Recovered from COVID, Think You Are Immune Think Again

 

Plagues in ancient times generated more than a few myths and perhaps the “ye olde” equivalent of today’s conspiracy theories. Back then, they actually did not have much in the way of “science” to reject, and what they thought they “knew” has mostly been disproven by modern empirical research. I suspect we can see some of this today in isolated primitive communities, but most of the world, directly or indirectly, has reasonable access to accurate and substantiated medical information. Yet never before in the era of modern medicine has there been such widespread disinformation – Russians have been particularly obliging in planting divisive falsehoods about the COVID-19 (medically known as SARS-CoV-2) vaccines – and general misinformation that has permeated populist conservative media. 

If you wear a mask and get a vaccine, in too many red states and red counties, you are labeled as a liberal turncoat, against Donald Trump and his recast Republican Party, even as the highly contagious Delta COVID variant seriously infects millions more and, just here in the United States, has added 200,000 more deaths – now over 700,000 and rising fast. A quarter of new infections here hit children, another attribute of the predominant Delta variant (vs the original Alpha version that did not seem to impact children that much). 

The main anti-vax hucksters, led by Donald Trump himself and his Fox propaganda “news” anchors, are rather dramatic hypocrites. They’ve all been vaccinated. Even Trump, who had a life-threatening battle with a COVID infection himself, has received the Pfizer vaccine. Aside from the “gene altering,” “magnetizing”, “tracking device planting,” “it’s just a dangerous experimental vaccine,” “Chinese hoax,” “there are simple common treatments and preventives that work better than the vaccine,” “a disease rumor was spread by liberals seeking control,” “it does not infect children,” and notions that the “vaccine is far worse than the disease” populist beliefs, there is one more belief that just might sicken a whole lot more: recovering from COVID gives lifetime immunity, so you do not need a shot. You can listen to GOP Senator Rand Paul (a quack eye doctor who never practiced) lambast Dr. Anthony Fauci and swear that once you have recovered from COVID, you have immunity.

There’s just one catch. Every single one of the beliefs about COVID in the preceding paragraph is provably false. For those claiming that they do not have to mask and are perfectly safe to enter public buildings, restaurants, clubs, crowded sport events and concerts, and public transportation because they had COVID, recovered and are thus immune, there is some very bad empirical news. Yale News, October 1st, explains:

“Now a team of scientists led by faculty at Yale School of Public Health and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte have an answer: Strong protection following natural infection is short-lived… ‘Reinfection can reasonably happen in three months or less,’ said Jeffrey Townsend, the Elihu Professor of Biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health and the study’s lead author. ‘Therefore, those who have been naturally infected should get vaccinated. Previous infection alone can offer very little long-term protection against subsequent infections.’… The study, published in the journal The Lancet Microbe, is the first to determine the likelihood of reinfection following natural infection and without vaccination.

“Townsend and his team analyzed known reinfection and immunological data from the close viral relatives of SARS-CoV-2 that cause ‘common colds,’ along with immunological data from SARS-CoV-1 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. Leveraging evolutionary principles, the team was able to model the risk of COVID-19 reinfection over time… Reinfections can, and have, happened even shortly after recovery, the researchers said. And they will become increasingly common as immunity wanes and new SARS-CoV-2 variants arise.

“‘We tend to think about immunity as being immune or not immune. Our study cautions that we instead should be more focused on the risk of reinfection through time,’ said Alex Dornburg, assistant professor of bioinformatics and genomics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who co-led the study. ‘As new variants arise, previous immune responses become less effective at combating the virus. Those who were naturally infected early in the pandemic are increasingly likely to become reinfected in the near future.’

“The team’s data-driven model reveals striking similarities to the reinfection risks over time between SARS-CoV-2 and endemic coronaviruses… ‘Just like common colds, from one year to the next you may get reinfected with the same virus,” Townsend said. ‘The difference is that, during its emergence in this pandemic, COVID-19 has proven to be much more deadly.’” Unvaccinated and unmasked conspiracy theorists are not just infecting and killing themselves, they are providing breeding grounds for new variants and infecting and sometimes killing those around them. No, an individual’s right to do what they feel like it, regardless of the consequences, is not a constitutional right when it comes to pandemics!

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes it is just plain terrifying to live in a country where millions and millions of us reject science and medical realities, putting us all at additional and unnecessary risk.