You Gov survey assumed having C19 once equals immunity

[20mum]

A survey asked how scared people are of catching Covid19, adding an option to tick a box marked "This is not applicable to me because I have already had it ".

This seems stunning. It is perfectly well known that Covid19 can be contracted a second time. What is worse, unlike some infections, the second infection is more dangerous than the first, because the symptoms are more severe, the risk of dying is greater, and the Long Covid after effects are more damaging.

People taking a You Gov survey will not expect to be given life-risking dangerous misinformation. Early in the year, before much was known, there was an assumption that becoming infected would give immunity at least for a while. It seems however that the antibodies fade remarkably quickly, and that reinfection is possible shortly after recovering from the first illness.

I really wish the Internet had never been invented. Rare complications of viral infections, where the immune system overreacts, are not new. The vast majority of people reinfected with a virus they've had will mount a perfectly normal immune response and be fine.

Tootletum we cannot blame it on the internet
How will we cope with long wet cold days at home without it?

Never let silly old facts get in the way of shouty opinion?

@Tootletum

I really wish the Internet had never been invented. Rare complications of viral infections, where the immune system overreacts, are not new. The vast majority of people reinfected with a virus they've had will mount a perfectly normal immune response and be fine.

This a million times

OP I have seen graphs showing more people affected on the second wave, but that can be due to more testing at the moment. The hospital admissions are predicted to be higher, so that we can directly compare to the first wave curve.
But I have never seen anywhere that if you get infected a second time is worst.
Also, always seen that reinfection is not frequent.

Assume a comparison: One country with a one thousand population tests the entire population, and finds one in a thousand is infected. Rate one in a thousand. Total infections one. That country re-tests the entire population at regular intervals. Each new case of infection is registered and the person identified. Most of these will not have symptoms, so would never have known, without the testing, that they had been infected once. Obviously, this would be the only country which would know if people were being re infected quickly, easily, frequently or never.

Another country, also with a one thousand population, tests only ten people, and finds one infected. Total One? Or total completely unknown? Rate one per thousand? Or rate one hundred per thousand? Number of instances of reinfection zero? Or nobody has the slightest idea?

It can only be fatuous to state anything about reinfection rate in any population which is not identified and retested regularly. There is, recently, a start. in u.k.. to such testing. However, it is not clear it covers a representative population sample, despite it being large enough to be statistically relevant. Does it include babies to centenarians, and does it include various states of health ?

I now know 3 other teachers who have caught covid twice within 6 months and two of them (one is my sister) feel very much worse, actually.

So many medical miracles on mn!

@phlebasconsidered

I now know 3 other teachers who have caught covid twice within 6 months and two of them (one is my sister) feel very much worse, actually.

Really?! You personally know 3 people who have caught Covid twice?! How unlucky....

It’s just bollocks

Yes, I do. My sister and two other teacher friends in Birmingham and Leicester. I'm not sure what you find hard to believe about it. I know a lot of teachers because we a) remain friends after training b) worked together as colleagues and c) one is my actual real sister.

Fuck off with your minimising of an actual real situation.

Because only two dozen or so worldwide?

Well, clearly not.

See, medical phenomena 🤷🏻‍♀️

@phlebasconsidered

I now know 3 other teachers who have caught covid twice within 6 months and two of them (one is my sister) feel very much worse, actually.

Wow! How come they’re not all in the news since the media have made so much fuss about other cases?!

Have they actually tested positive twice after a negative test in between?

Have your sister and your two other friends been on the news, even if it's just local news? Are they being tested by PHE or any other studies? Because there really aren't that many cases in the entire world of people being reinfected with Covid at this stage, so I am sure they would be very interested in this!

When did they get Covid the first time? Did they all catch it at school during lockdown? Did they all get actual positive Covid tests both times?

Have your sister and your two other friends been on the news, even if it's just local news? Are they being tested by PHE or any other studies? Because there really aren't that many cases in the entire world of people being reinfected with Covid at this stage, so I am sure they would be very interested in this!

When did they get Covid the first time? Did they all catch it at school during lockdown? Did they all get actual positive Covid tests both times?

Have your sister and your two other friends been on the news, even if it's just local news? Are they being tested by PHE or any other studies? Because there really aren't that many cases in the entire world of people being reinfected with Covid at this stage, so I am sure they would be very interested in this!

When did they get Covid the first time? Did they all catch it at school during lockdown? Did they all get actual positive Covid tests both times?

There's also the fear of the unknown. Once you've had it you may not want to get it again but feel it's more of a known quantity

There's also the fear of the unknown. Once you've had it you may not want to get it again but feel it's more of a known quantity

I know two people who have had covid twice.
They were tested on each occasion.
In the first person they didnt have any symptoms at all the second time and it was an incidental finding because they had to test due to local advice.
With the second person they had slight symptoms the second time. Much less than the first time they had it.
Each of the the second occasion of catching it was months after the first.

I take information from Radio 4, where there is still some attempt to uphold standards. If various virologists and statisticians are interviewed, one may be an outlier, and normally it would be expected that the B.B.C. journalist would have done enough homework to ask the right questions.

Again, I would point out that assertion is secondary to reason, and 'belief' secondary to evidence. The Covid19 virus is behaving in unusual ways, such as not wiping out children first.

It is hard to know what to do when people attack the messenger. Possibly there is a current thread on mink farms, where an o.p. is being attacked, as seems to be the favoured style on these boards?

To the shouty, I will try again, and apologise for not making it clearer: If, and only if, you are in a sealed off country where a significant representative proportion of the Asymptomatic (not symptomatic) were chosen at outset to be frequently retested, then you will know what percentage of your population have at any stage contracted the transmitted disease.

Furthermore, because you are re-testing the same known individuals, thousands of them, every week, you will also know what percentage get the disease twice, or more.

You will also know what percentage find the second or subsequent attack is identical to the first, i.e. are both events frequently asymptomatic? Or, does covid19 follow the customary pattern of it's cousins, and weaken with each attack? Or, does it behave differently? Differently, in many ways, is the answer emerging from the imperfect evidence.

People here who say they are experiencing a first attack, and finding symptoms severe, are not likely, in this country, to have the slightest basis to state it is their first attack. This could be the second, and the first had no symptoms, so they never knew about it.

The limited data gained from testing Asymptomatic people, for instance students, has shown that the great majority of carriers are entirely unaware they are infected. One set of tests apparently showed 80% had no idea there was anything wrong, not even a slight loss of sense of smell.

Nobody can reasonably assert that second infections are rare, because first infections must by definition be undetected in most cases, due to lack of symptoms.

P.S. Because young children scarcely ever appeared to have any symptoms of being unwell, it was naturally assumed they scarcely ever contract the covid19 virus. More recently, that assumption is being questioned. There is no systematic testing to prove or to disprove the opposite assumption: like the students, and others such as care home workers who were tested despite being apparently perfectly well, the young children could also potentially be asymptomatic, completely untroubled by illness themselves, but nevertheless contracting and spreading the virus.

Being open-minded and quickly ready to revise consideration of changed implications is important in science, and for the public.
It is unhelpful to sneer at new evidence and new developments and conclusions, merely because they don't conform to the first ideas people had, (including experts, who were all in the dark and are being repeatedly amazed about the unprecedented behaviour of Covid19)

I'm shocked at some of the ostriches on this thread!

I'm going to totally blow your minds now.... I know FIVE people who have had Covid twice!! Granted they all live in the house but still....

and before anyone says it, yes they were all tested both times, back in March and last week. 3 children had similar mild symptoms both times, 1 adult had milder symptoms the second time and the other adult had more severe symptoms the second and was briefly hospitalised.