So, if I read this right, up to 62% of kids are sort of immune to COVID?
With emphasis on the “sort of” 
… between that and T-cells and B cell memory from frequent (and still recent enough) past common cold causing HCoV infections enough possibly to “reduce the transmission” and “ameliorate the symptoms where transmission is not prevented” - according the interpretation of the authors.
I find this whole “kids get colds, and that protects them” argument to be weird. I thought the reason kids catch colds is because they DON’T have immunity to the common bugs that are going around. And their parents and subway riders and other people who interact a lot in society don’t catch as many colds because we have some prior immunity. I mean, parents get exposed to every cold their children come down with. Is there any evidence that parents of school-age children and people who take mass transit are less likely to get seriously ill with covid? Maybe there would be if anyone looked for it? There were some amazingly high levels of asymptomatic infections of people in homeless shelters in Boston, so maybe older people who get exposed to a lot of bugs DO also have some protection?
I’ve been guessing it’s because kids have a very active naive immune response, not because they already have immunity. I suppose we will eventually learn more.
This would be an interesting thing to be studied. Mostly because the people I know who are sick the most often have small children, which suggests that little kids getting sick all of the time doesn’t have all that much to do with their immature/inexperienced immune systems as people say or their parents who have mature immune systems wouldn’t be sick so often too. It seems more likely they’re just suffering from more opportunities to get exposed to illnesses because little kids have awful hygiene.
This interesting study shows that children have less antibodies to a more inner part of the virus (capsid proteins) relative to those that target the spike proteins on the outside of the virus. They suggest that having more antibodies to the the inner parts of the virus means that the virus had replicated substantially and the infection is more entrenched.
The question is, why doesn’t the infection take hold in kids? They think that its due to children having a stronger innate immune system (a generalized first response) than adaptive immune response (antibodies, B cells, T cells). Adults and teenagers have a stronger adaptive immune response.
fewer
Depends on the bug, how it spreads, and the duration of what degree of the immunity. But the general rule is as you have it. Younger children live in environments with a microscopic layer of snot and poop on every surface at all times and have much more frequent close contact with a large number of each other’s secretions than subway riders do. Even the dirtiest most disgusting crowded subways. And in general that is not a bad thing but that is another discussion.
50,738,093 total cases
1,262,132 dead
35,795,461 recovered
In the US:
10,288,480 total cases
243,768 dead
6,483,420 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Looks like some good news from Pfizer and BioNTech.
This is especially good to see:
The companies plan to apply for emergency approval to use the vaccine by the end of the month.
Very hopeful - there will be issues of scaling up, and final testing but at least something is on the way
Yes this is huge news. The 90%+ efficacy is particularly startling and bodes well for other vaccines taking a similar approach. These results are coming a few weeks ahead of the safety data precisely because the efficacy rate is so high. Were it more marginal. even with 40K+ participants it would take longer for the signal to emerge from the noise.
So we wait for the safety data which, I suspect will be fine (were it otherwise we would probably have heard more about it with trials being suspended etc.) but there will certainly be some extra-busy people in the Pfizer organisation moving into a final ramp-up status.
The scale-up won’t be an issue (in terms of getting from clinical trial batch to mass-production) but the volume of billion+ doses needs the supply-chain and manufacturing capacity that a huge company has (and also the ready network of external manufacturing partners)
Oh – THAT makes sense, and that’s what I’ve been assuming is the difference. I didn’t realize this article supported that view.
The safety data is critical, and we don’t have it because they need to have a certain number people wait 2 months after their second jab before they can breathe a sigh of relief that it doesn’t appear that the vaccine produces the sort of immune over-reaction that sometimes kills people with this virus.
I’m still a little anxious as this will be the first RNA vaccine to the market (ever) and it would be nice to have a better idea of the long-term effects of RNA vaccines. Still, I’m excited by this morning’s news.
True, and some safety issues may come to light in the final analysis but anything major would likely have already been seen in the initial months so I don’t expect any nasty surprises.
Because it really doesn’t.
A reasonable interpretation of the lack of IgG to N protein, the one expressed inside cells needed for viral replication, is that infection in kids never gets a chance to get a firm foothold before it is beaten off fairly quickly.
The Nature article lists the (not mutually exclusive) main speculations as to why: stronger innate response is one; different receptor locations and density is another; past recent/frequent infection with other hCoVs is a third. They specify that the last is supported by the fact that the response is IgG predominant, which argues for preexisting immunological memory as a factor. A first completely naive response would have more IgM.
Kids much more often having SARS-CoV2 cross reactive antibodies than adults do, as per the Science article, is also consistent with the speculation that recent frequent infections with other hCoVs is a major factor.
Which again does not mean that a stronger innate response, or receptor distribution/density, do not also play a role.
Anecdotally a group of adults with fairly frequent and recent exposure to the common cold causing hCoVs is pediatricians, and while I am sure there are some who have gotten seriously ill with COVID-19 I don’t know of them.
No. Anything immediate and major would have come up.
I’m afraid to ask how they got the sample from the live patient, and why that patient agreed to it!!
Live doesn’t mean conscious.
Should have read further into the article. He had a biopsy to diagnose fertility issues (presumably dating from pre-COVID, as I doubt biopsies happen all that early in the process of diagnosing such problems).