerable to diseases afterwards on already weakened organs ?

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/covid-19s-consequences-for-the-heart/

So instead of a lung disease you get a form of heart or kidney infection.

[Burbage]

Artclub Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Now, I'm just wondering, if you don't have some

> immunity after it, how will a vaccine work?

> Hopefully someone with proper knowledge can

> explain it to me.

The way a vaccine works is to give your immune system something 'like' the virus - an inactivated version, perhaps, or just some fragments of the molecules (often 'spike' proteins) on its surface - so that it learns how to produce antibodies to it. Then, later, if you meet the real thing, the immune system will be ready to respond to it more quickly. The antibodies, incidentally, work by sticking to the surface of the virus - as they stick, they slightly change their shape, making their sticky-out ends look very tempting to passing immune cells who eat them all up, and the virus along with them.

It normally takes around five days for your immune system to start producing specific antibodies. Before that, it will try to fight the infection using more general tools, like lots of tiny sledgehammers to crack lots of tiny nuts. Those tools tend to provoke symptoms, such as inflammation and fever, and can kick off unhelpful chain reactions that can be dangerous. In many ways, serious covid cases are us much to do with that as to the virus itself. Our immune systems differ a lot, not only in how they react, but what they react to.

If a vaccine can prepare our immune system for the virus then, hopefully, they'll all behave in the same way, by producing antibodies more quickly, and so avoid the symptoms by skipping the sledgehammer phase.

However, not all vaccines work, or work for long. That can be because viruses change (or mutate). The good news is that viruses that attack humans can only change in some respects. They can't change the bits of themselves that latch onto human cells by very much, or they simply won't be able to latch on.

Another bit of good news is that coronaviruses are "RNA viruses", meaning they don't have any error-correction mechanisms. That means that, even though they mutate rapidly, each mutation is a game of russian roulette. Measles is also an RNA virus, and the vaccine for that has worked for decades.

The bad news is that 'flu viruses are also RNA viruses. But 'flu is a bit different. One major difference is that it can merrily live, and jump between, a whole bunch of different hosts, such as humans, pigs and birds. That gives it many more chances, and is one reason why there a good few strains exist.

At the moment, we don't know if the covid virus is more like 'flu or measles in that respect. It might have evolved in bats (which seem to tolerate viruses well), jumped to pangolins and then to humans. Or it might have evolved in a human exposed to both bats and pangolins. At the moment, we don't know. But because pangolins are fairly rare, and most people don't spend much time with bats, covid is more likely to behave like measles than 'flu, so a vaccine should work well.

So a vaccine should work, in theory. In practice, it's more complicated. To make a vaccine, we need to choose the right bit of the virus to tease the immune system with. That's usually fairly easy. You just take one of the 'spike' proteins on the virus' surface that latches onto human cells. There's often more than one of those, though, and some are very similar to proteins you have in your body already, so that needs to be carefully chosen, or it mightn't work.

And then we have to find ways to make it. There are a few ways to do that - but mostly it's done by forcing e.g. hen's eggs or bacteria to produce that protein, either by infecting it with a 'harmless' version of the virus or genetically engineering it. The problem with that, though, is that mutations can happen there, too, so what you put into production isn't always exactly what you get out. And there, once the protein has been produced, you need a way to purify and store it in a way that doesn't change it.

Those problems are solvable, but they're one of the reasons why trials need to be done, and why sometimes trials fail. In this case, we have an advantage, in that lots of groups are working on lots of different potential vaccines, but it does mean delays are likely and 'promising' solutions don't always work out.

So that's vaccines. But it doesn't answer your question of why infection doesn't necessarily make people immune.

Mostly, we don't know. But natural immune systems won't necessarily always choose the same bit of the virus to recognise as vaccine-producers will, and some bits will be more changeable than others. If so, then immunity gained by infection mightn't last as long as immunity gained by vaccination, or work at all against just a slightly different version.

I hope that helps. I can't guarantee it's wholly correct, or that I've not forgotten something vital, but given there's nothing in it than most of us can do anything about, it won't make much difference. Corrections would, nevertheless, be very welcome.

[Blah Blah]

That was a very good interview and worth watching on iplayer Artclub. What she actually said is that coronaviruses are good at not leaving a strong immunity memory (something already understood by virologists), but that you do not have to use the virus you are trying to combat to create a vaccine, and that there is a difference between immunity left by recovery from a virus and immunity given by a vaccine.

Artclub's initial question is a very good one. Given that most vaccines are created by using the virus you are trying to combat to teach the body to create antibodies to fight that particular virus, how do you do that for a virus that doesn't teach the body to do that in those that catch the virus and recover? Sarah Gilbert answers that in her Marr interview.

She explains that you can teach the body to produce the antibodies to fight certain antigenic processes, that may be used by a variety of viruses. Her vaccine is not using SARS Cov2 at all, but the Adenovirus which she hopes will produce a stronger immune response. She explains how COVID19 latches onto the bodies ACE2 receptors and how that ACE2 receptor is the key factor in the age and gender differentials we are seeing in symptoms and mortality, and that vaccines do not work as effectively in older people as they do younger people (but that can be addressed with booster vaccines as often as they are needed).

She also touched on antigenic shift and drift a little too. That is the part that interests me because it is the indicator as to how difficult this virus might be to manage moving forward. She seems to say that minor antigenic drift observations are being seen already as opposed to the major antigenic shift we see with the seasonal flu virus. If it stays that way, then while we may never totally eradicate this virus, it may end up being entirely manageable once we have vaccines in play.

