Covid-19 Antibodies Waning Over Time
The herd immunity thesis claims that if enough people get Covid they will become immune to reinfection slowing the spread of the disease.
However, an Antibody Study Shows Immunity May Wear Off.
The survey of 365,000 adults in England who tested themselves at home using a finger-prick test showed the proportion of people testing positive for Covid-19 antibodies declined by 26.5% between June 20—12 weeks after the peak of infections in the country—and Sept. 28.
Doctors don’t yet know whether antibodies confer any effective immunity against reinfection by Covid-19. But even if they do and the results of this survey are confirmed, it suggests the prospect of widespread long-term herd immunity to the virus will be difficult to achieve. Herd immunity occurs when enough people in a population develop an immune response, either through previous infection or vaccination, so that the virus can’t spread easily and even those who aren’t immune have protection.
The authors admitted the trial had limitations. “It included nonoverlapping random samples of the population, but it is possible that people who had been exposed to the virus were less likely to take part over time, which may have contributed to apparent population antibody waning,” they said.
Blow to Herd Immunity Theory
A 26.5% reduction in antibodies in just 12 weeks is quite a significant reduction.
If accurate, it calls into question expected results from vaccines as well.
Whereas I stated “if accurate” and “calls into question” the Financial Times says Covid-19 herd immunity theory dealt blow by UK research.
Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at Nottingham university, said that while the React-2 study “confirms suspicions” about waning immunity in elderly populations, it is less clear what the relationship is between declining immunity and susceptibility to reinfection.
False Promise of Herd Immunity
Nature.Com discusses the false promise of herd immunity for COVID-19.
Proposals to largely let the virus run its course — embraced by Donald Trump’s administration and others — could bring “untold death and suffering”.
In early October, a libertarian think tank and a small group of scientists released a document called the Great Barrington Declaration. In it, they call for a return to normal life for people at lower risk of severe COVID-19, to allow SARS-CoV-2 to spread to a sufficient level to give herd immunity. People at high risk, such as elderly people, it says, could be protected through measures that are largely unspecified. The writers of the declaration received an audience in the White House, and sparked a counter memorandum from another group of scientists in The Lancet, which called the herd-immunity approach a “dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence”.
“Surrendering to the virus” is not a defensible plan, says Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
“Attempting to reach herd immunity via targeted infections is simply ludicrous,” Andersen says. “In the US, probably one to two million people would die.”
Guessing Game
Clearly everyone is guessing.
It’s equally clear that herd immunity proponents are making potentially disastrous guesses.
The same applies to the notion that vaccines will be immediately successful.
But the worst guess goes to Donald Trump who stated on February 26, “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
Mish
Skipping to the real issue–which is not herd immunity or vaccines, or masks, or social distancing…
Decision making under complex, fast-changing conditions subject to incomplete information (aka uncertainty) is something very few people have the capacity to do, especially in government and most institutions. Procedure manuals (e.g.) and past practice/experience generally limit our perspectives on situations. What tries to streamline a process will work with known situations (ie. risk); however, it hinders uncertain situations, and may make them worse.
Along comes Covid-19; you’re in charge; what do you do?
Depend on your experts! They don’t know! They get out the manual… They cover up their incompetence (masks not needed!). Panic sets in with toilet paper–you lie to calm thing down. Prior testing procedures don’t work…. Monumental mess results. Quarantine everyone. Economy screwed. Bigger monumental mess. No one has the remotest idea what to do to actually ‘solve’ the problem until information becomes more certain. State governors are incompetent at dealing with uncertainty. So is the military in most cases.
I could go on, but the point should be clear. What is missing is people who ‘think’ under uncertainty, have minds that are holistic (focused on the big picture), and are very creative.
BTW, my Covid scorecard: Trump gets an F, Biden’s Plan gets an F (it’s the ‘plan’ that fails every time there is uncertainty.)
What to do? A radical restructuring of how we address uncertain situations. A national evaluation to identify creative people who can deal with uncertainty. Let them set up their mode of operation…. you get the idea.
Studies must all be taken with a grain of salt. In today’s world whenever you hear about a “study” the very first question you want answered is who paid for the study.
