• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

New Study: Exposure to COVID-19 Confers Immunity Even When Not Infected

by Will Jones
5 April 2021 1:42 AM

The mainstream preoccupation with antibodies as a signal of protection from COVID-19, coupled with worries about their declining levels, often fails to acknowledge the crucial role played by T-cells in conferring longer lasting immunity.

A new study in Nature shows that not only do people infected with SARS-CoV-2 develop lasting T-cell immunity, but so too do their close contacts who never experience a detectable infection and have no detectable antibodies.

The authors write:

Close contacts, who are SARS-CoV-2-exposed, are often both NAT [PCR] negative and antibody negative, indicating that SARS-CoV-2 failed to establish a successful infection within these individuals, presumably due to their exposure to limited numbers of viral particles or a short time of exposure. However, our analysis of the samples from 69 of these close contacts showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 specific memory T-cell immunity.

For those infected, the study found the level of T-cell immunity was similar regardless of whether the infection was severe, moderate or asymptomatic. It also found T-cell levels stabilised and did not diminish over the course of three months, implying lasting protection.

For close contacts who were not infected, there were some differences in the quality of their T-cell immunity compared to those infected. The authors write:

The size and quality of the memory T-cell pool of COVID-19 patients are larger and better than those of close contacts. … The results show that 57.97% and 14.49% of close contacts contained virus-specific memory CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, respectively.

Disappointingly, the study found that in those never exposed to SARS-CoV-2 (because the samples came from before September 2019) there was no evidence of T-cell cross-immunity from other coronaviruses.

In order to investigate whether the observed expanded T-cells may have originated from pre-existing cross-reactive T-cells specific for common cold coronaviruses from previous infections, we tested blood samples of 63 healthy donors collected before September of 2019. Following a 10-day in vitro peptide expansion only 3.17% of the healthy donors contained detectable levels of virus-specific memory CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, respectively, suggesting that cross-reactive T-cells derived from exposure to other human coronaviruses do exist but are at a significantly lower frequency than those observed in close contacts.

They acknowledged that this was contrary to other recent studies and suggested the issue needed further study.

In agreement with recent reports,17,25 our data also demonstrated the presence of cross-reactive memory CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, which target various surface proteins of SARS-CoV-2, in unexposed healthy donors. However, the failure of these cross-reactive memory CD4+ and CD8+ to expand in vitro suggests they have limited potential to function as part of a protective immune response against SARS-CoV-2. It is noteworthy that the SARS-CoV-2-reactive T-cells detected in the unexposed healthy donors in our study were lower than those detected by Grifoni et al.17 and Braun et al.26, but were consistent with those reported by Peng et al.27 and Zhou et al.28 Assumably, due to the use of different methodologies in assessing SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell responses, it is difficult to directly reconcile the cell-number data between different studies. Thus, a thorough investigation is needed to determine whether the cross-reactive T memory can provide any protective immunity and exert an influence on the outcomes of COVID-19 disease.

The fact that exposure to SARS-CoV-2 can result in the development of more robust immunity (perhaps because of an immune system part-primed from earlier viral infections), rather than infection, is a salutary reminder of how the circulation of viruses helps us to develop and maintain healthy immune systems capable of fighting off a variety of diseases. Trying to avoid infection by staying away from people, insofar as that is possible, can be counterproductive as it can weaken our immune system by leaving us unexposed to a whole variety of pathogens.

It’s also a reminder that antibody testing is a very limited way of determining who has been exposed to and developed immunity to COVID-19. If millions of people exposed to the virus are developing immunity without ever being infected or developing antibodies, what does that mean for reaching herd immunity? It must be closer than we think.

Tags: AntibodiesHerd immunityImmunityPre-Existing ImmunityT cells

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

MPs to Get Vote on Vaccine Passports

Next Post

News Round Up

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

11 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
SueJM
SueJM
4 years ago

Omg….yet another variable to add to the confusion. Deliberate?

1
-6
LilyVLibre
LilyVLibre
4 years ago

Any potential good news WILL be quickly quashed and articles such as this deleted or censored from the MSM. The T Cell immunity was previously broached only to be dismissed along with any other anti Covid cult articles. In the same way that Handjob is now setting up a task force to make a pill that reduce Covid symptoms in those that have symptoms, any info that will stop crony money making schemes must be summarily dismissed. With regarding to pill making task force, please correct me if I am wrong, but are there not already various drugs etc that help reduce the symptoms, some of which ‘protect’ the NHS are not allowed to use? We could save a lot of wasted money if we just had one task force labelled Reinvent the Wheel.

