10/07/2020
This seems scary doesn't it?
How many of you have had CoVid?
Even if you have you may not necessarily develop immunity?
The bad news seems to be that if your lucky enough to get a mild case or asymptomatic case you may not develop a strong enough immune response to create antibodies in enough numbers? So basically does this mean you have to be really sick with CoVid to develop any sort of immunity?
But that's even worse! No one wants themselves or their loved ones to get a bad case of it and thankfully most people still don't but they are left with the uncertainty of not even knowing if they can ever be safe from this virus, even for the short term because people are getting it but NOT producing a strong enough immune response.
It's a new Virus, yes it's from the same family as other viruses we encounter so there are some informed predictions we can make but it's just too soon to know the answers to CoVid and immunity.
But I have a strange slightly different story to tell you.
I have had CoVid.
I had it at the end of March.
I caught it from the person I was living with.
They are 10 years younger than me and very fit.
They regularly run 20km and half marathons. They had no co morbidities that you read about.
So fortunately they were never seriously Ill. But they were still very ILL. Probably the sickest I have seen them in 17 years. They couldn't get out of bed.
Their whole body felt like it had been hit by a car.
They had a really high fever.
They had to crawl to the bathroom.
This was the SECOND round if it. It had started the week before first for 3 days, not as bad, gone away, then came back with a vengence for another 3 days.
Funnily as well at the time they lost their sense of smell and taste. No one knew at the time that this was a very common sympton.
Fortunately they got better, they were young and healthy and just like it appeared suddenly, it was gone.
Obviously I was worried. I thought, well I'm pretty certain to get this too, I just hope it doesn't get any worse for me. I am 52 with no co morbidity so whilst I'm not in a high risk group, it seemed pretty certain my turn was next. And the virus is unpredictable.
Next it was the turn of our 2 children. Both of them , a few days later, high fever and vomiting for 24 hrs . Then it was over Nothing more, just like kids do, one moment they were throwing up, the next day stuffing themselves with chocolate and Ice cream like nothing had happened.
But what about me!?
Well, I was checking my temperature twice daily but nothing, no fever. Totally normal. But the week after everyone else had been sick suddenly I found I woke up one day and couldn't taste or smell anything. I suspected I had caught the virus because the children's mom who had been so sick the week before had also lost her sense of taste and smell and ,even though she was now recovered ,her sense of taste and smell had not come back Remember at this time, it wasn't a well known symptom of CoVid but it was obvious to me that I had caught the virus now from her, just as the children had.
So I waited. Anxiously.
I counted the days, I knew from reading about it that most cases progressed from the mild phase if they were going to, to the more serious phase after 6 to 7 days.
But it was strange. I kept checking my temperature, twice daily, but nothing, normal.
I kept waiting for the car to hit me, the energy to go, the fatigue to suddenly overwhelm me.
But nothing. I just couldn't taste my blinking food!
Days passed. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,.Nothing.
I was a little confused. Was it over? I mean, even my kids had a high fever for a day! Their mom was really sick in bed, I had obviously caught the same strain and been face to face in close contact with all of them, so why was none of this happening to me?
More days past. Still nothing. I hadn't felt like eating much, I had felt a little nauseas at the beggining but
after a couple of days that had passed and my lack of appetite was from not being able to taste anything!
So I waited. 14 days passed, and slowly my sense of taste and smell started to return.
I reached the 3 week mark and started to relax. Most cases I had read ran their main course through about 3 to 4 weeks. If I hadn't been seriously sick by now it seemed unlikely I was going to be.
After 4 weeks my sense of smell and taste had pretty much returned. It was now the end of the 2nd week of April.
We were learning more about the virus every week now, and more and more loss of taste and smell were being reported as symptoms of mild cases.
Our doctor said it was obvious we had all had the virus but of course at this time there was no mass PCR testing available so you are left in a kind of limbo, not totally able to define yourself as having been CoVid positive and with no idea what this meant for the future.
So why did I have such a mild case when everyone in the household with was far sicker, even my kids, if only for a day?
And so what anyway, many people have mild cases, even totally asymptomatic cases! ! ? Yes, it's strange that I could be living with people who get sick from it and I, the oldest, didn't but not unique.
But this is not the really strange thing. Hopefully you have read the article I posted first because to understand the significance of what I am going to tell you, you need to have read it.
However, here it is in a nutshell. The general assumption is this.
From antibody tests done on people who have either tested positive by PCR for CoVid or on people who have had mild symptoms or even no symptoms there appears to be a correlation between how sick you were and how many you have and for how long you have antibodies.
Sicker =more antibodies
Mild, Asymptomatic= less antibodies or even NO antibodies
Also antibodies seem to decline in numbers quite quickly after infection. Read the article. Some people with mild or asymptomatic cases had very few or none even after 2 months.
Now we know antibodies aren't the only way your immune system fights off infection, T Cells are also important but people aren't being tested for these at the moment, it's more complicated.
But it's fair to say this. Having antibodies is GOOD. Having them stick around longer is also GOOD.
From what I know, the production of them is the basis that most vaccines are made on
So because the majority of CoVid cases are mild, or asymptomatic, and its being claimed in various studies that
this 1) Doesn't lead to large antibody production or even none at all and 2) The antibodies that are produced decline quickly over only 2 months post infection, this is NOT GOOD for our chances of developing immunity for the short or longer term or of producing a one shot vaccine.
So where does my story fit in to this?
I'm just another lucky/unlucky CoVid case in that I got it mild but because of that I probably didn't develop enough antibodies and they haven't stuck around long enough to assume I would have much immunity?
Well I took the antibody test. I took it 3 weeks ago. That was a full 12 weeks after I was infected. Nearly 3 months
My test unsurprisingly came back positive for exposure to CoVid.
I saw my doctor after. She told me my antibody levels were in the top 3 highest she had seen. She'd only seen 2 higher levels in test results and they were both from people who were really sick and had been tested a lot sooner after infection. Remember I was tested close to 3 months after infection when there will supposedly have been a decline in levels to the point in some cases there are virtually no antibodies present.
So there I was, a total contradiction to the course and results these studies seem to be predicting.
I couldn't taste my food for 2 weeks. That was all But my immune system reacted in such a way to CoVid that 3 months after I had one of the top 3 antibody levels that my doctor had seen when according to these studies , after such a mild case and after such a long time after infection I should have expected to see the opposite with the accompanying unfavorable prediction for any immunity.
Now as I said, there is so much we don't know about this virus and exactly how our immune system fights it or doesn't unfortunately.
And antibodies aren't the ONLY way we fight off infection
But reading these articles can make you feel pretty un- optimistic about our chances of ever developing any real recurring immunity. But knowing that you can produce lots of antibodies and they can stick around for a bit longer at least without having to have been really sick means we can at least be MORE optimistic that over time ,as with other Corona viruses , our amazing immune systems will develop and have the ability to at least hopefully greatly reduce the severity of this disease if we encounter it again in the future.
And we can help our immune systems to do just this There is increasing evidence weekly of the powerful role certain vitamins and natural supplements can play in the fight against CoVid. Not just to reduce the severity of any infection but also to reduce the chances of actually being infected through their prophylactic use.
It's late now, this is a VERY long post , I need to go to bed but tomorrow I'm going to post the immune system boosting and prophylactic supplements I take.
Scientists still don't know how long coronavirus antibodies last or what level you need to be protected from future infection.
