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First Covid-19 Reinfection Has Been Documented (statnews.com) 58
There have been scattered reports of cases of Covid-19 reinfection. Those reports, though, have been based on anecdotal evidence and largely attributed to flaws in testing. But in this case, researchers at the University of Hong Kong sequenced the virus from the patient’s two infections and found that they did not match, indicating the second infection was not tied to the first. There was a difference of 24 nucleotides — the ‘letters’ that make up the virus’ RNA — between the two infections. Experts cautioned that this patient’s case could be an outlier among the tens of millions of cases around the world and that immune protection may generally last longer than just a few months.
- Of more importance, will it happen again or is this a one off case? Maybe this person never fully recovered. Maybe not.
Of more importance, will it happen again or is this a one off case? Maybe this person never fully recovered. Maybe not.
Actually to me, the larger question is…what was the seriousness of the infection to the individual?
I mean, if I”m one of the lucky ones that get it and have no or virtually no symptoms, or it doesn’t make me sick and kill me…I don’t give a damn how many times I get “infected”.
Was his first time worse than subsequent infection?
We know a virus will mutate…and some things I’ve read s
I mean, if I”m one of the lucky ones that get it and have no or virtually no symptoms, or it doesn’t make me sick and kill me…I don’t give a damn how many times I get “infected”.
You’ll still self quarantine during that time so you don’t spread it to others who could get sick and/or die, right?
You’ll still self quarantine during that time so you don’t spread it to others who could get sick and/or die, right?
Well, sure!!
I mean, I’d treat it like I do when I have to evacuate for a hurricane…I just think of it as a short unplanned vacation.
I work from home anyway…so, so far, this really hasn’t impacted me that much, but if I didn’t have this luxury, I’d treat it just like I mentioned above.
A slight inconvenience that I’d make the best of…I have LOTS of things I can do while staying at home
- OK fine.
There are too many people that equate no health problem for them, as no health problem at all.
- From the article:
“During his second infection, the man did not have any symptoms. During his first case, the patient had classic Covid-19 symptoms of cough, fever, sore throat, and headache.”So, yes, the second time seems to be milder.
The key to re-infection may be this:
“While most people seem to mount a solid response, there has been indication that some people do not produce neutralizing antibodies– those that can block the virus from infecting cells– at very high levels, for unclear reasons.” exactly– the fact you are infected with any number of most benign covid type viri is of no real interest. About 20% of ‘colds’ are of that basic type. The only real question is will the next ‘breed’ make you really sick , or just be a normal bug.
Re:Who is surprised by this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually to me, the larger question is…what was the seriousness of the infection to the individual?
I mean, if I”m one of the lucky ones that get it and have no or virtually no symptoms, or it doesn’t make me sick and kill me…I don’t give a damn how many times I get “infected”.
Having no symptoms doesn’t mean there is no damage being done. There is mounting evidence that long term effects such as myocarditis are not uncommon even in asymptomatic carriers [forbes.com]. This is true even for relatively young people (median age of 49 in the study).
If this bears out, you should definitely be concerned about even “mild” cases or repeat infections. It’s also why we shouldn’t be so blase about children getting it. Even if they don’t have any serious visible symptoms, there could be all kinds of long term health effects that we don’t know about yet. There could be a wave of people dropping dead from sudden heart failure in their 20s ten years from now because we rushed to send kids back to school and “COVID doesn’t hurt kids”.
- We cannot either as society or individuals make any decisions around so many “what ifs”. We also need to stop reading articles by MDs who publish into Forbes magazine, because what I have repeatedly noticed is they use very careful language in order to still be correct, yet frame things in a way we all know best as “clickbait”.
You did not understand how a virus affects the body before COVID-19, so stop pretending like reading a couple articles makes you an expert, especially if your source verification
- Maybe some better info [health.com] to round out your knowledge, speaking to the same study you refer to. Relevant quotes:
“Essentially, the new research establishes a link between COVID-19 and myocarditis, or inflammation in the heart caused by viral infection, but a relatively weak one”
“According to Dr. Cantillon, myocarditis sounds a lot more severe than it usually is. In fact, many viruses have been linked to myocarditis, and most people who develop the condition continue to be fully functioning, Dr. Cantillon
I mean, if I”m one of the lucky ones that get it and have no or virtually no symptoms, or it doesn’t make me sick and kill me…I don’t give a damn how many times I get “infected”.
