<
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-risky-are-repeat-covid-infections-what-we-know-so-far/>
"The specter of COVID has haunted the globe for four years now—the disease has
killed at least seven million people worldwide. Yet the pandemic’s long-term
effects are still hazy—because when it comes to a novel virus such as
SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID, scientists still have a lot to learn.
What we do know is that COVID is here to stay—and that catching it doesn’t give
people permanent immunity. Four years into the pandemic, researchers and
clinicians know that people are racking up multiple infections, but the
long-term consequences of repeatedly getting the virus aren’t yet clear.
Fortunately, both individuals and governments have strategies to avoid some
infections—if they use them.
“However you slice it, whatever long-term health effect you look at, the risk
[from reinfection] is not zero,” says Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist
at Washington University in St. Louis. “The truth is that, yes, we’re sick and
tired of the virus, we’re sick and tired of the pandemic—but it’s still here.
It’s still hurting people.”
In the U.S. alone, more than 1.1 million people have died of COVID since the
pandemic began, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The agency is no longer tracking infections at the community level, but in
mid-January it reported that nearly four percent of deaths nationwide were
caused by COVID.
And while the winter wave of infections appears to be waning, the world missed
its chance to make COVID disappear. “This ugly guest isn’t going to leave us
any time soon,” Al-Aly says. “It’s going to be here probably for decades.”
Early on in the pandemic, scientists hoped that COVID would be the sort of
disease for which vaccination or infection creates immunity that lasts for
years or a lifetime. But the SARS-CoV-2 virus had other plans. Vaccination and,
to a lesser degree, infection make you less vulnerable to catching the virus
and having a severe case, but that protection wanes over time.
“One infection does protect you against future infections” but not completely,
says Jamie Rylance, a physician on the World Health Organization’s clinical
management team. The SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates rapidly, so a person’s immune
system can’t necessarily fully fight off a new infection, even if it’s been
primed by a recent bout with a different strain. The same holds true for
vaccinations: although initial shots and boosters help a person’s immune system
respond more effectively to an infection and reduce the odds of a serious COVID
case, current COVID vaccines can’t prevent infection completely.
Complicating things further, COVID often triggers asymptomatic infections,
which helped the virus continue to spread early in the pandemic even in places
where governments established relatively strict containment protocols. And four
years into the pandemic, many people are testing for COVID less often and tests
miss many asymptomatic cases, making them even harder to identify. So people
have likely been infected more times than they know."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: February 15, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-98518046
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
