If you've had covid once...

[Realitea]

I'm wondering if you were to get it again, would you have the same symptoms as you had the first time? I can't see how it could affect you differently if you got it again.
I'm convinced my family have had it. DS (he's 19) was the worst. Very unwell for a couple of months. DD (9) recovered after 2 weeks. DH had no symptoms and I had a migraine for 2-3 days.
Could immunity only last a few months? If you've had it, is it likely you won't get it again?
I know we don't have the answers yet but I'd like to know what others think about this.

Can You Get Covid-19 Again? It’s Very Unlikely, Experts Say:
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/health/covid-antibodies-herd-immunity.html

"anecdotal reports have described alleged reinfections—people who apparently catch COVID-19 a second time, and who test positive for the coronavirus again after months of better health. Such cases are concerning, but hard to interpret. Viral RNA—the genetic material that diagnostic tests detect—can stick around for a long time, and people can test positive for months after they’ve cleared the actual virus. If someone like that caught the flu and went to their doctor, they might get tested for coronavirus again, get a positive result, and be mistakenly treated as a case of reinfection. “It’s really hard to prove reinfection unless you sequence the genes of the virus” both times, Iwasaki says. “No one has that data, and it’s unreasonable to expect.”

Immunity lasts a lifetime for some diseases—chickenpox, measles—but eventually wears off for many others. As the pandemic drags on, we should expect at least a few instances in which people who’ve beaten COVID-19 must beat it again. So far, the fact that reinfections are still the subject of smattered anecdotes suggests that “it’s happening at a very low rate, if at all,” Cobey says. But remember: A bigger pandemic is a weirder pandemic. When there are almost 5 million confirmed cases, something that occurs just 0.1 percent of the time will still affect 5,000 people.
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/covid-19-immunity-is-the-pandemics-central-mystery/614956/

Think there have been reports both of patients getting more and less severely second time around... if they've definitely done that.

Getting it more or less severely second time around,

Thank you that’s quite promising!

My friend works at a nursing home.

They regularly test residents and staff (I'm unsure if it's routinely or just if they display symptoms).

She said several residents have had >1 positive, with the severity of symptoms lessening each time.

I was convinced we all had COVID early March I had loss of taste, DD1 had a fever and DD2 was diagnosed with a chest infection (she had a chesty cough and at the time the company COVID advice was that only a dry cough was a symptom), as was my grandma.

I got a positive mid June.

Unsure where that random 'company' came from!

The problem with COVID-19 seems to be that many people aren't retaining antibodies. I have a few friends in the medical world and 3 of them have tested positive for COVID, all ill with symptoms for at least 1 month, one still with ongowing fatigue and breathlessness. Only one of them has tested positive for antibodies however 2 months later, and he was the least sick of them all. I'm aware that this is anecdotal, but research his also showing a large fluctuation in antibody production in terms of when and for how long. At the moment we don't know enough about this virus to make any kind of call about lasting immunity.

Antibodies are only part of the picture of immunity. There are also T-cells, which “remember” how to make the antibodies and start to do so if re-exposed. The real question is not how long do antibodies last, but how long do T-cells last.

Unfortunately, the test fro T-cells is more complicated, therefore more expensive, so unlikely to be used outside a research environment.

I completely agree that the key is both T cell and B cell immunity, but we are just lacking data right now, so it is best to be very cautious. With T cells there is currently research involving previous SARS infections which shows promising immune response, but at the same time there is research that was inconclusive.

I agree with the need to maintain caution. Only time will tell.

At the population level, that means that masks, SD and sanitiser are here for a long time.

At the individual level, that means you make your own choices depending on your own assessment of risk. I've been in two supermarkets lately. In one, everyone was wearing masks, including staff, and there was plenty of room to swerve the minority of people who seemed to think as long as they werent actually eyeballing you they were OK.

In the second, no staff were wearing masks. I realise there is no legal requirement for them to do so, but it would be better if they did. More alarmingly - one member of staff was helping another customer at the self-checkout, and because of the layout, was blocking my route to the exit, so I waited. No mask, and never mind 2m or even 1m, she was leaning right into the customer as she talked to her. Apalling.

Immunity to coronaviruses is temporary. The most recent studies found median immunity to endemic human coronaviruses is 6 to 12 months. Columbia and Amsterdam universities for anyone who wants to take a look at the papers. Galanti and Shaman were the authors of the Columbia study. Can’t recall the Amsterdam team off the top of my head.

Influenza mutates to create new strains that are beyond existing immune response, but genetic drift doesn’t seem to be the issue with coronaviruses. The rapid antibody depletion observed in numerous studies suggests our immune system has a problem knowing what to do with SARS-CoV-2.

T-cell response is better than nothing but if reactivation or reinfection is an issue, relying on T-cells isn’t a long-term solution. Functional depletion and exhaustion of T-cells was an early study out of Wuhan that’s been replicated elsewhere. This virus takes a lot of T-cells down with it and some people run out of T-cells trying to fight it. And T-cell depletion isn’t good for long term health and fighting other viral diseases and cancer.

I think it’s almost certain we’ll see reinfection. We don’t know how frequently or what proportion of the population will be susceptible.

That's worrying. Once is enough for me. 😱

So we can look forward to Boris catching it again in September?

Someone my mum knows tested positive, was treated and seemed to recover, then tested positive again many months later and sadly died. He was very unwell otherwise (had cancer throughout) but it does tally with some other reports of people getting reinfected or never properly shaking it off the first time.