More times than not, studies are paid for by corporations with a vested interest in the outcome of the study. When you are paying for the study, it tends to support your position. It is an unfortunate truth that science today, and so called scientific conclusions are for sale to the highest bidders. For every “study” which comes to one conclusion, you can find another which comes to an opposite conclusion depending on who paid for the study. In the case of the country of Sweden which has rejected both face masks and social distancing and relied almost entirely on immunity to curb the virus, their low numbers would give a reasonable person some reservations about whether immunity works or not.
I think people may forget that the purpose of the lockdown was to keep from overwhelming the healthcare system. I haven’t forgotten the field hospitals we had here, we still have some set up in case they are needed. It also bought time to do all of that vitamin d research etc…if the healthcare system gets well beyond capacity, mortality goes up from all causes. Regarding immunity, the field of immunology is so incredibly complex and this virus attacks and provokes the immune system all at once-I think it will be a while before we know the answer to the question of the possibility or herd immunity or sustained immunity.
Very well written,@Mish.
“Clearly everyone is guessing”… Mish too.
“Covid-19 Antibodies Waning Over Time”
T cell immunity.
Only 17% of the people on the Diamond Princess got sick. People have exposure to previous corona viruses. This may provide T cell immunity to Covid-19 to upward of 50% of people exposed.
It is not just about antibodies.
Perhaps some herd resistance would be a better term than herd immunity with respect to Covid. Herd immunity is a good term when applied to chicken pox, not corona-viruses. Suspect similar to cold corona-viruses one gets some resistance for some years so one gets a milder case upon re-infection some time after the first case. It’ll be awhile before we truly know but from the research I’ve read something close to this will be our findings in time.
The early data on reinfections is no promising in that regards. Of the first 24 cases of documented reinfection, 10 were worse the second time, 10 were the same, and 4 were milder. It’s still a small sample, plus there may be a bias in that there may be reinfections that are not caught because they are mild.
Just to clear this up – Herd immunity is the only way a virus can be defeated. Herd immunity with a vaccine or without a vaccine. It’s such a taboo subject to talk about but it’s is the only way any virus has been stopped or slowed.
Reinfection at this point seems very unlikely in the short/medium term.
News about Covid-19 should be illegal, tweets Trump
NO but what should be required is equal time for other viewpoints. Sort of like the old Point/Counterpoint segments that was often on TV or in print. Costco magazine even had one!
The key question:
CAN ANYONE POINT OUT A VIRAL ILLNESS WHERE HERD IMMUNITY HAS BEEN ACHIEVED ??
Chicken pox and measles. At least in developed countries.
Try for ones without a vaccine.
The only ones I know of are smallpox and pertussis, and those were achieved via vaccines, not mass exposure. Unfortunately, pertussis is starting to re-appear due to anti-vaxers, so it may become a serious problem again.
Polio.
Yes, but none without a vaccine.
So…with herd immunity, it does not mean that people don’t get sick…it just means enough people have immunity for it not to be an ongoing epidemic.
When I was a kid, you were allowed to get primary herpes zoster (chicken pox) because it was generally not a life-threatening infection and it was so contagious the idea that you might NOT get it wasn’t given much credence.. Now we vaccinate for that..and for mumps…..but people still get sick…..mostly people who don’t get vaccinated…but the disease was not completely eradicated…and the immune response as a kid doesn’t even keep you from getting the late onset symptoms many older people get, called shingles.
Measles too. Measles (before the vaccine) would represent an excellent case of a disease where herd immunity mostly worked….as long as you didn’t get it when you were pregnant…..then your kid was born blind and with serious intellectual handicaps.
Coronaviruses, as we experienced them up until this very strange one (that only appears to be chimeric, according to the best appeals to authority the MSM can make)…those coronaviruses were extraordinarily good at mutating so often that herd immunity was irrelevant, for any practical purpose.
measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, chickenpox, and polio…all prior to the age of vaccines
Right now, we don’t know what the future holds.
And rather than better, the second time around, people have had worse cases.
A virus that affects lungs, hearts, brains–how many times do you want to get it?
And logically, if these vital organs are affected adversely on the first go-round, do you really think that they will be helped or not further affected by another infection?
We don’t know the long term consequences yet. A virus that infects multiple organs is fairly common and typically the body recovers fine. The horror stories are amplified ad nauseum by those who want the virus to be much worse than it is.