You might if you knew how much it can fuck up you internal organs, including your heart:
https://www.google.com/search?… [google.com]
You might if you knew how much it can fuck up you internal organs, including your heart:
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I’d been reading that yes, while this happens, it is in a very small percentage of people that have had the disease.
There are apparently a number of different, long last effects that can hit different people in different ways, but so far, it seems this are still outlier cases, and not the norm.
- I don’t care if I have a one in a million chance of dying, I’d rather have a almost negligible chance of dying.
- Be careful about “no symptoms”. Some people don’t notice the symptoms they have. Remember a few months ago when you couldn’t buy a pulse oximeter for any price? Medics discovered that some “asymptomatic” infected people were unconsciously breathing more rapidly and deeply due to diminished lung capacity, and people got the idea of using oximeters as early warning devices. Just because you don’t notice symptoms doesn’t mean the virus isn’t doing bad things to you. The first infection might soften you up
Reading the story. They gene sequenced the virus the second time and found it was a different strain. So reinfection with a different strain is at least possible after 4 months in 1 case.
Really the question is whether previous infection is as good as a vaccine, so people needed bother with a vaccine. Not whether it is 100% effective.
Maybe this person never fully recovered. Maybe not.
But in this case, researchers at the University of Hong Kong sequenced the virus from the patient’s two infections and found that they did not match, indicating the second infection was not tied to the first. There was a difference of 24 nucleotides — the ‘letters’ that make up the virus’ RNA — between the two infections.
Either he got infected with two different strains, or that one latent infection that he never recovered from really mutated.
24 nucleotides is a bit much for one virus strain in one person. This seems pretty clearly a second infection. What it doesn’t say is how common this is. Also, as someone else indicated, how severe the second infection was compared with the first.
That a corona virus should have a short period of immunity isn’t a real surprise. Some do, some don’t.
Check back in 2-3 years, we might have a definitive answer given the wide variability in symptoms presented by the virus.
The good news is he had no symptoms the second time around vs. mild the first time, so maybe there’s some chance that you gain/retain partial immunity that makes subsequent infections mild and low risk.
There’s suggestive evidence that antibody based immunity is transient, but TCell based immunity is durable. This could fit with that. TCells take longer to get into action, and their action is killing off infected cells. This prevents rapid reproduction of the virus, but perhaps it doesn’t stop it completely.
OTOH, I’m a programmer, not a medic, so don’t take this too seriously.
Every person produces different antibodies. For some they might be merely sufficient under the right circumstances to kill it off. But not strong enough under non-optimal circumstances.
However sometimes for some reason antibody responses fail to be memorized. For some deisease maybe more than others.
Which regime were is thus is the question. I don’t know how this rebalances the odds.- This person was infected by two different version of the virus. This person had two distinct infections.
- by nospam007 ( 722110 ) *
“Of more importance, will it happen again or is this a one off case? Maybe this person never fully recovered. Maybe not.”
No, it was a different strain the second time, that’s why they are so sure.
Normal relapses have been widely documented, this isn’t one.
- Hopefully, but he still has the opportunity to spread it. That is probably the bigger problem.
- What is the re-infection rate for other viruses?
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go… [nih.gov].
- https://www.consultant360.com/… [consultant360.com]
Re:Is re-infection common with the flu/other virus (Score:4, Insightful)
by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday August 24, 2020 @04:03PM (#60437039) JournalIt can happen [oup.com]. If you breathe coronavirus it will enter your mouth throat and lungs and start spreading. If you’ve had the infection before (or gotten a vaccine), that will give your body a head-start in fighting it off.
And alcohol (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-urges-restrictions-on-alcohol-sales-amid-pandemic-warns-drinking-can-make-coronavirus-worse-2020-04-15)
Don’t forget that.If we just can keep enough people inside long enough we can end overpopulation in under a year. We just have to shoot them when they try to get food.
