A new study out of Sweden published in the prestigious journal Cell, suggests that scientists may now have an answer to one of the most crucial lingering questions about COVID-19: whether people exposed to the virus develop long-term immunity:
Early research suggested that coronavirus antibodies – blood proteins that protect the body from subsequent infections – could fade within months. But in their concern about those findings’ implications, many people failed to consider our immune system’s multilayered defence against invading pathogens.
Specifically, they discounted the role of white blood cells, which have impressive powers of recollection that can help your body mount another attack against the coronavirus should it ever return. Memory T cells are an especially key type, since they identify and destroy infected cells and inform B cells about how to craft new virus-targeting antibodies.
A study published Friday in the journal Cell suggests that everyone who gets COVID-19 – even people with mild or asymptomatic cases – develops T cells that can hunt down the coronavirus if they get exposed again later.
“Memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19,” the study authors wrote, adding that they “may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19.”
That’s because memory T cells can stick around for years, while antibody levels drop following an infection.
The authors of the new study examined blood from 206 people in Sweden who had COVID-19 with varying degrees of severity. They found that regardless of whether a person had recovered from a mild or severe case, they still developed a robust T-cell response. Even coronavirus patients who did not test positive for antibodies developed memory T cells, the results showed.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called T-cell studies like this one “good news.”
“There’s a lot of hot stuff going on right now” in T-cell research, Fauci said during a NIAID Facebook Live interview on Thursday, adding, “People who don’t seem to have high titers of antibodies, but who are infected or have been infected, have good T-cell responses.”
…Many people who’ve never gotten COVID-19 seem to have memory T cells that can recognise the new coronavirus.
That was true for more than half of a cohort of 37 people in the July study and at least one-third of a group of 68 patients in the Nature study.
The likeliest explanation for these findings is a phenomenon called cross-reactivity: when T cells developed in response to another virus react to a similar but previously unknown pathogen. In this case, experts think these cross-reactive T cells likely come from previous exposure to other coronaviruses – those that cause common colds.
Indeed, a study published earlier this month supports that hypothesis: Researchers reported that 25 people who’d never had COVID-19 had memory T cells that could recognise both the new coronavirus and the four types of common-cold coronaviruses equally well.
So-called experts in the media have all but ignored the crucial role of T-cell immunity for this very reason — it’s far more versatile and long-lasting than basic antibody titer response.
When they study their vaccines, that’s what they measure for their ‘effectiveness’ — the level of titular antibody response after vaccination.
But anytime you introduce foreign substances into the body you will get a titular antibody response without necessarily getting any long-term immunity — which is one of the reasons flu shots do not work from one season to the next.
And all flu viruses spontaneously mutate, rendering specific titular antibody response useless.
And when the media falsely pronounces there is no long-term immunity to COVID-19, they are deceptively focusing only on the short-term antibody response, not the long-term T-cell response.
And, yes, you read that correctly — if you’ve ever had the common cold, you’ve developed T-cell immunity to COVID-9 and all other coronaviruses — and that’s exactly why it’s important for your immune system to be constantly exposed to these common viruses — it strengthens your immune system.
Face masks, social distancing, and lockdowns weaken our immune systems and make it less likely we can easily fight off these common flu viruses when we are exposed — especially young children whose immune systems are still developing.
But don’t worry, the media will dig up an ‘expert’ who will refute these new findings and explain to the gullible public why T-cell immunity for coronavirus is BAD for you, like this one commenter of the Cell study:
The authors contend that T cell responses, both in the stages of waning antibody levels and cross-reactive T cell responses in unexposed individuals, could be protective. However, they neglect to mention the distinct possibility that this may be disadvantageous in possibly facilitating induction of ADE.
Your letter by Jiang in this same journal issue does quite a good job delineating both these potential advantages and disadvantages of cross-reactive antibody responses. The interplay between cross-reactive humoral and cellular responses is important to note.
As for waning antibody levels, the role of existing cellular (T cell) memory from prior infection has been shown to be responsible for ADE in dengue virus. In addition, cross-reactive T cell responses have been shown to incite plasma leakage syndrome in dengue fever.
It is important to not neglect mentioning these potential disadvantageous consequences of T cell immunity.
Very impressive gobbledygook whose sole purpose is to confuse you, make you question your common sense, and ultimately trust these ‘experts’ who can de-code this nonsense.
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