Repeated COVID infection: normal or indicative of some immune problem

[Chocchops72]

I’ve already had Covid three times, and just got a very faint positive tonight. I feel awful.

September 2020
June 2022
September 2022
December 2022

Is anything being said about repeat infections? Is it normal? I work in a school but not directly with children. I guess I tend to lean towards people when they talk as I’m deaf which might make me more susceptible? I guess it’s Omicron doing the rounds, and it is more infectious.

or should I be asking the dr why I’m getting this so often?

I have already pointed out that yes, ADE is a genuine concern with both repeated infections of a disease, and vaccination.

For vaccination, it is tested for in cell studies, animal models, and by participant monitoring in clinical studies. When a vaccine is approved, post-surveillance monitoring is used to detect safety signals. There have been two previous examples of vaccine induced ADE in the 1960s-70s. Surveillance picked this up very quickly, and the vaccines were recalled.

It would be obvious if any of the SARS-COV-2 vaccines caused ADE, just as it was for the those previous vaccines. There was no evidence of it in cell studies, animal studies, or clinical trials. Around 4 billlions doses that have been given now - people do not get sicker with coronavirus once they have been innocculated against it. We have robust, replicated date demonstrating this.

Ignoring the wealth of evidence we do have, and instead cherry picking an article with a title that they think backs up their agenda but doesn't actually provide any evidence for ADE, just demonstrates a real lack of critical thinking.

I feel like the oft used "open your eyes" metaphor is apt here!

the article in Nature

Again, the paper was not published in Nature @BeethovenNinth

I'm struggling to understand how you can think it points to "nebulous signs" when you clearly haven't read it.

It's an incredibly dense molecular bio paper which would take me a couple of days at least to get through, as a working scientist not familiar with these methods.

Thank you. I found the paper and read the summary and understood the ADE issue remained open for discussion. I saw it in Nature so am confused but could have been mistaken

If it’s clear than it hasn’t then I’m sorry. I submit to those with greater knowledge than I!

Mike Ryan puts it pretty simply

How do you stop getting it through? It seems like it’s been genetically engineered to keep evolving and infecting. It’s quite worrying if we are all just going to get it possibly several times each year

It seems like it’s been genetically engineered to keep evolving and infecting

What makes you say that? @BeethovenNinth

Coronaviruses in general have a relatively high mutation rate. There has been nothing in it's evolutionary trajectory to suggest it isn't behaving as existing coronaviruses have done.

Unfortunately when you have billions of people infected at once with little existing immunity, rapid mutation, evolution, and emergence of new variants will occur.

This has slowed down substantially due to population level immunity building (in a large part thanks to vaccination programmes).

i like your user name biokult

it’s all the bloody doom. The WHO saying don’t get it any more than you have to due ti longer term impact on organs. That it does seem to have been made in a lab with gain of function. That I’m jumpy as people I know do seem to have worsening health in many cases

@BeethovenNinth

haven’t had vit d tested. I am pretty anaemic though (years of very heavy periods) now being treated and on iron supplements. Definitely feeling my energy levels pick up but maybe my immune system has taken a battering too.

Wear a mask, get vaccinated, socially distance as much as you can in crowds, don't visit ill people ...

pi that’s not really going to work though is if? Masks do fuck all - let’s be honest- unless they are the properly fitting medical N95s.

if we have a situation that covid repeatedly means our immune system is damaged each time then we have a real issue on our hands

@BeethovenNinth

pi that’s not really going to work though is if? Masks do fuck all - let’s be honest- unless they are the properly fitting medical N95s

They don't do "fuck all". Honestly. Do provide your scholarly sources for such idiocy. If you truly think that, and wish to avoid Covid, wear the N95s then. Bet you won't.

No I won’t - you are right. But I have suggested my elderly mother does

sitting the bus daily with a soggy cloth mask watching my glasses steam up let me know how useless they were.

if I was vulnerable in any way I would wear an N95

i do worry for young people though. That doesn’t mean I think we should mask them. It’s possible to be sceptical about masks and vaccinating young people AND be worried about the impact of covid

@BeethovenNinth

sitting the bus daily with a soggy cloth mask watching my glasses steam up let me know how useless they were.

