(Getty Images)
There is an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal that says we are closer to the herd’s immunity than we know. He claims that if we look at T cells – cells that remember past infections – we will find that quite a few people have developed immunity to COVID-19 without ever having had symptoms.
Dr. Gordon Cohen, a Mercer Island physician, joined Seattle’s Morning News to discuss.
“One of the things that has been largely ignored among all these terrible warnings by COVID is that COVID cases have dropped by 77% in the last six weeks. So, this opinion piece by Dr. Marty Makary – who is a well-known surgeon and public health expert – says that “if a drug reduces cases by 77%, we call it a miracle pill.” So he asks: Why is the number of cases declining? And it has to do with the different types of immunity that our body has, antibodies to T cells, ”said Dr. Cohen.
Mercer Island MD explains why the CDC now recommends multi-layer masks
According to this theory, the figures behind the mortality rate and the infection rate seem to indicate a wider spread immunity of the herd than previously thought.
When we do antibody tests, it does not capture these antigen-specific T cells or memory T cells once they are activated by the virus. And it’s quite interesting that he points out that people who survived the Spanish flu of 1918 were discovered in 2008 – 90 years later – with memory T cells that were still able to produce neutralizing antibodies, “he said.
“So what he’s saying is that one in 600 Americans died of COVID-19, which translates to a population mortality rate of about 0.15%. So, this is the theoretical mortality rate for COVID-19. But the current mortality rate from COVID-19 infection is 0.23%. So these figures suggest that about two-thirds of the U.S. population already had the infection (potentially unknowingly).
Will Washington teachers’ unions support the CDC’s reopening guidelines?
In other words, the test that has been done is to test the antibodies that are currently fighting the infection. Once these antibodies disappear, the T cells are left to remember that infection, and they are the ones that actually protect you from the future infection. But the tests do not reveal their existence.
“This is how our body naturally develops immunity. But when we test people to see if they have a response to vaccination, we test antibodies, we don’t test T cell activity. So what he pointed out is using a variety of math models, it’s possible that by April, based on his math data and what we know about the disease, that COVID-19 is largely gone, ”said Dr. Cohen. .
Listen to Seattle’s Morning News from 5 to 9 in the morning on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to podcast here.