The common flu and common cold can lead to horror stories also.
You speak as though reinfection is commonplace.
I think that the consensus is that reinfections will be commonplace. We won’t have firm data on how long it takes between infections for at least a couple of years, though.
Immunity as measured by antibodies (IgG) naturally declines over time. The half life of an antibody is around 21 days. However, antibody production (via B-Cells) is what drives an individual’s immunity. The immune system is much more complex than simply measuring an antibody level to a specific protein. This is not to say that one won’t become reinfected—we are constantly facing reinfection from a variety of pathogens on a daily basis. However, subsequent infections are usually mild or even asymptomatic (but not always).
Absolutely. This article makes no sense. We get an infection. Our body produces antibodies and white blood cells. We beat the infection and then the antibody and white blood cell counts go down. We keep the blueprint for the antibody.
I don’t understand why the sole endpoint is on antibody production from B-cells. The vast majority of us clear this virus through other mechanisms of our immune system, mucous membranes, dendritic cells, T-cell cross reactivity, etc… even with a our comparatively unhealthy population. Imagine if our “Health Care System” was predicated on preventative and lifestyle medicine.
“In the US, probably one to two million people would die.”
This is crazy.
The IFR is supposedly ~0.2% according to the best estimates. US pop, assuming all are vulnerable, is ~330m => We have an absolute ceiling of ~660,000.
10% of the population are so young they are basically unaffected -> 600k.
Subtracting the already infected leads to 30% reduction: estimate for the UK deaths ~= 45k, divide by IFR => 22m, UK pop = 65m, ~30%.
Herd immunity is supposedly a thing at about 70%, so the meaningfully susceptible population who may die is 40% of 600k, or 240k.
This is still possibly artificially high, but all in all throwing around “millions” is just irresponsible.
Depends on the the spread. If it takes off then hospitals are overwhelmed and death rate much higher. Hence a need to limit how fast it reaches 60-80%
First, a Vaccine Approval. Then ‘Chaos and Confusion.’
Come spring, Americans may have their choice of several so-so coronavirus vaccines — with no way of knowing which one is best.
Carl Zimmer | Oct. 12, 2020
The United States may be within months of a profound turning point in the country’s fight against the coronavirus: the first working vaccine.
Demonstrating that a new vaccine was safe and effective in less than a year would shatter the record for speed, the result of seven-day work weeks for scientists and billions of dollars of investment by the government. Provided enough people can get one, the vaccine may slow a pandemic that has already killed a million people worldwide.
It’s tempting to look at the first vaccine as President Trump does: an on-off switch that will bring back life as we know it. “As soon as it’s given the go-ahead, we will get it out, defeat the virus,” he said at a September news conference. But vaccine experts say we should prepare instead for a perplexing, frustrating year.
….
“Attempting to reach herd immunity via targeted infections is simply ludicrous,” Andersen says. “In the US, probably one to two million people would die.”
And that is NOT a large number against a population of 330+ million! And please don’t give me the crap about “but if it was YOUR relative…”. It wouldn’t make any difference at all to me. Stay healthy, hope for the best.
Others who have looked in to the antibody testing situation may know better (please chime in), but it’s my understanding the accuracy of antibody tests is … a lot worse than you think. As in, don’t take sure-win bets from guys in white coats or pocket protectors.
Too, last I looked at the FDA site, the accuracy of the tests used to detect whether you have the disease right now is dependent on the stage of the disease you’re at. Covid19 tests are accurate like you think tests should be if the stage is juuuuust right and test procedures are executed perfectly, too.
Great post@Mish and great comments, @Webej
False negatives are far more likely than a false positive. So if you are trying to determine infections they work
You mean if you’re trying to determine a floor to the number of infections? That is, for being OK with the results dialed toward getting more FNs?
I’m not sure where these guys are setting the dial. Vague memory tells me they tend to be more forgiving of FPs. But, that memory may be wrong, or the dial may depend on the vendor, application, or patient-situation. And, I’d not be shocked if you are correct they are opting to go with FN over FP. Or if the tech, itself, pretty much forces the issue for some or all of the test types.
