COVID-19: Chapter 8 - Ongoing source of viral information, and a little fun

[All-InFlynn]

@MrWookie

But it’s an obviously stupid article. The name of the game is to not get and spread a disease that kills people, even people who have already been vaccinated. Deliberately giving people a deadly disease is not winning the game! It is the opposite of that.

See, this is perfectly good and useful criticism.

[CaffeineNeeded]

@Bobnewton

It still seems like we might not know.

Nope we’re sure that not spreading deadly disease is optimal.

[CaffeineNeeded]

@Jalfrezi

It might be better in terms of your protection if you suffer minimal effects. That’s what the article says.

Which is incredibly fucking stupid because what if it doesn’t just cause minimal effects? What if you spread the disease?

It’s fucking stupid. Getting covid isn’t a good idea. Bold take apparently.

[spidercrab]

My bro-sciency interpretation is this:

When you are infected by the virus, your body recognizes a variety of attributes about the virus, and will attempt to defend against those attributes if it sees them again. Maybe it develops moderately successful defenses against multiple attributes. And so if you’ve had SARS before, some of those moderately successful defenses could be effective against COVID for any shared attributes.

When you’re vaccinated, the body recognizes one particular attribute of the virus (the spike protein) and develops an exceptional defense against that attribute, but no defense against the other attributes of the virus.

The combination of moderate defense against multiple attributes (from prior infection) plus exceptional defense against a single attribute (from the vaccination) might be more effective than boosting the already-exceptional defense against the single attribute via a vaccine booster.

None of this is to say that it’s desirable to become infected in order to gain the benefits of that combination.

And I can’t emphasize enough that this is bro-science speculation on my part, and you should take it as seriously as the claim that chocolate chip cookies don’t make you gain weight if you crumble them up first.

[Jalfrezi]

lol

Yeah that little word “if” means a lot sometimes.

[Effen]

I see the real battle to be fought here is policing language and tone instead of a pandemic.

[mosdef]

Imagine not egging these people on. C’mon folks, don’t let the liberal socialist eggheads tell you this stuff isn’t safe!

[Trolly]

Getting exposed to a variety of antigens helps the immune system respond to a wider range of threats. This is why we’re encouraged to get the flu shot every year to keep your immune system learning new tricks.

[Melkerson]

I think all of that is likely pretty close to the truth, but it doesn’t answer any of my questions.

It looks like they have identified 4 (?) antibodies that one gets from prior SARS 1.0 infection that are extremely helpful against COVID-19 (even alone but especially in conjunction w/ the vaccine). Four isn’t that many. Why can’t they just pop in 4 mRNA sequences to get your body to make those.

Also why is it that the antibodies developed against SARS 1.0 are better against COVID-19 than antibodies developed against prior COVID-19 infection itself. I’m not even sure if that is true, but I’ve read a couple of things that seem to suggest it. If it is true, it makes no sense to me at all.

[Trolly]

@Melkerson

Also why is it that the antibodies developed against SARS 1.0 are better against COVID-19 than antibodies developed against prior COVID-19 infection itself.

YEah, that seems pretty wild to me as well.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Oh interesting you needed it explained to you that covid can be spread to others? We’re all here to learn I suppose. Glad you learned something today.

[otatop]

Very respectful discourse ITT.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Random guess honestly but SARS 1.0 was ridiculously deadly and I’m guessing only people with very good immune responses survived.

[Melkerson]

@CaffeineNeeded

Random guess honestly but SARS 1.0 was ridiculously deadly and I’m guessing only people with very good immune responses survived.

I guess it depends on what you mean by “ridiculously”. Apparently mortality from SARS 1.0 was only 9% overall (much higher in olds, though). That’s some scary shit, especially compared to COVID-19, but it still leaves a lot of survivors.

[All-InFlynn]

@CaffeineNeeded

Oh interesting you needed it explained to you that covid can be spread to others? We’re all here to learn I suppose. Glad you learned something today.

No, I’m aware of that. I’ve already explained to you why (most likely) the post was flagged. What you do with that information, well, that’s on you.

[CaffeineNeeded]

You know what I got the MERS (sars 2.0) confused here. Still think it’s a valid hypothesis.

[mosdef]

I thought the math was totally different on spread though because people didn’t have long periods of being contagious before symptoms. So if you got sick and isolated, that would end your contribution to spread.

[Melkerson]

That may be, but it’s unrelated to the point being discussed. The question is why would prior SARS 1.0 infection be more protective against COVID-19 than prior infection with COVID-19 itself.

[spidercrab]

@Melkerson

That may be, but it’s unrelated to the point being discussed. The question is why would prior SARS 1.0 infection be more protective against COVID-19 than prior infection with COVID-19 itself.

Sorry, I definitely misinterpreted your question. But I must have missed this claim about SARS 1 when I skimmed the articles. I agree it’s surprising - which article is it from?

[MrWookie]

I mean, I still got a 10% killer as “ridiculously deadly” when it comes to infectious disease. That’s way up there, especially by the standard of today.