Thank God we didn’t try for herd immunity! Man tests positive for 2nd time.

[Pinktornado]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/case-of-man-with-coronavirus-for-second-time-stokes-reinfection-fears-hong-kong

Man tests positive for coronavirus for the second time in 4.5 months. It was definitely not the same infection both times. However each time he didn’t have many symptoms which is a relief I suppose.

Considering that the virus hasn't been around long outside of China

Is that actually still being put about? That this was a virus which suddenly appeared in China at the end of December?

Aren't there other virus where vaccination is effective for most, but some people don't get immunity despite having had the illenss?

Chickenpox maybe? I'm sure I've seen people on mumsnet saying they had multiple jabs and had had it as a child. Maybe he was just really unlucky.

I read recently that 75% of new cases in Spain were asymptomatic.

@Namechangr9000

I read recently that 75% of new cases in Spain were asymptomatic.

But hey, let's shut down Madrid again.

@HalfPastThree

This is surely good news, and it's exactly what we expect the immune system to do. He was not even mildly ill: he was asymptomatic.

We know that asymptomatic people are less likely to pass the illness on, which is good news for pandemic control.

We are eight months into a global pandemic with probably hundreds of millions infected, and this is the first time this has happened - and he's presumably an outlier or we'd have been seeing it more often.

I agree with all of this.

We have no vaccine and life is mostly back to normal, cases may be rising but hospital admissions and deaths remain low. Isn’t that herd immunity?

I was musing on this earlier and I wondered how we know that this doesn't happen all the time with lots of other illnesses?

There is a general assumption that you only get chicken pox once (in general terms, I know there are some people who get it more than once). How do we know that they actually only get it once and do t in fact only get it symptomatically once and further infections are asymptomatic?

I have never been officially tested for chicken pox and neither was DS1 when he had (what we assume!) was chicken pox. Asymptomatic people certainly wouldn't be tested.

I'm just interested to know how much is unique to Covid and how much is happening with various viruses all the time but we are just not looking for it.

I was reading Sweden's cases are coming down, are less than e.g. France...time will tell whether they are helped by having less of a wave than the other countries I suppose. Give it a year...

This is surely good news, and it's exactly what we expect the immune system to do. He was not even mildly ill: he was asymptomatic.

We know that asymptomatic people are less likely to pass the illness on, which is good news for pandemic control.

^ This

There is a general assumption that you only get chicken pox once (in general terms, I know there are some people who get it more than once). How do we know that they actually only get it once and do t in fact only get it symptomatically once and further infections are asymptomatic?

I remember reading a few years ago that the routine vaccination of children against chicken pox in the US had led to a rise in shingles in older people. I can't remember all the details but I think the theory was that people need to be exposed to the virus from time to time to top up their immunity and with no virus in the community this wasn't happening.

It seems as if he was only in hospital the first time because Hong Kong was isolating everyone who tested positive in hospital and he only had 3 days of fever and cough. We only know he is positive this time because Hong Kong is testing everyone who comes in from 'risky' countries. There could, therefore, logically be loads of people around the world who have been asymptomatically infected a second time but haven't been tested. Surely this is actually reasonably good news. He wasn't very ill the first time, but has been not at all ill the second.

There are lots of reports of reinfections around the world, mainly in Israel, Iran, Philippines & US (places where high levels of community transmission make reinfection more likely) I’m afraid many of the secondary infections were more severe, possibly evidence of ADE or that the person was weakened by first infection.
Many medics have been reporting this but it hasn’t been accepted because it was impossible to prove whether it was a second infection or a reactivation of first infection (also not a good thing). Now it has been proven through genetic sequencing & so we will see more & more reports of this (previously it was being dismissed as scaremongering) & get a feel for how widespread it is. It’s another reason why we should be working hard to minimise community transmission.

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/some-people-can-get-pandemic-virus-twice-study-suggests-no-reason-panic#

We did 'try for herd immunity' We're relying on that unless you want lockdown for life. That's how it works.

Even a vaccine is an aid to herd immunity, but faster and safer than people catching it.

This isn't worrying. Quite the opposite. Although a sample of one is too small to be statistically relevant it shows that, having had Covid once, when he met it again, even a different strain, it didn't make him ill. He was only tested as he was travelling.

We don't even know if the Covid genetic material found in his sample was infective; it could well be that his immune reaction had deactivated it.

There's a world of difference between having a pathogen present in one's body and the immune system deactivating it and suffering from the disease. There are various bacteria and viruses that live in our bodies which we need to keep us healthy. In the wrong circumstances they can make us ill, but their presence in the healthy state doesn't mean we're suffering from an infection.

Two European patients confirmed to have been re-infected:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/aug/25/coronavirus-live-news-gaza-in-lockdown-following-first-local-cases-hong-kong-man-re-infected?page=with:block-5f44e7c38f08767dd7f0e657#block-5f44e7c38f08767dd7f0e657

a patient in the Netherlands and another in Belgium had also been re-infected with the virus.

Dutch broadcaster NOS cited virologist Marion Koopmans as saying
the patient in the Netherlands was an older person with a weakened immune system.

“That someone would pop up with a re-infection, it doesn’t make me nervous,” she said.
“We have to see whether it happens often.”

"The Belgian case was a woman who had contracted Covid-19 for the first time in March and then a second time in June.

Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst told Belgian broadcaster VRT that the woman, whose symptoms were relatively mild,
may not have created enough antibodies to prevent a reinfection, although they might have helped limit the sickness.

“I think that in the coming days that we will see other similar stories ...
These could be exceptions, but do exist and it’s not just one,” Mr Van Ranst said. “It’s not good news.”

< but so far it's not terrible news either;
noone has yet been seriously ill, let alone died, from a 2nd infection.
No indication that there will be a lot of confirmed 2nd cases
Time to worry is when / if all this changes >