Her interview is 17 mins in Artclub and I think it answers your question very succinctly while also explaining some of the main challenges in developing a vaccine that can be widely used. :)

[Artclub]

Our glorious leaders failed to prepare for what was very obviously coming our way. They had other countries to learn from but they did nothing. There are still flights arriving here with no checks. Very little testing. Small companies in the UK trying to sell PPE to our government but being ignored...

[Artclub]

Thankyou, very helpful.

[Artclub]

Thankyou

[evilmanic]

Just out of interest, what are your views on 5G? And how it relates (or doesn't) to Covid-19?

seenbeen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Blackcurrant Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > On Andrew Marr today, the Oxford university

> > vaccine scientist who has developed a vaccine

> for

> > testing said her previous vaccine against the

> MERS

> > coronavirus gave a much stronger and longer

> > lasting response than the infection itself. So

> if

> > you've had covid, you're now partially

> resistant

> > but it's still worth getting the vaccine when

> it

> > becomes available. Herd immunity unlikely to

> work

> > without the vaccine.

>

> The animal testing for the first SARS virus

> resulted in either the symptoms getting worse, or

> severe liver damage. The first SARS virus and this

> SARS 2 virus both act on the same cell receptors

> so a vaccine is going to be very difficult to

> develop if that is the case.

> Interestingly the Cambridge Virology team are

> saying that the DNA of the current virus is more

> like the DNA of a similar virus found in horseshoe

> bats 1,000 miles South of Wuhan.....

> How exactly are we being let down by our so-called

> glorious leaders? All I hear from the media is

> implied blame- this is a PANDEMIC- all countries

> are vying for PPE...How come Turkey did not

> deliver the PPE today- did they get a better

> offer? The Government is being led by the

> scientists.

> The problem with this WHOLE scenario is that when

> the outbreak happened in Wuhan, China STILL

> allowed flights out of the area.....WHY?

[Staspah]

> The problem with this WHOLE scenario is that when

> the outbreak happened in Wuhan, China STILL

> allowed flights out of the area.....WHY?

And In this country they were still letting flights in from China WHY?

Flights still coming here too and no checks at airports WHY?

[Blah Blah]

By the time Beijing caught wind of the cover up by local authorities in China, and sounded the alarm, the virus had already spread across borders. So stopping flights at that moment would not have prevented the spread of something so infectious with its various incubation periods. We focus on flights because that is the quickest way to travel anywhere, but land borders are also crossed easily, boats still sail and so on.

All the processes followed from thereon are the established processes for pandemic management. Isolation of cases and contact tracking for example, but what changed that response into the subsequent social distancing and then lockdown (also established stages of pandemic response modelling) are the realisations around infectiousness and severity of symptoms.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it is important to try and understand the pressure on science and governments when new viruses emerge. Epidemiologists train for a worst case scenario they hope never to have to put into action. It's a big call to make and what follows, depends on the success of the race to develop vaccines and treatments.

On flights still coming here with no checks, I don't know why any government would not automatically quarantine travellers. But you could also ask why public transport was allowed to run as normal for as long as it did and so on. That is in between navigating all the silly conspiracy theories out there and those who just refuse to believe there is even a virus at all. There is a clear clash emerging between the ethics of saving lives and political interests around economic concerns. For me it is not a question of either/ or. Pandemics do happen. There will always be lives lost and there will always be economic impacts. The same is true of global wars. Those that come through best, are those best able to adapt to the new world that emerges.

[gromit316]

does this mean there is no point in a vaccine?

[Blah Blah]

???? gromit. Of course there is a point in a vaccine.

[seenbeen]

JohnL Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Blackcurrant Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > On Andrew Marr today, the Oxford university

> > vaccine scientist who has developed a vaccine

> for

> > testing said her previous vaccine against the

> MERS

> > coronavirus gave a much stronger and longer

> > lasting response than the infection itself. So

> if

> > you've had covid, you're now partially

> resistant

> > but it's still worth getting the vaccine when

> it

> > becomes available. Herd immunity unlikely to

> work

> > without the vaccine.

>

> Why did he say "will Britain get this first" -

> surely work has been an international effort not

> only UK based research and other countries aren't

> sitting around doing nothing - that came across so

> badly.

>

> Also hearing reports that even if you are

> asymptomatic - damage to the lungs, heart and

> kidneys (and maybe brain) can happen - that means

> people are vulnerable to diseases afterwards on

> already weakened organs ?

>

> https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/cov

> id-19s-consequences-for-the-heart/

>

> So instead of a lung disease you get a form of

> heart or kidney infection.

The target of the virus is ubiquitous but some researchers in Sweden and British Columbia have come up with something promising in vitro at least

https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/59290/decoy-ace2-receptors-could-be-promising-covid-19-infection-preventing-drug/

[JohnL]

This sounds like something Trump would make up - but seems to come from proper sources in France

Nicotine protects against Covid19 - People being strongly advised not to start smoking.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-nicotine-patches-to-be-tested-on-patients-after-study-suggests-smokers-less-likely-to-catch-covid-19-11977460

[JohnL]

Sorry, in my above post I underestimated Mr Trump and his ingenuity

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/donald-trump-inject-disinfectant-coronavirus-treatment-a4422816.html