28
0
DanClarke
DanClarke
4 years ago

So why is Doris spending billions on sending out tests to everyone, oh yes, the rinsing continues

21
0
LilyVLibre
LilyVLibre
4 years ago
Reply to  DanClarke

He either owns the company who make the tests or he following the orders of his puppet master Covid overlords at WEF or B&MGates Foundation. Either way its £1.3 billion of OUR money up the nose and down the drain the perpetuate the lockdown Yellow Star Health Apartheid Scheme.

7
0
peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago

A lot of these studies have sample sizes too small to get significant results. T-cell immunity has always been assumed in natural herd immunity estimates. Governments don’t want to engage with known science when it doesn’t suit their real target, which is to enforce vaccines, boosters etc together with biosecurity IDs.

18
0
Cheezilla
Cheezilla
4 years ago

If I knew this from O-level biology, you can’t tell me that nobody on Sage knew this all along.

16
0
paul smith
paul smith
4 years ago
Reply to  Cheezilla

Yeah, it’s pretty basic stuff.

7
0
Freecumbria
Freecumbria
4 years ago

I saw this study posted up on twitter a few days ago and although I don’t have the skills to properly evaluate it, it stunned me.

Thanks for the article on this. The last two paragraphs above are a very important summary of the potential implications of this.

Asymptomatic transmission is not a major vector of transmission (the scientific evidence strongly suggests this). But this suggests asymptomatic transmission could potentially even be beneficial in enabling the virus to transmit within the population in a setting where the infected are unlikely to be badly affected but will acquire some immunity. This is clearly better than encountering the virus in hospital when unwell and when in the proximity of patients with major symptoms who may be major transmitters.

Testing asymptomatic people makes even less sense viewed in the light of this. And the above indicates another possible mechanism by which the vulnerable are harmed by the lockdown of less vulnerable people.

6
0
LilyVLibre
LilyVLibre
4 years ago
Reply to  Freecumbria

Yes but we cannot have less testing, less mask wearing, less complying, less money in the trough. The T cell immunity info has previously been aired and quashed. All articles that do not support the Government fed propaganda will be ignored, discredited or deleted.

6
0
Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  Freecumbria

And likewise, unless I have read you wrongly, you would be better acquiring your FULL immunity from contact with an asymptomatic person than from having the experimental vaccine. Please someone, do correct me if I am wrong in thinking this.

6
0
amanuensis
amanuensis
3 years ago

Protection from certain upper respiratory tract infections, notably coronaviruses, has always been about innate immunity first with a cellular immunity response second. Antibodies appear to come as an additional response when there viral load exceeds a certain point and the disease becomes more serious.

This appears to be related to the health of the innate immune system, which is presumably why children tend to not make antibodies to coronavirus infections while pensioners do (on average across ‘modern populations’ only about half of people have some antibody response to coronavirus infections, with those who have serious symptomatic disease making the most antibodies).

Now, it could just be considered as ‘one of those things’. Ie, the body doesn’t make antibodies if it doesn’t need to. But presumably those antibodies would be useful to stop future infections — that is, after all, the theory behind the vaccines. So why would the body not get round to doing it for some diseases?

One theory is that there’s something about coronavirus (and other) antibodies that results in additional risks to the individual — perhaps through the generation of protein-antibody complexes (eg, similar to what happens with heparin induced thrombocytopenia), or perhaps through more general autoimmune effects (eg, Rheumatoid arthritis).

So, perhaps the human immune system has evolved to avoid producing antibodies to certain diseases when it can get away with it, to reduce the chances of certain conditions developing in the future, but it does produce an antibody response when it has no choice, such as in older people who tend to have a weak and dysregulared innate immune system.

In which case it might end up being a problem that we’ve decided to solve the coronavirus nuisance by forcing our children’s immune system to behave like that of a pensioner’s.

I’ll admit right now that I don’t know the answer to the above — but neither does anyone else. Maybe we’ll find out by the end of the clinical trials into the covid vaccines — after all, that’s what they’re for.

0
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

16 May 2025
by Will Jones

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

29

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

25

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

19

News Round-Up

18

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

April 2021
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« Mar   May »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences