Monument Hills
Cancelled
- Dec 12, 2017
- 2,200
- 5,199
- AFL Club
- Fremantle
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- Hufflepuff, Wildcats, WCE womens
This relates back to how vaccines work. For example, you have no antibodies to virus X in your body. You are given a vaccine which is part of or an inactive form of the virus. Your immune system identifies this new 'virus' in your body, and begins to manufacture specific antibodies to X therein adding to the body's antibody 'library'. It takes a number of days to do this. Afterwards it keeps a base number in the library ready to go at a moment's notice.Well the thing is we don't really know that having it once is going to give you immunity from getting it again. There are some reports of individuals having had it, recovered and then had it again. Either way, it's still unclear as to the immunity having it provides.
If you later get infected by the actual virus X, the body goes yep, that one's in the library, pushes out the base numbers in the library into the bloodstream, and immediately produces large amounts of the specific antibody and goes all shock and awe on X, George Bush style, before X has a chance to grow up to numbers that are dangerous to the body. Thus, the virus' effect on the body is less than if there weren't such a base number of antibodies in the library ready to go or immediate manufacturing of more. We see the difference as reduced symptoms than if you had not had the vaccine.
When you get infected by a real virus having not had a vaccine to it previously, your body essentially does the same thing except because the virus is live and whole, it can effect various damage on the body itself or through causing the body's immune response to overreact causing other issues e.g.pnemonia etc. during the time that the body is identifying and creating antibodies to the virus.
If you survive the first infection and then catch the same virus a while later, like with the vaccine, the body's immune system is ready to go with base antibodies pushed into the bloodstream and goes all shock and awe on the virus. Therefore, there is less time for the virus to effect damage on the body before the antibodies get it under control. Therefore, you can, of course, get the same virus again like with cv19, but it's effects on the body will be far less the next time (like what happens when you are vaccinated. This is the basics of immunity and response to viruses.
The bloke who taught humankind how the above works and got a Nobel prize in the process is basically equivalent to the Don Bradman of Australian medical research. His name is Peter Doherty and he has plenty of interesting things to say about cv19 in a number of recent articles that are googlable if you are interested.
To answer your question, yes, we can have a second infection of cv19. But, as noted by Doherty and every other immunologist, the next infection should show milder symptoms [unless it happens before the first infection has been dealt with by the body and you haven't yet built up the immunity - i.e. why doctors are dying in Italy getting dose after dose of virus one after the other by multiple patients. Add in being overworked, lack of sleep, high stress. Body doesn't have time to make the antibodies and recover from first infection with rest - doctor dies. Very sad.] Hope this helps