Breaking news on MSNBC: South Korean researchers have determined

[Goodheart]

that it is impossible for people who have been infected with Covid 19 to be reinfected!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, give me my antibody test!

[Botany]

1. But can those people still be infectious to other people?

n/t

[madville]

10. If they just have antibodies and no active virus

the answer is most likely no. This will be great if we can get widespread antibody testing and those that have already had exposure can't spread or get the virus, people that don't have the antibody will still need to distance and isolate. Higher risk folks will be stuck until a vaccine can be approved though, they'll still need to isolate and distance as well.

[forgotmylogin]

37. Can they use the antibodies from an immune person to develop a vaccine?

Or am I completely misinformed how vaccines work?

I guess that's why they were doing plasma therapy?

[madville]

2. Great news, I think we are going to be surprised at

how many people have been exposed that never displayed any symptoms, especially healthy kids and young adults. Some of the recent studies with antibody tests are saying it could be around 30-40% of the population in the US has already had exposure and most reported no noticeable symptoms.

[stopdiggin]

41. the tests in CA had a lot of doubters and skepticism among the medical community

other estimates have not ventured anything nearly in that range (even n hard hit pops, NY, etc.)

That said .. if this holds up, it is undeniably very good news. Let's see how long it takes for WHO/CDC to back this claim.

[Disaffected]

3. "Impossible"??

Sounds like hype.

Link?

[Goodheart]

11. That's South Korea's word, not mine.

[Disaffected]

12. OK but,

do you have a link? Just perused the MSNBC website and found nothing.

[Celerity]

21. This is 5 days old news

Coronavirus patients can’t relapse, South Korean scientists believe

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-patients-cant-relapse-south-korean-scientists-believe-rkm8zm7d9

Thursday April 30 2020, 12.00pm BST, The Times



but here is a new story, with the Roche CEO saying the same thing



Roche CEO says it is ‘very likely’ people develop immunity after recovering from coronavirus

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/roche-ceo-very-likely-coronavirus-patients-develop-immunity.html

People who have recovered from Covid-19 are “very likely” to be immune to the virus, according to the CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche.

CEO Severin Schwan told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday he believes those who had already had the coronavirus would now be immune to the illness — but he pointed out that more research was required.

“We know from other coronaviruses that it’s very likely as soon as you have gone through an infection you will also acquire immunity,” he said. “But this still, nevertheless, has to be proven over time. We need studies to really see whether those people who have been infected once are subject to reinfection. But there’s a high likelihood that this will be the case.”

Schwan’s take on immunity to Covid-19 came after South Korean scientists concluded it was impossible for the virus to reinfect humans.

There had been concern that people were appearing to fall ill with the coronavirus a second time in Japan, China and South Korea — but researchers from the South Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that this phenomenon had resulted from testing failures.

[Disaffected]

23. Excellent, thanks.

[Celerity]

24. even better news

The latest coronavirus antibody test is a lot more accurate (100% accurate at detecting antibodies) 99.8% accurate at ruling out the presence of those antibodies

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213389337

[stopdiggin]

45. YES!! And that is really a breakthrough

Now how fast can we get our hands on (literally) millions of these tests?
--- -- -- ---

Testing people didn't really mean much when we had such crap tests in many places. And .. can we hope that this (a good test) might drive a stake through the heart of some of the hucksters that are flooding the markets?

[Celerity]

49. scammers need to be imprisoned for decades nt

[33taw]

4. Does this apply to mutated versions of the virus?

[BComplex]

8. So far, all 33 mutated versions of the virus?

I'm sorry, but I don't think this is true, either.

[33taw]

13. I don't believe this story.

[Quixote1818]

29. Why? Do you have some research to suggest otherwise?

Coronaviruses are very stable. They have a coronavirus from 30 years ago (cold virus version) and has changed very little over 30 years. It's not like the flu virus which is extremely unstable.

[33taw]

31. No. Just a lot of conflicting stories. Just doesn't ring true to me.

[totodeinhere]

36. I am skeptical as well. We have seen several other stories that indicate the opposite of

what this particular study concludes.

[Quixote1818]

27. It's mutating very slowly. Because of this a vaccine will probably cover all the versions

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-to-know-about-mutation-and-covid-19#What-this-means-for-a-vaccine

[EarnestPutz]

5. Really good news if it means that a vaccine will give you permanent immunity......

....The best case scenario is that this ends up like measles, where a vaccination done in the 1950's still affords protection.

