. . .there are three or four other coronaviruses that will give you cold-like symptoms. Some of these milder viruses are widespread, so you may have antibodies to them. The question is, do antibody tests for this coronavirus pick up antibodies for other coronaviruses? It looks like with many of the assays, there are some cross reactions. So that’s a problem because we’re gonna get false positives.
My question is whether cold conoraviruses may give some level of immunity to COVID-19 if the antibodies are that similar?
Cowpox is the basis of the smallpox vaccine; they are closely related so that immunity to cowpox gives immunity to smallpox. Could a recent cold give immunity to COVID-19?
This effect may help to explain the huge range of responses to COVID-19.
I think that would make sense, although it doesn’t explain why young children seem to get such mild cases. They haven’t been around long enough to have been exposed to a lot of coronavirus strains.
I am also wondering if the immunization for pneumonia that is recommended for people over 65 helps prevent COVID-19 caused pneumonia.
I agree that a pneumonia vaccine is unlikely to help with the coronavirus itself although it may prevent bacterial pneumonia that sometimes comes with the virus.
If there are strains of cold viruses that cause the production of antibodies against some feature of COVID-19, then getting the right kind of cold may provide at least partial immunity.
It looks like researchers have confirmed that previous exposure to cold viruses may give some protection against the COVID-19 virus:
. . .they looked at T cell response in blood samples that were collected between 2015 and 2018, which is before SARS-CoV-2 was discovered, and saw that many also contained significant reactivity against the virus despite not having previous exposure. The researchers say this may be caused by exposure to one of the other coronaviruses, like those that cause the common cold.
I wonder if it makes sense to intentionally spread a strain of cold virus to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 disease?
I don’t see how that would stop the spread, but it seems like a reasonable interim (to a vaccine) step to reduce the severity (particularly death) for those of us who will contract COVID-19 in the next several months.
Many people test positive for antibodies to COVID-19 without ever having symptoms.
One explanation is that they have substantial immunity before exposure to COVID-19 because they already had a cold that allows their immune system to respond more quickly to the new virus.
Many people, such as myself, are highly resistant. I very rarely get sick and if I do, generally very mild and short lived systems. And clearly I have been heavily exposed to whatever germs have gone around each year.
A lot of people clearly have had COVID-19 without symptoms, their bodies easily fighting it off.
Previous exposure to a coronavirus variant is probably helpful.
Yes, but even though they were asymptotic, they were infectious and thus able to spread the disease.The same would hold true for people deliberately infected with a common cold coronavirus if they subsequently came down with COVID-19.