I mean if you test people and they come back positive you are very likely catching infections. the person nees to quarantine and health offiicals can use this ifnformation to determine if an area is a problem. A false positive would lead to unnecessary treatment. Sice false positives are rare, not likely ad since people get tested twice almost impossible. The false negative person is like an untested person. They still wear a mask and socially distance,
The biggest problem with the test is not the lab work; it is in the obtaining of the sample. You have hundreds of thousands of people “tickling brains”, i.e., shoving probes up into people’s sinuses. Some skill is involved. If they get the probe where it needs to be, and they get a good sample, the test will be accurate. If they don’t get it where it needs to be, the sample will be lower quality.
What a lot of muddled thinking.
Herd immunity is simply nature.
Herd immunity is not a theory or a proposal but an important epidemiological concept: Immunity among the general population protects those who do not have it. That is why Europeans died of small pox at less than 1/10th the rate than native Indians, of whom 90% were wiped out.
In vaccination theory (vaccination is a shortcut to acquired immunity after surviving infection; vaccination is predicated on acquired immunity), the herd immunity threshold is a theoretical number that indicates how many people you need to vaccinate to make sure that those who can’t be vaccinated (infants, infirm, immune compromised, allergenic) will be protected. That threshold is not the actual empirical number required. It is the number required without knowing in advance what coefficients apply for communcability and infectiousness and assuming everybody is equally prone to infection. Those coefficents serve to dampen the spread considerably, but are pretty much impossible to determine beforehand.
Waning of antibodies is normal (it would be inefficient to produce them when not needed). It was observed long before Covid, particularly with respect to Corona viruses. It doesn’t mean your body no longer knows how to make them. Waning antibodies does not imply your are equally susceptible. Antibodies are like artillery, but there is also sentry duty (skin and mucosal immunity), scouting, intelligence gathering, and carpet bombing. Back in May a Swiss group discovered that more than 50% of blood samples antedating the pandemic showed T-cell (cross-) reactivity to the virus. Many similar studies have come to light.
To say that the people advocating a more traditional approach are risking millions fails to discount the cost of the current approach; the UN estimates 130 million dying from lack of food availability (money) due to the lockdowns across the globe, and that is just a beginning of the long term costs. It also ignores that a number of these scientists at odds with “scientific evidence” belong to the top figures in the field. We already know the IFR is about 0,16%, trending to 0,10%, heavily concentrated on geriatric patients, in the same order of magnitude as a bad influenza epidemic.
Or we can think there has been a fundamental break with nature, such that, as Krutika Kuppalli (congressional expert witness) puts it: We will never return to pre-Covid days even after a vaccine. We will need to continue to mask in perpetuity.
Obviously a failure of evolution to have one encoded in our DNA.
All policy requires navigating potential risks to the right and to the left.
The vaccines being tested are not being tested for their impact on morbidity, and may make no difference to mortality among the infirm.
2nd great post Webej. This is a nasty disease that may kill or maim main people. But a quick study of history shows us that there is nothing new here. In fact we’ve had many worse diseases in the past.
I’ve been in favour of government mandated lockdowns in the short to medium term. But it isn’t a long term solution. We either get a vaccine FAST, or we learn to live with it.
This is shaping up to be a brutal winter.
horse pucky. for the body to successfully mount a good defense it must be quick. if immunity is partially or fully forgotten over time it does the body little good. There’s some hope that t-cells stay active longer but nobody is really sure. under this theory repeat vaccinations are never necessary.
The evidence is pointing towards reinfection is unlikely in the short term.
24 cases out of millions of infections.
That is interesting data, but doesn’t really answer the question, for a variety of reasons. First, we don’t catch nearly all cases, so obviously we are only going to catch a tiny fraction of the reinfections. Second, some reinfections may appear to be a situation of a “long hauler”, continuing to have symptoms from the first infection. Third, and most important, is the question of how long it takes before reinfection. For those cases, the average is 74 days, but suppose that for the majority of people, immunity lasts 8-10 months. In that case, there would be a small number of reinfections so far, but a very large number ahead.
