LurkerJ said:
I also think it's a viable strategy for countries that are letting the virus loose or just can't possibly follow the western model of lockdowns, let alone the Chinese model. When you say permnant damage to the lung or kidneys, what kind of damage are we talking about here? How likely is it for someone in his 20s to get that sort of damage? 30s? 40s? What if the chances of that damage is related to the viral load in the first place? Our conversations are unfortunately lacking meaningful numbers, and this isn't your or my fault. It's just the way it is. Another example of this is the conversations about the vaccine. How certain are we that we are going to get a vaccine? There have been serious attempts at coming up with vaccines for far deadlier viruses but all those attemtps have proven futile so far. It's not unrealistic to operate under the assumption that a vaccine may never be ready, or at least may never be ready in the timeframe we've been given (12-18 months). |
Not much is known yet, permanent damage can only be confirmed to be permanent after enough time has passed
https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-recovered-patients-have-partially-reduced-lung-function/a-52859671
"In some patients, lung function could decline by about 20 to 30% after recovery," says Dr. Owen Tsang Tak-yin, medical director of the Infectious Diseases Centre at Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong.
The good news in that article:
The majority of virologists are convinced that recovered COVID-19 patients are immune to the new SARS-CoV-2 virus after the infection has run its course. After all, the body's own immune system has produced precisely those antibodies during the infection that render the pathogen harmless.
This all-clear also applies to those who had only a weak course of the disease and showed few to no symptoms. Nevertheless, their immune systems reacted to the pathogen and produced the corresponding antibodies. A renewed infection with the new coronavirus is therefore highly unlikely.
But there as well, only time will tell.
@Vister, this is why controlled tests need to be done before a vaccine is rolled out. A vaccine can be ready in months, but it takes at least a year to do various controlled clinical trials to determine whether it's safe and effective. The first small scale test should already be underway (was scheduled for early April), then depending on favorable results it will be scaled up to 100K people after a few more months.
We don't have criteria yet what an immunity certificate should be like or what tests are needed to be 99.99% certain it is what it says. Your immunity is naturally high right after getting over an infection yet reduces over the next few months. Hence the Canadian study whether plasma from newly recovered patients can be used to treat new patients. That will only work in those few months right after recovery. Whether your natural immunity will be enough from a mild infection to then withstand a major infection half a year later, we simply do not have any data on that yet. Just some wild stories about some people getting re-infected or the disease flaring up again, or someone with a 31 day incubation time, and people infected with multiple strains. Most of the wild claims come from China and can't be trusted at all.
So all we have currently is, it is highly likely that you will be immune to further infections if you already had it once, and highly unlikely that you can spread it after already having it once. Is that enough :/
As for other organs, it's not just ventilators that are in high demand
https://www.ft.com/content/e26524a5-c868-451c-a7d7-a91627a1722c
Leading London hospitals are running short of vital equipment in intensive care wards, including blood dialysis machines needed to treat patients suffering from coronavirus-related kidney failure, according to a leaked memo. The shortages, which go far beyond concerns about the lack of ventilators and protective equipment, emerged from a conference call of some 80 senior National Health Service doctors. They illustrate the way Covid-19 can damage much more than the lungs and respiratory system in patients who become seriously ill — affecting the kidneys, heart and occasionally even the brain.
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