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There’s an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal that says we’re closer to herd immunity than we know. It claims that if you look at the T cells – the cells that remember the infections – we will find that quite a few people have developed an immunity to COVID-19 without ever having any symptoms.
Dr. Gordon Cohen, managing director of Mercer Island, joined Morning News of Seattle to discuss it.
“One of the things that is largely ignored under all these serious COVID warnings is the fact that COVID cases have dropped by 77% in the past six weeks. In this opinion piece by dr. Marty Makary, who is a well-known surgeon and health expert, says that “if a medication breaks down cases by 77%, we call it a miracle pill.” Therefore, he asks the question: Why is the number of cases decreasing? And it has to do with the different types of immunity that our body has, antibodies to T cells, ‘said dr. Cohen said.
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According to the theory, the numbers behind the mortality rate and the infection rate indicate a more widespread herd immunity than was initially thought.
‘When we do antibody testing, these antigen-specific T cells or memory T cells are not caught once activated by the virus. “It is very interesting that he points out that in 2008 – 90 years later – people who survived the Spanish flu were found to have memory T cells that could still produce neutralizing antibodies,” he said.
‘So what he is saying is that one in every 600 Americans dies from COVID-19, which equates to a population death rate of about 0.15%. This is therefore the theoretical mortality rate of COVID-19. But the current mortality rate from COVID-19 infection is 0.23%. These numbers therefore actually indicate that about two-thirds of the American population actually already had the infection (possibly without knowing it). ‘
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In other words, the test that has been done tests the antibodies that are currently fighting the infection. Once the antibodies disappear, the T cells can remember that infection, and these are the ones that protect you from the future infection. But the tests do not reveal their existence.
‘This is how our body naturally develops immunity. But when we test people to see if they respond to the vaccine, we test for antibodies, we do not test for T-cell activity. So what he pointed out is by using different mathematical models, it is possible that by April, based on his mathematical data and what we do know about the disease, largely COVID-19 can mostly be gone, ‘said Dr. Cohen said. .
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