[Aristus]

7. Now if only we had something to give us permanent immunity from anti-vaxxers.

n/t

[EarnestPutz]

14. I'm afraid to think about all the noise that the anti-vaxxers will make....

....when we finally have a vaccine available and (wait for it) you have to get your kids vaccinated before they can go to school. Boom! Heads will explode. Some people will just put down their "Open the Restaurants - No more government tyranny" signs and pick up their " No mandatory vaccinations - No government tyranny" signs. Same idiot mindset, same idiots.

[forgotmylogin]

38. I think flu-shots (vaccines) have always been optional.

People aren't required to have a flu-shot. In fact, I remember when there was a shortage and they asked healthy, non at-risk people to hold off on getting them.

[stopdiggin]

50. not the same thing as the childhood vaccination issue (nt)

[forgotmylogin]

62. Oh, definitely. You're right.

I don't have kids, and forgot that shots are a requirement to register.

[safeinOhio]

40. Yesterday a RW girl told me

they are now installing 5G lines in all of the sewers in Michigan to help infect us.

I think she even thought it true.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. But for how long? Some immunities are permanent but others aren't.

I remember having to get a second smallpox inoculation years ago before going on a trip out of the country because your immunity wears off, though it takes years. Smallpox, by the way, was a real doozy, with a fatality rate of 30%. Now it's been eradicated, no thanks to anti-vax idiots.

[Wounded Bear]

9. Nice headline. Will hold out for more info before I dump my protections...

[King of the sheep]

15. The antibody test gives many false positives.

Even if this is true, and it doesn't sound like language a scientist would use, it requires the antibody test to be 100% reliable. It is not.

[Takket]

20. Last I heard was there are 14 tests out there

And only three were reasonably accurate. But some european firm had a test over 99% effective coming out. So we are close on that I hope!

[Phoenix61]

22. It's Roche. nt

[ohtransplant]

16. link

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-scientists-conclude-people-cannot-be-infected-twice-11981721

(I don't see a pay wall.)

[Goodheart]

17. Excellent. Thanks.

[King of the sheep]

19. So, there are two problems still:

1) The test may falsely tell us we have had the virus, so we are still vulnerable.
2) The virus will mutate, and then be able to reinfect those who had the previous form.

[Phoenix61]

25. Roche has a test that is 99.8% accurate

Covid mutates much more slowly than the flu virus.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/coronavirus-mutation-rate.html

[Takket]

18. Figured that was the case

Reinfection storied were anecdotal and never took into account that far more logical reasons being that the person probably had Covid and the flu/common cold close together, and/or that the tests were giving bad data.

Hopefully this is being tested elsewhere and will be corroborated soon. Then we can put this to bed.

[yonder]

26. If accurate this is great news of course.

IMO, we will need time on the order of years before we can reliably use words like "impossible".

[Shermann]

28. Very encouraging, but I'll wait for peer review/confirmation by the WHO nt

[Greybnk48]

30. John Oliver reported that up to 50% of the anti-body tests are bogus

Last edited Mon May 4, 2020, 01:16 PM - Edit history (1)

right now! A huge number of companies are cranking them out and ZERO have FDA approval. ZERO! Four tests out of many have a lower ranking than approval by the FDA. The rest have nothing.

Bottom line: DON'T TRUST THE TESTS YET! THEY GIVE FALSE POSITIVE'S AT LEAST 50% OF THE TIME!!!

Watch Last Week Tonight's show from 5/3/2020 and he does a segment on it with a scientist explaining what I just wrote above.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/john-oliver-breaks-down-lack-coronavirus-testing-us-1293045

[stopdiggin]

52. yes. and let's point out again that BOTH false positive and negative

results have serious health repercussions in this scenario! The "false positive" goes cheerfully back to work .. "passport" in hand .. to the aged care facility. And the "false negative" is convinced that it's OK to resume weekend visits with her grandchildren. And both become deadly vectors within days of a bad test!

[Igel]

53. This is breathless.

The truth is anodyne.

He exaggerates more than is possible. Categorize this as clickbait with enough truth to say that it's not entirely wrong.

Some tests are reliable. Some aren't.

None have FDA approval. 11, last I heard, had FDA emergency approval. Notice the word "emergency."

Those with emergency approval are reasonably accurate--not always great. Some are great.

