Scientific evidence continues to emerge that indicates that COVID-19 is going to be with us for a very long time to come. Yesterday, I reported on a recent study that was conducted in China and another recent study that was conducted in Spain that both showed that COVID-19 antibodies start to disappear very, very quickly. In fact, the study that was conducted in Spain discovered that some patients that originally tested positive for antibodies “no longer had antibodies weeks later”. Well, now we have a third study to add to the list. A study of COVID-19 patients that was conducted at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ National Health Service Foundation Trust in London found that “just 16.7 percent of the patients had a potent antibody response” after a couple of months had passed…
Researchers analyzed immune responses of patients and health care workers at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ National Health Service Foundation Trust in London and found that levels of antibodies that destroy the virus quickly declined after peaking several weeks after patients exhibited symptoms.
The study found that 60 percent of the patients had a “potent” antibody response at peak of their battle with the coronavirus. After about two months, however, just 16.7 percent of the patients had a potent antibody response.
This has enormous implications for vaccine development, because if antibodies disappear very, very quickly any vaccine would need to be administered over and over again throughout the year to provide any sort of protection at all.
And of course a large portion of the U.S. population will never want to take any COVID-19 vaccine under any circumstances.
In addition, experts are telling us that even if a COVID-19 victim develops antibodies, that does not necessarily mean that individual has immunity. In an article that he authored for CNN, Dr. William Haseltine explained that “only 15% of those who test positive for antibodies make the neutralizing antibodies necessary to develop immunity”…
Not only do antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 fade, and perhaps fade quickly, studies have also shown that only 15% of those who test positive for antibodies make the neutralizing antibodies necessary to develop immunity in the first place. And not all of those who make neutralizing antibodies make them at high levels. Some of those infected make no antibodies at all.
So what all of this means is that a vaccine is not going to end this pandemic, and any hope of “herd immunity” bringing this pandemic to an end is completely gone.
It turns out that COVID-19 behaves a lot like other coronaviruses. Antibodies for other common coronaviruses typically disappear entirely “between four months and one year”, and as a result people can actually catch the exact same virus “year after year”…
While SARS and MERS are the coronaviruses that grab the headlines, there are four other mostly unknown coronaviruses that are much more common: 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43. What we know from 60 years of research into these viruses is that they come back year after year and reinfect the same people — over and over again.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 is far more dangerous that most of the other coronaviruses that are floating around out there.
Yesterday, one reader criticized me for suggesting that COVID-19 often causes permanent damage. But of course that is exactly what the hard science has shown. For example, one study of COVID-19 victims discovered that 55 percent of them had serious heart damage that was caused by COVID-19…
Of the total 1,216 patients, 667 (55 percent) had abnormalities in their scan and one in seven participants had what researchers described as “severe abnormalities,” according to the paper published in the journal European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Imaging.
On average, the participants were aged 62, and 70 percent were male. Sixty percent of the scans were performed in a critical care setting, such as an ICU unit or emergency room, while the others were carried out in general medicine settings, cardiology, respiratory, or COVID-19 wards. Some 54 percent of the patients had severe COVID-19.
As we know, COVID-19 also can do a tremendous amount of damage to the lungs, and some scientists are now linking the virus to brain damage in some instances.
And once you become infected, you may have a very, very long battle ahead of you.
In fact, I came across an article today in which one COVID-19 victim claimed to have been battling the virus for more than 100 days…
My first Covid-19 symptoms appeared on March 14: a low-grade fever, profound leg pain, malaise, and loss of appetite. More than 100 days later, Covid-19 is still with me. Some days I wonder if it will ever leave.
Can you imagine that?
When I was a kid, I thought that if I was sick for a week that was way too long.
But apparently this particular virus tends to stay with people for an extended period of time. If you can believe it, a study that was just conducted in Italy found that only 12.6 percent of COVID-19 victims were completely free of symptoms 60 days after first becoming sick…
Almost 90 percent of Covid-19 survivors still have symptoms including fatigue two months after first falling unwell, according to a study.
Italian researchers tracked 143 people who had been hospitalised with the disease but had since recovered.
Only 12.6 per cent were completely free of any Covid-19–related symptom 60 days after they first became unwell.
So those that are mocking this pandemic need to stop, because there are countless victims that are going through nightmarish ordeals right now as they battle this virus.
I think that most of us had assumed that COVID-19 would be a temporary crisis that would eventually go away and then we could go back to our normal lives.
But if there is no way of ever achieving lasting immunity, this virus will be able to circulate around the globe over and over again, and there will be nothing that we can do to stop it.
In other words, it looks like COVID-19 is now a permanent part of our lives.
I wish that this wasn’t true, but unlike so many other news sources I do not believe in engaging in wishful thinking.
And now that everyone has seen how much damage a virus like this can do, that will just encourage terrorists or others with a very evil agenda to quietly release extremely deadly diseases in the future.
A year ago at this time everything seemed so “normal”, but now our lives have been turned upside down by this virus, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.