On the flip side (I wondered a while ago...)- someone with Antibodies that gets exposed to the virus, does that restrengthen the Antibodies? Did anyone out there who tested for antibodies 3 months+ ago retest? Are we seeing drastically different results?
I don't really know the answer, but I'm trying to think logically about this, based on the little I do know. Please don't be fooled into thinking I have any expertise in this field, just because I use full sentences and Standard English. If you think it sounds wrong, you're probably right, so feel free to offer corrections.
During your first infection, while you were feeling sick, your body’s immune cells (macrophages, B cells, T Helper cells) sensed the virus and worked together to get the B cells to produce antibodies to fight the infection.
Even after you recovered, B cells continue to make antibodies, and if another coronavirus enters your body, the antibodies will recognize it and neutralize it so that it can’t make you sick a second time.
But as time passes, less antibody is produced, and you’re at risk of getting re-infected. What
@4yourinfo suggests is that you could get your B cells to keep producing antibody if you could re-stimulate them with the virus again and again, just like a booster shot renews your immune response.
The idea that repeated exposure to a virus might maintain immunity, seems to have some support, at least after the immunity induced by a vaccination:
Some vaccines “can induce very strong immune responses. In these cases, boosting may be necessary only at intervals of several years (if at all) in order to sustain life-long immunity. Alternatively,
the vaccinee may encounter the pathogen itself often enough to keep triggering memory responses without the need for more than a single dose of vaccine.” (Primer to the Immune Response, Mak, Saunders, Jett, 2013, p 351)
I don’t know if there are diseases for which it is known that such repeated exposure triggers the immune system response, or if this is just a hypothesis. Later they mention one specific disease, but it sounds like there is no definite evidence that immunity is triggered by re-exposure and that this explanation is hypothetical:
“…one dose of live, attenuated chicken pox virus] is sufficient to induce antibody production in 97% of school-aged vaccinees. These antibodies persist in the circulation over several years, but it is unclear whether this persistence is due to the vaccine or to
regular re-exposure to VZV (varicella zoster virus) in the community. A booster dose of…vaccine at age 4-6 is therefore currently recommended.” (p 363)
So your hypothesis seems reasonable, but here’s why I think it’s not recommended that you act on it at this time:
Timing. Let’s say you’re recovered, and you come in contact with the virus again over the next month or two. This wouldn’t be expected to activate your immune system because your B cells are working at their peak, doing a splendid job of churning out antibodies. The virus that you encounter at this time can’t even reach your immune cells to activate them, because the antibodies patrolling your bloodstream will knock it out of commission before it gets anywhere. That’s a good thing, of course! Your immune response is successful, so contact with virus at this point fails as a method to boost it further.
So, instead, you wait several months more and then expose yourself to a person infected with covid. But your antibodies may have decreased so much that you no longer have sufficient immunity, so instead of boosting your antibody production the virus just makes you sick. This is undesirable because your goal was to avoid getting sick! and at least some of those who get re-infected have worse symptoms the second time. Note that this is different from a booster shot, where you’re exposed to a weakened virus that can stimulate the immune reaction but can’t cause the actual disease.
So you need to find that sweet spot, a time when your antibodies have started to decline, so that some viral particles are able to reach your immune cells to activate them, but before they’ve declined so much that you have insufficient antibodies to stop the virus from making you sick. The problem is that we don’t know when that might be. There’s a lot of variability in how humans respond. Some might lose immunity after two months, others after two years. So figuring out the time when you personally could risk re-exposure as a safe way to boost your immunity may not be possible.
You might say, “I don’t have to find the optimal time, I’ll just visit another covid patient for an hour every day for the next year.” That might theoretically work to keep your B cells active, but I don’t know if anyone is quite that dedicated to bikur cholim.
Dosage. Even if you knew the best time for re-exposure, you wouldn’t how much virus you’re getting from this exposure, and the severity of response to coronavirus seems to be very dependent on the amount of virus that enters the body. How much you get will depend on how the body of the infected person responds to the virus, how much they release when they cough or speak or breathe, how long you’re together, the movement of air in the room, etc. If the dose you get is too low, it may not stimulate your immune response. Too high, and it could overwhelm the antibodies you’re producing at that point and allow you to get re-infected. Again, this differs from a booster shot, when you get a carefully measured amount of weakened virus.
Viruses mutate. Small changes occur in the coronavirus over time, and it’s possible that the antibodies you developed to the first virus will no longer stop a mutated virus that you’re later exposed to.
So I think it would be dangerous to intentionally re-expose yourself to corona with the hope that it might extend your immunity, because of the uncertainty regarding the optimal timing, dosage, and strain of virus, and because if it doesn’t work to extend your immunity it could lead to covid illness with its potential for serious long-term effects.
But there may be a safe way to do this. It’s called… wear a mask! Wait.. hear me out. This is a new idea.
In countries where mask-wearing is most prevalent, a high percentage of people who are infected with corona develop only mild symptoms or even none at all. Two scientists from San Francisco suggest that this is because masks don’t work.
Huh?
Masks
do work to stop much transmission of the virus, and so fewer cases occur in those masking countries. And masks
do work to prevent many severe cases, since the mask results in a smaller dose of virus getting through and therefore milder symptoms. But masks
don’t work to stop all virus particles, with something like 20-80% of virus particles getting through (depending on mask properties and user behavior). So people wearing masks are frequently getting a tiny dose of virus as they go about their business. Not enough to cause any symptoms, but perhaps enough to stimulate the cells of the immune system to make antibodies.
They’re proposing this to explain why people who had a severe infection often had many close contacts who developed no symptoms but do have antibodies. The close contacts wore masks, and so the small dose of virus they got as a result may have stimulated antibody response without stimulating symptoms.
It seems to me it could apply just as well to a person who has recovered from covid and is at risk of a second infection. If these recovered people were to wear a mask as they go shopping, to shul, to work, to family visits, etc, they may be allowing the repeated inhalation of tiny amounts of virus on a regular basis, so that whenever their natural immunity starts to decline, there’s always another tiny burst of virus stimulating the reactivation of B cells to produce antibody, without stimulating a second bout of disease.
It’s just a theory, but in the absence of any other great ideas for preventing re-infection, it could be worth trying.
The scientists’ description of their idea
A Goldilocks Dose of Coronavirus: Do masks provide a just-right amount of COVID‑19?The NY Times science reporter included reactions from other immunologists:
A New Theory Asks: Could a Mask Be a Crude ‘Vaccine’?