It is much better to use masks with a good fit. However, the fact glasses steam up isn't necessarily a problem. A coronavirus molecule is about 0.1 microns wide. Now, a molecule of carbon dioxide - the gas we breathe out - is about 0.00033 microns wide - infinitely smaller than the coronavirus molecule. That's why you easily sense breath through the mask (and out the edges of poorly-fitting ones). Masks do exactly the job they are designed to do.

Excuse italics fail there!

The Zoe app seems to suggest that eating 30 different plants a week builds immunity, including mushrooms, seeds and nuts

They also say to place high importance
high polyphenol foods -dark colour fruits, berries, seeds, nuts(especially hazelnuts and pecans) , coffee, green tea, dark chocolate and cocoa powder, red wine, and all types of beans (especially white and black beans).

Also include fermented foods, such as yogurt or kefir, kombucha or kimchi, all types of soy, miso.

I've been doing it for over two years and haven't had covid after the first few weeks of the pandemic, despite having reduced immunity and a house full of young people.

@twinteenwrangler 'repeated lockdowns' have not destroyed your immunity. They've protected you from infections that would harm your immunity, like COVID. There's no benefit to getting infections, your immune system does not need 'exercising' to stay fit.

COVID is known to exhaust T cells needed to fight infection, for at least 7 months post-COVID (studies presumably under way for longer timescales now).

Each subsequent re-infection with COVID increases your likelihood of severe outcomes such as diabetes, stroke etc. See graph below, as you can see risk of hospitalisation shoots up with every re-infection. Source is Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02051-3

The best thing you can do is take measures to prevent further re-infection: ventilation, socialise outside, don't mix with people who are clearly sick, and wear a proper N95 mask like a 3M Aura which can be reused.

The top of the graph seems not to be showing. That steepest line is hospitalisations.

Did the figure definitely come from the linked nature medicine paper @ThaiDye ?

Really interested in those hazard ratios (partic for hospitilisations) but couldn't see it anywhere in the paper linked (or in their extended data).

Thank you, am sleep deprived so might just be being dim!

@leafyygreens the figure is made from data presented in the 'supplementary data' section of the paper, table 8 onwards, basically an additional way of illustrating the data. It's been shared by various doctors/scientists on Twitter.

Thanks @ThaiDye , this is what's confusing me - doesn't seem to be in supps at all?

Not in supplementary information, nor supplementary tables or extended data. Those are the only docs they've got listed!

the figure is made from data presented in the 'supplementary data' section of the paper, table 8 onwards, basically an additional way of illustrating the data. It's been shared by various doctors/scientists on Twitter.

Ah - so you're saying the figure has been made been by others not involved in the paper?

Seems a little unorthodox and personally I would be a tad peeved if people ignored mine & my coauthors lovingly produced figures to make their own and circulate but anyway

Very interesting (and sobering) paper, nevertheless, thank you for sharing.

@leafyygreens the graph itself isn't in the supplementary data, but someone used the data from table 8 onwards to make it. So it's based on the original data but not published in the paper. This is one reason why supplementary data is published, so others can use it

@leafyygreens to be honest I think this new/extra graph is much easier to interpret than the ones in the paper and makes a very clear point. The original authors didn't visualise this particular data.

@leafyygreens dont worry , the limitations of that study have previously been pointed out to thai dye but she wont let facts stand in the way of a good alarmist post... so it's a study of USA veterans (ie.disproportionally older and male),it includes people who experienced first infection prior to vaccinations ,subgroup analyses were not carried out by age,sex or race and it had a control group that relied solely on reported covid tests rather than testing of controls(so no way of knowing how much of the control group had been exposed to the virus) ....so there's no way it can be generalised out to a whole population and that graph is just fantasy. I've no problem with the fact that certain groups of people respond very badly to infection and that further infections will cause further damage but to state it applies equally to everyone is just alarmist.

• ThaiDye @twinteenwrangler 'repeated lockdowns' have not destroyed your immunity. They've protected you from infections that would harm your immunity, like COVID. There's no benefit to getting infections, your immune system does not need 'exercising' to stay fit."

There is a benefit to being exposed to the colds and other viruses that would have otherwise been circulating during lockdowns since this improves immune response to similar viral strains when encountered later. This is why keeping things too clean reduces immunity to common pathogens. I don't believe that lockdowns and masks have protected me from anything whilst also causing significant harms to mental health, the economy, education.... and my ability to fight off other viruses now circulating this winter.