# Covid19 survivors are given the green light. **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [April 12, 2020, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628 "2020-04-12T13:32:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628/1 "2020-04-12T13:32:42Z")
So, apparently there is antibodies. > **[Fauci says the government is considering giving out COVID-19 'immunity cards'...](https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-says-government-considering-giving-190200668.html)** > > Dr. Fauci said a "large number" of antibody tests, which show whether someone has recovered from coronavirus, will be available in the coming week. Can we deduce that there may be an antibody for this virus already in the genetic code in a portion of the world population? Passed on from ancestors? ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628/2 "2020-04-12T13:59:19Z")
This sounds good, but as of only a few days ago, science still hadn’t come to any conclusion that the anti-bodies do confer an immunity, nor for how long if they do. Sorry to bring less good news: [What Immunity to COVID-19 Really Means | Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-immunity-to-covid-19-really-means/) \*I instinctively rarely trust Yahoo for accurate reporting. \* A little more: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/coronavirus-survivors.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/coronavirus-survivors.html) > [@](#): > > But uncertainties abound. While Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, has said he is “really confident” that people who recover are protected against re-infection, there is no perfect test for immunity, and it is not clear yet how long it may last. Guidance from health officials as to the precise moment people who had been infected can no longer infect others is often conflicting, and testing is often not available to confirm when a person is virus-free. Some Covid-19 survivors face stigma from neighbors who know they had been sick. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628/3 "2020-04-12T14:25:37Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > Can we deduce that there may be an antibody for this virus already in the genetic code in a portion of the world population? Passed on from ancestors? No. What in that AP article would lead you to believe that? There are ways to genetically “hardcode” immunity into the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of the host genome, but that only applies to pathogens that populations have evolved to resist; the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been pretty definitively established to be a novel virus from recent zoonotic transfer. We don’t understand why it affects some demographics and some individuals more virulently than others but it isn’t because some people already had antigen-specific antibodies. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628/4 "2020-04-12T15:22:30Z")
I don’t think we can “deduce” it, but there’s been a lot of thinking in that direction. SARS-COV-2 may be novel, but there’s nothing truly new under the sun. [https://www.genomeweb.com/infectious-disease/rockefeller-led-team-launches-initiative-study-covid-19-genetic-vulnerability#.XpMuZGllDqs](https://www.genomeweb.com/infectious-disease/rockefeller-led-team-launches-initiative-study-covid-19-genetic-vulnerability#.XpMuZGllDqs) > [@](#): > > “We predict, for example, that the IEI underlying severe influenza pneumonitis would also make someone prone to the coronavirus disease, because they’re both RNA viruses infecting the lungs,” Casanova said. “In the long run, we want to prove or disprove the idea that life-threatening diseases in the course of primary infections in previously healthy individuals is genetic.” > **[Clues to COVID-19 coronavirus's vulnerability emerge from an antibody against...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200403103959.htm)** > > An antibody recovered from a survivor of the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s has revealed a potential vulnerability of the new coronavirus at the root of COVID-19. > [@](#): > > The study, published today in Science, is the first to map a human antibody’s interaction with the new coronavirus at near-atomic-scale resolution. Although the antibody was produced in response to an infection of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which is caused by the SARS-CoV virus, it cross-reacts with the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. > > The structural mapping revealed a nearly identical site on both coronaviruses to which the antibody binds, suggesting a functionally important and vulnerable site for this family of coronaviruses. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/05/health/young-people-dying-coronavirus-sanjay-gupta/index.html](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/05/health/young-people-dying-coronavirus-sanjay-gupta/index.html) > [@](#): > > Younger people are far less likely to die, but there is an unusual pattern that seems to be emerging. As Dr. Anthony Fauci told me, it is what makes the coronavirus such an “unusual disease.” > > “I’m fascinated,” he said, " … by what I would call the pathogenesis." > > “You know, you get so many people who do well and then some people who just, bingo, they’re on a respirator, they’re on ECMO (a cardio-pulmonary machine) and they’re dead,” Fauci told me when I interviewed him for my podcast, “Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction.” > > “I mean, the dichotomy between that, there’s something there, Sanjay, that we’re missing from a pathogenesis standpoint. And I don’t think it’s only if you’re elderly or if you have underlying conditions. There’s something else going on there that hopefully we’ll ultimately figure out.” > > So, what could be behind it? Scientists and researchers wonder if the answer could lie in our genes and are beginning to try and understand what differentiates people who get mild cases from those who die. > > One possibility is a gene variation in the ACE2 gene. ACE2 is an enzyme that attaches to the outer surface of cells in the lungs, as well as the heart. In an article in Science magazine, Immunologist Dr. Philip Murphy of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that “variations in the ACE2 gene that alter the receptor could make it easier or harder for the virus to get into lung cells.” ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628/5 "2020-04-12T16:38:54Z")
People really **want** to believe that illness and recovery confers long term immunity. However, That’s not the case for some other Corona viruses. Plus we keep getting reports of people in China suffering relapses. There’s really no way to check the veracity of the reports. People are desperate for good news, so we get it. They do Not want to hear that the second phase of the infection, 9 months from the first, turns everyone who got it into a zombie. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628/6 "2020-04-12T16:41:57Z")
Quarantined Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covid19-survivors-are-given-the-green-light/851628/7 "2020-04-12T16:52:16Z")
There is no question that there are differences in genetic susceptibility between people or whole populations; this is why Eurasians were able to tolerate smallpox as an endemic disease with only occasionally epidemic outbreaks with relatively low morbidity but the virus cut through the geographically isolated Native American and Aboriginal Australian populations like a scythe through wheat, to the point that we can’t even estimate the mortality beyond that it was greater than 90%. There is almost certainly a genetic component that makes some people uniquely predisposed to a severe COVID-19 presentation despite relative youth and lack of underlying condition or co-morbidity. And it is unsurprising that the identifiable immunoglobulin binding protein could be common between the SARS-CoV(-1) and SARS-CoV-2 viruses given that both viruses are identified as common from a recent common lineage. But the question posed by the o.p. was “Can we deduce that there may be an antibody for this virus already in the genetic code in a portion of the world population? Passed on from ancestors?” There is no evidence that I’ve seen to indicate that antibodies that attack the SARS-CoV-2 virus are part of the class of [natural antibodies that are produced by the immune system](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6384419/) from the host’s genome. Stranger