For now, it just hasn’t been around long enough to really answer the reinfection question. There is one aspect of that data that is troubling however. In most diseases, a second infection is considerably milder than the first one. In a few, such as dengue fever, the second infection is much worse. So far, the data indicates that Covid is between the two extremes, but trending towards a more serious second case the second time. In the 24 cases cited, in 10 cases the second case was worse, in 4 cases it was milder, and in the remaining 10 cases it was about the same.
You are correct we don’t really know. My guess is covid will be an opportunistic virus that will live in cancer wards and nursing homes for years. Reinfection and death of health individuals seems unlikely but time will tell. Weaker immune systems might pose a problem though.
Dengue fever is an interesting virus. People generally don’t get reinfected with the same strain. The problem arises from getting the first strain and then getting infected with a second similar but different strain the tricks the immune system into spreading it. It’s not a normal reinfection type virus but the second go round can be terrible from what I have read.
How covid evolves after we start to eradicate it is anyone’s guess. What is promising is how few reinfection have taken place on what I would assume to be 80-100 million infections.
extinction is also a biological concept. population bottleneck as well.
That Covid Re-Infection tracker is good evidence. Thanks for adding it to the conversation.
The design of the study only allowed for the measurement of antibodies, an after-the-fact assessment. There is no reporting on T cell immunity, nor the immune response upon re-challenge.
C’mon, man!
The question is how you get to herd immunity. Mass infections means too many people die or succumb to serious health problems. But via vaccination there are far fewer health risks. We’re probably all going to have to get a yearly vaccine.
The health risks from an insufficiently tested vaccine are far greater for young people than sars-cov-2.
At this point, in addition to taking precautions to avoid it, the best plan would appear to be to keep your personal immunity up by maintaining a healthy body weight, exercising, taking Vitamin D, Zinc, and Melatonin, plus a zinc ionophore such as quercetin or green tea, and then wearing a mask so that if you get it, you get a mild case. Do that, and then go about your normal business.
Obviously you can’t completely protect the elderly and the at risk, but you can do the best to minimize the numbers who die. You can also try to improve treatments. The longer the whole thing is stretched out, the better the treatments will get.
Protect the obese, the elderly and those with underlying conditions. The rest of us have very little risk.
Protect the obese? Sure, put them in internment camps until they lose weight!
Yea only people with pre-existing conditions need to worry. Did u c the list of conditions. Add up the % of US adults with those conditions, I got 190!!. (Googke says)
So obviously a lot of people have several conditions, but doesn’t sound like much of the population is not ar risk
Little risk does not mean no risk. I have a two friends that have gotten the coronavirus. One is 50 with no other risk factors. The other is 40, and was in such good shape he could have been on the cover of a fitness magazine. Both are long-haulers with severe chronic fatigue issues now. There is no way to know if you get sick if you will recover quickly in two weeks, or have long term damage.
tRump’s Chief of Staff said “We are not going to control the pandemic”:
Analogy makes no sense whatsoever.
Did they manage to “control the virus” during WW1 which killed more people than the ware casualties?
I have believed this since March. This virus will do what it wants, and our attempts to change this are futile. Some of the hardest lockdown countries in Europe, e.g, Italy, Spain, are facing big resurgences. This virus may not even care about our masks and 6 ft rules. I suspect in 5 years we will say all those things we tried didn’t really matter. I focus on my weight and nutrition, all I can do
Herd immunity here would take years to happen, to get to the numbers it would take….and the healthcare system would be overwhelmed in the meantime. That was my conclusion, arrived at back in the spring.
I suspect the virus will become endemic….just like other coronaviruses….we will be very lucky if any of the five or so vaccine approaches being tried…..or if any of the vaccines for other diseases that might convey some cross-immunity…(and it is possible that one might)…..actually provide anything close to long term immunity.
But we can still control it with good protocols..no matter what….if we can get really good compliance with the public health measures that we know do work. If nothing else works, we might try common sense. Eventually.
The virus was endemic on 24 Jan when we learned 5 million people had left Wuhan. That is why the WHO and everybody said in March already that the containment stage was over, we were moving in to stage 2, mitigation.
The virus is in the cat population … wild cats are averse to mask-wearing and social distancing.
This depends on who you ask. Some people think so.
What we really have now is what could be termed in epidemiological terms a PROPAGATED OUTBREAK. This is clearly an epidemic.
