Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[Lafiel]

haxxiy said:

Mnementh said:

This Gangelt study is getting real critic from other medical scientist. A main problem seems to be, that it can't really differentiate between antibodies against different Coronaviruses. As other more harmless Coronaviruses are causing common cold (not the flu, that is not a Coronavirus at all), it might have been these people had a common cold and antibodies against that, but still not against COVID-19. The study didn't take that into account.

EDIT: source in german https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/heinsberg-studie-herdenimmunitaet-kritik-1.4873480

Antibodies target a single antigen, and these tests are done with Covid-19 antigens to see if there's an immune response. While it's technically right to assume closely related viruses could elicit the same immune response due to cross-reactive immunity, it does also mean that whatever is in these people's blood has specifically reacted to Covid-19 antigens and would (very likely) neutralize the virus.

From what I read a lot of antibodies unfortunately have little effect on virus activity, if they bind too losely/don't bind to the specific antigen (hull structure) that is related to a viruses reproduction. Scientists think for SARS-CoV-2 the antigen that allows it to use the ACE2 receptor to invade cells is the crucial one, so it's possible only antibodies for this one grant a strong immunity.

Every virus has a multitude of different hull structures, so it's possible the study in question used an antigen which is not uncommon in the other corona viruses.

Last edited by Lafiel - on 10 April 2020