Documented only means someone in an official capacity wrote it down on an official document. Twice.
In Switzerland, 20% of the negatives can actually be positive.
One hears of US laboratories returning positive results from people who got tired of standing in line that never got tested. One hears some doctors sent in sterile specimens andreceived positive results.
Some tests, as far as I know, have or had up to 80% miss rate.
So again… documented in this context means jack shit. Jack. Shit.
Re:Documented means nothing (Score:4, Informative)
by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn@@@earthlink…net> on Monday August 24, 2020 @04:11PM (#60437087)Sorry, but in this case it means the virus was genetically sequenced both times. And there were significant differences that placed the infections in two different strains.
This isn’t proof that it happens often, but it’s evidence that the previous anecdotal claims shouldn’t just be written off as noise. And it’s evidence that, at least occasionally, the second infection is less severe than the original one.
Of course, if both infections cause micro-strokes, or damage to the kidney tubules, or some such, then the damage will be cumulative. But if the cases aren’t severe it may never matter. You may die/go senile for some other reason.
- by Kokuyo ( 549451 )
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but I thought most if not all tests just look for RNA fragments. Whether they actually represent an infection, remnants of one or just something you picked up but your body caught on to it early is not really something you can tell.
Has this changed?
We’ve been deal8ng with so many corona type viruses, obviously we’re gonna find corona RNA that differs from covid-19. These days EVERY type of symptom can point to covid. How the hell do we know this alarmist article truly is
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but I thought most if not all tests just look for RNA fragments.
Right. Which is why it’s important that this case was not merely a positive test– a few correct fragments– but a case in which they sequenced the whole genome of the virus.
Hey. I’ve already gone senile, you insensitive clod!
Documented only means someone in an official capacity wrote it down on an official document. Twice. In Switzerland, 20% of the negatives can actually be positive.
In this case they not only got a positive test result, they PCR sequenced the virus.
That’s why this case is imporant, while a half dozen other anecdotal reports of reinfection are dubious: the others had test results, which could be false positives either the first or second time, or a false negative test showing that they had recovered (and hence it wasn’t reinfection, it was a single infection that lasted a longer time). This one actually has PCR results, showing it wasn’t a false negative of the same vi
- Documented means documented. That’s a scientific word that means a scientist observed it, and wrote it down. It does not mean, “jack shit”.
- The outbreaks of Europe and Asia had different strains [cato.org] (clades) of the coronavirus.
It’s notable that reinfection is possible at all, but it would be a more dire finding if the reinfection were from the same strain, for which antigens had already been developed. The statistics look pretty good if this is truly the first reinfection documented out of hundreds of millions tested.
If you get infected every three months and don’t get sIck any time except the first time, then how do infections 2 through N matter at all?
Yes, because (1) you are infectious even if you don’t have symptoms, ,
(2) Just because in this one instance the second case had no symptoms, that doesn’t mean that every reinfection will be symptom-free.
(3) even symptom-free infections may cause long-term damage.
Yes, because (1) you are infectious even if you don’t have symptoms,
(2) Just because in this one instance the second case had no symptoms, that doesn’t mean that every reinfection will be symptom-free.
(3) even symptom-free infections may cause long-term damage.
1. There’s no evidence of that in his case.
2. There’s no evidence for that
3. There’s no evidence for that for subsequent infections1. There’s no evidence against that in his case.
2. There’s no evidence against that
3. There’s no evidence against that for subsequent infections
FIFY.
By the way, it would have been shorter if you’d just written “there’s a lot we don’t know.”
Indeed he did not!
”During his second infection, the man did not have any symptoms”
Philosophically, this is unfair towards Covid-19. Any other ”illness” – no one would ever have known.
From what I gather, this COVID-19 is just pneumonia. Big woopty-dilly-wacky-doo.
3.8% of hospitalizations for pneumonia result in death. It is not something to be unconcerned about.
I’ve had pneumonia twice in my life. All the family doctor did was spew the typical mantra “drink plenty of fluids & get lots of rest”. I never went to the hospital,
You survived twice. Horray for you.
I know people who survived being shot, too, but I don’t say “oh, getting shot is no big deal.”
- Oh snap.
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