Is natural Covid immunity possible?

[Thudthudthud]

3 weeks ago DS(6) started with a cough and fatigue. It later transpired that his best friends dad had a confirmed case of coronavirus so it’s likely he had it too.

Since then everyone else in the family has had it as well to varying degrees and symptoms (cough and chest pain being the moment common symptoms). All except me who had a day of a runny nose and since then nothing.

Is it possible I have some kind of natural immunity or is it more likely it’s still going to hit me?

I couldn’t find any stories of anyone catching it a second time and being very ill, there were tests done which showed Covid traceable but there were questions over the tests. So far the good news is we don’t seem to be seeing people ending up a second time in hospital with it, it’s early days so this may change. You would of thought medical staff who are on a coronvirus ward, if they have had it once and recovered, you would see more cases where they have caught it again but I can’t find any?

@BlackBear19 it says it here on the faqs on NHS site. www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/bcg-tb-vaccine-questions-answers/

www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/bcg-tb-vaccine-questions-answers/

Re. The chicken pox thing. Neither of my kids have ever definitively had it I.e. with the spots etc. However DS got shingles as a toddler, and you can't get shingles without having had CP. We can only assume they both had CP subclinically, or at least it was one of the times they had very mild virus symptoms - no more than a slight temp etc. They have 100% been exposed to it several times via nursey/school.

Not sure if it's a clicky link, it's on the bcg page for NHS under faqs, it's the first sentence.

I read an article where a whole village in Italy was tested. For every case with symptoms there were 10 positive cases without any symptoms.

Being a small village I expect there were many family groups where perhaps their DNA just showed a natural resilience to it. However I find a 10 to 1 ratio quite astounding. I guess until there is an anti body test we won't know who has been asymptomatic.

I would be wary of taking a vaccine that had been rushed through.

My DH had BCG jab, I didn't (40s) as they said I was naturally immune to TB. Kids and DH have shown no signs of covid. I have had coughs on and off since December and fevers a couple of times, don't think it's covid as I've not been out since lockdown started. Nasty cough which comes and goes.

I know CV and chicken pox aren't the same but....my friend's children haven't got chicken pox, despite lots of exposure and her doctor suggested they are super carriers, they might have had it asymptomatically that they wont suffer the usual symptoms but carry it....and therefore, spread it far and wide?!

I'm wondering about all these CV cases who are asymptomatic and more so, people who've had CV and could then transmit it outside the 14 day quarantine limit. So, your family goes down with CV and you don't. You all stay isolated for 14 days. You then go back out into the world and are immune. Can you catch it again, not suffer symptoms and spread it around - a superspreader?

Is that a thing even with disease?
(Disclaimer: I obviously don't specialize in immunology.)

bobstersmum

You and I must have different thought processes . I read that the other day and focused in on the at least 15 years rather than your focus of up to 60 years.
I did my sums and concluded mine maybe wasn't working any more.
But I'll happily take a bit of your more hopeful outlook and hope many more will be protected by their BCG.

OP, people's own immunity system react to the virus differently. From the various news I have read, 80-90% people have the virus will have mild or no symptoms.

So, we have 60k confirmed cases, which mean we actually have around 500k-600k cases already. That's also one of the reason we have higher death rate. As we didn't test the mild cases.

It’s really interesting and I wonder if there will be some natural immunity. When it was first raised I thought about HIV - it was a new virus when it emerged but now we know that a significant percentage of Northern Europeans have a genetic mutation that provides immunity. Obviously this took a long time to discover, but it seems logical to assume there might be some mutation that provides immunity.

I’m surprised you were sent for an x-ray notangelinajolie, I also didn’t have the BCG as I reacted to the pre test, as did the vast majority of my class at school as I remember. Only a handful went on to have the actual BCG. None of us had X-rays. That was the 80’s though so maybe they had more knowledge around it by then.

I suspect I’ve had corona virus. Dh possibly. Dc (aged 20 and 18) not had it, although would have shown symptoms by now if all the timeline reports are accurate.

I definantly had bcg at school.

Hopefully someone will shout me down if I'm wrong here but from reading I believe there's also an issue with 'viral load' so if you have a very small exposure to the virus initially you can have a milder version but as the exposure is ramped up the more dangerous it becomes. This is why frontline workers are dying, they get exposed repeatedly to a high amount of the virus, especially if PPE isn't available.

Although I'm presuming if your child had it you would have been the main carer so at the front of queue when your DS was generously sharing the virus around!

That’s definitely one theory ExCwmbranDweller but they don’t know enough about the virus yet to know for sure.
People tend to have the highest viral load when most symptomatic, which is why a nurse who is treating patients with severe symptoms would be more at risk than a parent picking it up from their mildly symptomatic child (mild in the sense that they didn’t require hospitalisation).

Everyone's immune systems are different, dd1 with get a cold and it will be gone again in a few days, dd2 will frequently end up with a secondary infection that requires anti biotics from the same cold. Her body obviously just isn't able to fight it off in the same way! Interesting about the BCG though. I've definitely had mine but worried about my mum in her late 60's now as she had it as a baby rather than a teen. I also read a link between O- blood types and milder symptoms but that was ages ago and no idea if it's true as I didn't check the source

As pp said the viral load also seems to be a factor from what I've read

I think when this is all under control the scientists will take decades to unpick it all HoffiCoffi (NN neis ) and it will be fascinating. I hadn't thought about different levels of shedding depending on how ill a patient is. Jeeze the NHS workers are insanely brave, I'd be terrified to go near a sick patient, never been happier to be invalided out of my job, I'd have run screaming from the hospital.

So with viral overload you would think we would hear more cases of health/NHS workers getting ill a second time but I haven’t heard of one? Does that mean even with viral overload they are immune?

Gin96 they still don’t know if you actually can be ill a second time, or whether it was a fault of the testing. There isn’t enough data as yet.
Like ExCwmbranDweller says, there will be a lot of unpicking of it all when things have calmed down.

But the likelihood is that those infected with higher viral load the first time would have stronger immunity than someone who has only encountered a small amount of the virus initially.
In general, those who get chicken pox more than once are those who only had it very mildly the first time and didn’t build up sufficient immune response. But again, with COVID19 no one really knows yet!

But has there been any cases of anyone being very ill from coronvirus a second time? I can’t find any reported?

No there hasn’t.

@HoffiCoffi13 well that is good news, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Is it 99% of the population will survive this, is that correct?