Warbledwrassler said:
What I don't understand is the reporting of reinfections. I had heard months ago about somebody being reinfected, but about a week ago, someone in China was reinfected and the media went nuts with it. There's an agenda here.
Early on there were reports in I think South Korea of people testing positive again after a negative test. There was also a person in San Antonio who tested negative, was released from quarantine at the military base, and then the final sample taken came back positive so she had to go back in. Someone (again I think it was the South Koreans, but could have been somewhere else in SE Asia) did some viral cultures on these re-positives and showed the virus wasn't active, the PCR test is looking for some specific viral RNA and is very sensitive. However, just because the RNA is present, it doesn't mean the virus is active or infectious.
The fear mongers lost a storyline when it was shown the re-positives weren't infectious. But they kept the low level buzz of "we don't have proof people are immune". That is an easy fear to maintain because the only way to prove immunity is to do a challenge study where you intentionally inject virus into someone who was recovered and we don't do those kinds of studies in people. The fact that it was done in monkeys and they were all immune was ignored because "animal tests don't always translate to humans". The evidence that millions of people had recovered and didn't get sick again didn't matter.
None of that was helped by the WHO speaking against "COVID passports" where people who test positive for antibodies would be free to go back to normal. They had a point, especially given the false positive rate for the antibody test. Either the WHO sucked at messaging that or the fear mongers intentionally misinterpreted the statement because that was used to validate the "we don't know" fear.
Also, there was a study looking at antibodies that showed asymptomatic people had lower levels of antibodies and they dropped below detectable faster than people who actually got sick, with some portion of the asymptomatic testing negative for antibodies after 3-4 months. The fear mongers again misquoted the study and applied the antibodies go away not just to the asymptomatic individuals but to everyone, when the study actually showed recovered patients still had high levels of antibodies after 3 months. Note, there was another study more recently that contradicted those results and accused the original study of looking at the wrong antibodies, antibodies that are only short term while the long term antibodies are built up.
Finally, they found someone else who was "reinfected" as proof of the "no immunity" fear. But here again, there were big holes. The individual was presumed to have COVID earlier but there was never a positive COVID test. He goes out months later and then gets tested for some reason (contact tracing or maybe entry into the country) and tests positive. But he didn't have symptoms. First, we don't know if he really had it the first time or had something else. Second, who cares if you test positive again if you can't spread it and it doesn't make sense.
The other part of all this is a complete misunderstanding of why we get a flu shot every year. It isn't because the same strain of the flu virus mutates so rapidly that you aren't immune to it the next year, It is because there is an insane number of flu virus subtypes and the vaccine is only good for 3 or 4 of them. We get a new vaccine each year because they change up which subtypes to protect against. While a new strain of a subtype may come back around a few years later after mutation and rearrangement, it isn't an annual thing that the flu just changes so fast that your immune system cant recognize it again. Plus, we also knew early on that the COVID19 virus was mutating at about half the rate of flu virus after measured the rate of new mutations in the genomic data.
There is absolutely an agenda to keep the fear high. What is absolutely insane is that even if we take the "antibodies go away after 3-4 months" as true, the rational response would have been to get continual exposure. If you have antibodies 1 month after recovery and are reexposed, your immune response grows stronger, and generally your immune response probably lasts longer. This is the entire basis of childhood immunizations where they get a new shot for the same virus several times and tetanus boosters every ~10 years. Instead, the strategy was hide in your house and avoid exposure until your immunity goes away. Completely irrational.
