@biobook What is your educational/work background?
I have been educated, and I have worked! But not in immunology or epidemiology or medicine. I just read a lot, including here at DD, and am learning all this together with everyone else.
Not to bring any proof from the New York Department of Health, however, in the Nursing Home industry, Cuomo has mandated all employees in New York to be tested twice a week. At first the FAQ stated that an employee who had previously had a positive test and/or has a positive antibody test would be exempt from continuing to take the twice weekly test. However, yesterday they completely reversed this stating that even with positive antibody test they are still required to take twice weekly tests "until more is learned about immunity following Covid-19". Don't know if this is still part of their covering up the mistakes they made with regards to the nursing homes since March or if they are seeing some data in regards to the antibodies.
If they're trying to "cover up", they're not doing a terribly good job, because you've found out about it! No, it seems more likely that they originally thought that a positive antibody test meant the employee would have long-term immunity, and now they're not so sure, so want to test more frequently to make sure that the antibody levels remain high. Or maybe they're concerned about false positive tests.
The working theory, IINM, has been that Covid is more contagious than the average coronavirus. Are the 12 recurrences due to immunity of the other 85%, or lack of repeated exposure? Additionally, the study says that reinfection was most common in children. I'm curious to know if that would hold true here, and what the ramifications would be for schools, especially since, at least at one point, children were (or are?) viewed as dangerous silent spreaders. (I'm not sure if this still holds true.)
First, I should mention that they started studying 191 people, and only 86 of those had any positive test at all during the year. So more than half of the people were never infected at all during the year. Not surprising, since we all know that when "some cold is going around" not every single person catches it. But we can't tell if it was because nobody in their vicinity had the virus, or if they were just better at washing hands and keeping hands away from their nose. And the same applies to the question of why the 85% had virus in their nose the first time, but never tested positive again during the year. Maybe they weren't re-exposed to the virus, or maybe they managed to wash hands and keep it out of their nose.
We wouldn't say that 85% were immune, because that would imply that they were infected with the virus but didn't get sick, while these 85% weren't shown to be infected a second time, so we don't know if they were immune or not. This study wasn't trying to figure out how long immunity might last, but rather how short it might be. So all they can really conclude is that in
some people, immunity to these coronaviruses may last just a few months.
Re: children, yes, 9 of the 12 who were re-infected were children. Again, not surprising, since children are so much more likely to stick their fingers in their nose and to develop colds. The novel coronavirus affects adults and children differently, so I don't think we can conclude anything at this point.
The images of lungs with Covid have shown extensive damage, even for those with very mild symptoms. There have also been reports of the virus attacking other organs, on an individual basis. With the average coronavirus, is there documented damage to any internal organs? If yes, how does a second attack on those same organs not cause cumulative damage? If not, is it possible that our virus may prove to hit harder during a second infection due to the attacked organ being weakened by the first infection?
From this article, it sounds like these 4 coronaviruses generally just cause respiratory symptoms, not other internal damage.
If the novel coronavirus acts like these 4, we would expect a second infection to be as bad as the first, but not worse. But the novel coronavirus is different in so many ways, so this expectation is very iffy.
If we draw any conclusions relevant to our current situation, it would be that those who've recovered from a bout of covid-19 should not think that they're immune for life, but should be taking the same precautions as those who've never been infected, to try to avoid a second infection.