Your assertion, that there is a sufficient zoonotic pool in cats (or humans) or some other animal vector to say that the virus is ENDEMIC….is not proven, at least not to my satisfaction.
In general, the endemic phase of this disease won’t really be here until we have run much further through the human population and we see recurrences in populations that have had outbreaks and recovery.
Ordinary Coronaviruses are endemic. Lyme disease is endemic. Influenza is endemic. COVID could still be eradicated in humans if we get a decent vaccine, which is possible at this point. So in my book, it is NOT endemic.
One more thing. This argument you keep making : “The WHO said in January” is a certain kind of argument…called an APPEAL TO AUTHORITY.
An appeal to authority is, without a doubt, one the weakest arguments you can make….because it isn’t based on anything….other than what somebody or some organization said…..taken out of context usually, and used to lend credence to some idea or other that some campaigner is pushing…that otherwise might be subject to more rational discussion.
This is the very favorite argument the MSM uses when they want to create a particular narrative and obscure the truth about a thing…..and I see it in articles about COVID…and many other politically charged topics….over and over. Almost daily.
You should keep your eye out..and question this kind of “authority”….and see whether the headline claims are really justified…they seldom are.
Mish, I think you need to change the title…
This does not show anything. It is not even a study, but a survey. We need better data both for natural and vaccines
So far reinfection seems very low.
Only a few documented cases, some which involved a different strain, although no proof that that was causal.
The best route to immunity is surviving an infection.
This is known as nature.
If your immune system has not learned to fight off the pathogen, the species is in real trouble and essentially borderless.
So, if I understand, herd immunity and vaccine effectiveness will be correlated. If herd immunity isn’t possible, vaccine will be ineffective, and vice versa. So, if true, we lock down until when? This part of the equation is what I don’t understand
Yes. Until eternity, or else until Jesus returns.
Vaccination is a short cut to the natural route to acquiring immunity (surviving an infection). Vaccination cannot improve on acquired immunity.
Vaccine come from the latin for cow. People noticed that milkmaids were less prone to small pox, because they had acquired some immunity against bovine pox viruses similar enough to the human strain to confer cross-reactive immunity, but less lethal.
“If herd immunity isn’t possible, vaccine will be ineffective”
This is true now. It may not be true 20 years from now.
” and vice versa.”
Not vice versa. For any given virus, failing to produce a vaccine does not mean herd immunity isn’t possible.
Measuring the antibodies is a proxy for measuring acquired resistance to a disease. You can keep resistance after you no longer test positive for specific antibodies.
You hinted at it, but many people seem to miss this point: every vaccine humans have ever made just piggy-backs off the immune system’s native mechanisms. If we can’t naturally develop immunity, our vaccines won’t work either.
Likely they are proposing that booster shots will be needed to keep immunity at levels that are more effective, eventually with adaptations to new strains etc. As there will be a reservoir for the virus somewhere this translates into perpetual vaccination programs and related controls.
Monthly booster shots would work well on so many levels! They would be a boon to the pharma industry. And with the help of the MSM, would keep the fear level up in the general population.
You are right. The best immunity is surviving infection. Vaccine is a shortcut.
Seems odd that so few grasp this.
If there is no acquired immunity, vaccination is impossible too.
The adaptive immune system is capable of recognizing 100M different pathogens, so it’s likely a coronavirus such as Covid-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) is recognizable. Even the HIV/AIDs virus is recognizable by the immune system of some. However, against that, if C-19 virus is man-made and has a huge “Gain of Function”, GoF, as apparently it has, it will be harder for the body to recognize it. I think C-19 is chimeric and as such it will be difficult to get a vaccine (huge GoF).
Sobering quote: “No-one has ever produced a safe and effective vaccine against a coronavirus”. – from “The Evidence which Suggests that This Is No Naturally Evolved Virus A Reconstructed Historical Aetiology of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike”, Birger Sørensen, Angus Dalgleish & Andres Susrud (2020)
Don’t get too excited about that quote. There actually was a vaccine for SARS that appeared safe and effective in Phase 1 and 2. No phase 3 trial was done, however, since SARS ceased to be a problem. The big reason there are no vaccines for any Coronaviruses is simply that there has never been a need before. Now there is a need. Soon enough we will know how easy it is.