A Roche press release compared its new test with two already on the market with emergency approval, and the Roche test was so much superior according to Roche's press release. Now stop and think: What's the chances that it's going to compare it with the best two already on the market, unless it still would come out ahead and could use this as a selling point? (I think it would be a strong selling point. It's not one that they advanced, however, so I put the two comparison tests in the "not the best on the market" category).

Please note, however, that the Roche test is also not FDA approved. It has received FDA emergency approval.

[CaptYossarian]

32. Now, instead of the flu, the covidiots will compare it to chicken pox.

People with a 70 IQ have their own interpretation of anything.

[yaesu]

33. Well, this isn't a full blown study, no one has any idea how long immunization will last nt

[Shermann]

39. I'm not so sure about that

We have a huge population of people who have been recovered starting in January or so. I'm not a medical researcher, but it seems like you could measure the relative strength of the antibodies over time and have some idea.

[totodeinhere]

34. I hope that this information is accurate, but I would approach it with caution.

We may need several peer reviewed studies over a period of time to get a definitive answer on this topic.

[EllieBC]

35. I hope they are correct. I feel like some poeple want them to be wrong though.

Too many people relishing and enjoying the idea of permanent struggle like it's supposed to be noble or something. Too many seem to almost hope this doesn't end sooner than later.

[llmart]

42. +1

We've got plenty of them here on DU.

[EllieBC]

43. Yup.

And I don't get it. Unless they think it'll usher in their dream world, which...it won't.

[Ace Rothstein]

44. I wonder how many of them previously said they believe in science.

Then don't believe the science when it tells them something they don't want to hear.

[llmart]

51. True.

They also say they won't believe anything coming out of this government re: the virus but then something comes out of S. Korea and they get all suspicious.

I actually have had the pleasure of knowing a few S. Korean researchers (I worked at a university) and their resumes are extremely impressive of what they have done and worked on by the time they're in their 30's.

[USALiberal]

46. I have not seen any of that. nt

[Igel]

54. I'm less charitable.

It's not that they want some huge noble struggle.

It's that they want a huge gnarly calamity they can attribute the blame for over the course of many months. The bigger the screw up, the more horrible the screwer of ups. Cut off nose to spite face.

[Quixote1818]

58. +1 nt

[Ford_Prefect]

47. What has WHO got to say about it?

I'll feel more confident about this if an authority outside of Korea has confirmed similar results. With more than 31 mutations confirmed it only seems logical that you may be immune to the local varmint and not its East or West coast cousin.

My second question is what degree of resistance is conferred and for how long?

My other thought is that you first must survive the Virus. Some of us are more at risk of succumbing or getting through the illness with major damage and complications to heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, brain, and limbs.

[Igel]

56. I take the S. Koreans at their word.

They have every reason to want the truth, and none to lie.

They had a large number of cases of people who tested positive for COVID, recovered, and tested positive again. Some had symptoms or some reason to get retested. You see the problem.

Same for some cases in China, elsewhere. What's a pain to do is to test for live virus. But the S. Koreans did this, for their "re-infected" patients. And they found that there wasn't any detectable live virus. That left the PCR test, and they quantified some things and found that the PCR test was very, very sensitive and picking up small trace amounts of RNA. It's a systemic problem with the testing. (It's the same checking for heavy metals. We can get down to fraction of a part per trillion, and that some proposed limits would rule out most of even the purest ground or surface water.)

(The report came out last week, Monday or Tuesday. I posted it here as part of an old thread, but since it didn't fit the DU Zeitgeist.)


The remaining issue is, "What about the symptoms?" Sniffles, dry cough, low fever aren't exactly symptoms unique to COVID.

[Quixote1818]

59. Agree. nt

[Ford_Prefect]

60. I have not doubted the efficacy or integrity of the Korean testing. I asked that more testing

confirms their results, as anyone would. Given the diversity of symptoms and effects, not to mention the apparent confusion over how the virus acts on humans I feel it reasonable to have more than one set of subjects, tests and results. Peer review and all that, too.

I also asked if there is information about degree and longevity of immunity.

As one who would not likely survive COVID-19 or might be severely compromised by it I have some concerns.

[Quixote1818]

57. The WHO's message was pretty muddled. Go to the 7 minute level of this video

[Bernardo de La Paz]

48. The antibody tests are currently very unreliable. . . . nt

[Meowmee]

61. I hope it pans out this way, that would be great!

Even if we end up needing a yearly or some type of regular covid vaccine, it would be good.