One of my friends has become increasingly concerned about the effects of covid infection and re-infection on the immune system and I don’t feel like I have a very good understanding of the current science/knowledge, so I thought I would post here in case anyone had any insight.
He sent me these two links recently:
Is that how the immune system works, that infections use up T-cells, which are finite, meaning covid does permanent damage with every infection? Is it substantial enough damage that running out of T-cells is likely? If so, that does sound like a huge issue – is it? What kind of implications are probable?
What might happen in the future, if such a large portion of people who have had covid now have this problem? I sort of optimistically feel that if it affects such a massive number of people, science and medicine will find solutions, but maybe that is naive?
Article rings true, not that I have access to all the facts or the deep immunology education necessary to interpret them.
I’m left without any sense of what (at this point) can or could be done. So it ends up sounding like, optimistic or pessimistic, either way we land on the conclusion that our species is stuck with COVID as the new normal. The optimistic folks frame it as “like the common cold, or the ever-recurrent flu, just a fact of life” and the pessimistic ones as “we’re fucking doomed, it’s going to ruin our collective immunity and we’ll become ever less able to fight it off and we’re going down”, but either way no clear path to “here’s what we do to defeat it”.
Yeah that certainly lines up with what I hear from people – obviously this friend is firmly on the pessimistic side of things. True, there doesn’t seem to be any practical advice or steps that can be taken to counter the negative effects at this point – and I don’t have the education or knowledge to understand whether that’s something that could change, or not…
Not exactly. While all our cells are, to some extent replaceable and to some extent finite, i think the issue here is that covid can actually infect white cells, so it’s not just that they get “used up” by fighting the infection, but that they can get, i dunno, excessively used up, like a mini-hiv.
That also probably means it doesn’t always happen, just like covid doesn’t always get into the blood blood vessels. Sometimes, it mostly sticks to the respiratory tract and the gut.
I don’t know, but I’d be skeptical of any claim where the main sources cited are a) a dermatologist citing a statement by a German health minister which might easily have had something lost in translation; and b) a Marxist-Leninist website. It seems like if there were a generally accepted consensus that this was occurring, your friend would have some better sources.
Ah, I see – thanks puzzlegal, that info on how the immune system works helps me understand. So potentially still a problem, but not quite as bad/common as he’s thinking, I suspect. And thank you for the link, I’ll check it out!
Yeah, I was also confused about how if this was generally accepted, why there wasn’t more evidence / why people weren’t talking about it more. My friend thinks there’s a lot we collectively still don’t know about covid and that progress in science and medicine is slow, and sure, that is probably true, but that doesn’t really explain why there aren’t more sources…
Yeah, if everyone who had covid was suddenly significantly immune compromised, we’d all know that. Because everyone who isn’t a complete hermit knows lots of people who’ve had covid.
It’s definitely a thing. Despite the cites in the OP bei.g dubious (and I don’t see any cites for a link between
multiple infections and immune deficiency)
E.g.
It’s very early days for claiming that immune dysfunction seen in a subset of Covid patients is “incurable”, much less that it’s going to lead to a surge in chronic diseases.
For perspective, note that extended immune dysregulation has been observed as a result of other viral diseases (EBV and measles for instance).
It’s something to study, understand and work to counter, certainly.
Of at least equal concern is the tendency for influential people to speak out without regard for the accuracy and impact of their words.
That’s my gut reaction too – my friend’s concern there is that there may already be evidence, for example the bigger-than-expected RSV and influenza surges that happened recently (at least here in Canada, I don’t know how widespread that was), but also that it’s the sort of thing that gets worse with time, as people get sick and recover over their lives – maybe shortening lives and at least significantly affecting quality of life.
To someone who doesn’t know very much about the immune system/etc (ie me), that does sound plausible, at least to some degree / for some people – but would that would be common enough to worry about given the vast numbers of people who have had covid already coupled with the lack of overwhelming evidence so far? I don’t really know.
I mean, there could commonly be a modest reduction in immune function, or rarely be a serious reduction in immune function, and those might not be obvious. What we know is there can’t be a widespread total devastation of the immune system, like that article implies. Because we really WOULD know that.
Hmm, thanks for the links griffin – I’ll check these out too.
And thanks Jackmannii, those are good points. My friend has started to see any amount of risk as not worth taking in light of the potential debilitating consequences, which obviously has quite an effect on his life, and that feels slightly…overly cautious to me. So far it sounds like in the bigger picture, there isn’t enough info yet for anyone to say for certain what all the implications of covid, which obviously makes sense, but certainly it’s something many people are studying, so hopefully a clearer picture will start to emerge.
I think that’s an important point, that we would already have evidence of that if it were so significant and widespread. I will go and read all the links now and try to understand a bit more. Thanks again!
I gotta admit, I’m still pretty covid-shy. My adult child came over for supper last night and we all tested, first. I wear a mask when I go shopping, or out to parties/dances, or take public transit. But I do go to some parties. I have also developed a large “wardrobe” of N95 and KF94 masks.
Same here – there are some immunocompromised people in my life and it is very easy for me to wear a mask whenever I’m out in public, so I do. There aren’t too many people still masking in my area, but there are some, which is cool.
Thanks for the link. It seems like a good, balanced view of where current knowledge stands. Quoting immunologist John Wherry from the article:
“We’re not seeing evidence that this one virus has changed our immune system’s ability to keep us healthy on a large scale. There are 7 billion people on the planet who are doing fairly well. And we’re not seeing opportunistic infections, we’re not seeing huge increases in cancers that need immune surveillance, we’re just not seeing the kinds of things that we saw in other settings where the immune system was compromised, or dysregulated, because of an infectious disease, or because of toxins, or because of radiation, that we’ve seen in a variety of human events over the past 100 years.”
There have been claims by vociferous antivaxers that Covid-19 vaccines are destroying people’s immune systems en masse, leading to inevitable “depopulation” at the behest of our Pharma masters, who of course make lots more money if they have far fewer customers to sell to. These bozos have been notably silent as to whether the disease itself can have a significant immune system impact.
Thanks again, everyone – I have read through everything and now I feel much more on solid ground in terms of understanding the current knowledge! Yes, the Slate article is great – I just sent it to my friend, hopefully it’ll help him feel that things are not so dire.
These bozos have been notably silent as to whether the disease itself can have a significant immune system impact.