Study Finds Many Uninfected Adults Still Have Strong Pre-Existing Antibody Protection Against COVID

By Arjun Walia | Collective Evolution

A study published in March 2021 suggested that the majority of healthy Adults in British Columbia have evidence of pre-existing or naturally acquired immunity to COVID-19. They found this to be the case even in individuals who haven’t been infected, and could be explained by the fact that coronaviruses that already circle the globe, prior to COVID-19, may provide protection from the novel virus. They explain,

There are 4 circulating coronaviruses predating COVID-19 that cause up to 30% of seasonal upper respiratory tract infections (8). The spike proteins of β-coronaviruses HKU1 and OC43 exhibit approximately 40% sequence similarity, whereas the α-coronaviruses NL63 and 229E exhibit approximately 30% structural similarity with SARS-CoV-2 (9). The common occurrence of circulating coronaviruses year after year and their structural similarity with SARS-CoV-2 raises the possibility that the former may stimulate cross-reactive responses toward SARS-CoV-2 and that this heterotopic immunity may impact clinical susceptibility to COVID-19 and/or modulate responses to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (10, 11)….In conclusion, this study reveals common pre-existing, broadly reactive SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in uninfected adults. These findings warrant larger studies to understand how these antibodies affect the severity of COVID-19, as well as the quality and longevity of responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

We are living in a world where anything “natural” seems to be shunned by a large portion of the medical community, and defined as “pseudoscientific”, when in fact, research suggests the opposite.

Natural immunity is quite robust. Dr. Suneel Dhang, an internal medical physician in the United States explains,

I’m not aware of any vaccine out there which will ever give you more immunity than if you’re naturally recovered from the illness itself…If you’ve naturally recovered from it, my understanding as a doctor level scientist is that those antibodies will always be better than a vaccine, and if you know any differently, please let me know.

A number of studies have now been published demonstrating that infection from COVID will provide a person with long lasting antibodies. Several studies have demonstrated that individuals with prior infection not only have these antibodies, but that they also developed robust levels of B cells and T cells (necessary for fighting off the virus) and these cells may persist in the body for a very long time. How long? It could be decades, or even a lifetime.

Individuals with infection from SARS, for example, still have a robust level of antibodies nearly two decades later. Research has also found that even a mild COVID infection can provide very strong protection that could last a lifetime.

Last fall there were reports that antibodies wane quickly after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, and mainstream media interpreted that to mean that immunity was not long-lived. But that’s a misrepresentation of the data. It’s normal for antibody levels to go down after acute infection, but they don’t go down to zero; they plateau. Here, we found antibody-producing cells in people 11 months after first symptoms. These cells will live and produce antibodies for the rest of people’s lives. That’s strong evidence for long-lasting immunity. – Ali Ellebedy, PhD, associate professor of pathology & immunology, of medicine and micro-biology. (source)

This science and research completely opposes what we were hearing early on in the pandemic, that prior infection, and infection from other coronaviruses may only provide protection for a few months or even a couple of years. It turns out that it’s probably a lot longer.

When infected with SARS-CoV-2, most people clear this virus from their body by mounting a robust, long-lasting immune response that targets multiple components of the virus1. These people will be protected from re-infection with the same variant of SARS-CoV-2 and, due to the breadth of a natural immune response, will also likely have some degree of protection against emerging new variants of SARS-CoV-2. Indeed, most people who have naturally acquired immunity should not be at risk of developing severe disease. – Dr. Byram Bridle, Viral Immunologist, University of Guelph. (source)

How does this compare to vaccine induced immunity? We don’t know as there is not enough data to say yet.

Dr. Ozlem Tureci, co-founder and CMO of BioNTech, the company that developed a COVID vaccine with Pfizer told CNBC that people will likely need a third shot of its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine. She also believes people will need one every year. Judging by this belief, vaccine induced immunity will continually wane and those who choose to go the vaccine route may have to continue with inoculations.

The scientific consensus of the number of people infected around the world is well over what testing has claimed. Currently, we’re nearly at 200,000,000 cases, but that number is most likely well over a billion globally. This is why the survival rate for healthy people under the age of 60 is nearly 100%.

These infection numbers are important because it represents a globe closing in on herd immunity. My question is, what effect does the vaccine have on those who have already had an infection? What does this do to natural protection one gets from infection?

Another important question to ask is, why has the topic of naturally acquired immunity been given absolutely zero attention within the mainstream? Why are they pushing the idea that we can’t go back to completely normal until every single person has had a vaccine if that doesn’t match what the science is saying?

This article (Study Finds Many Uninfected Adults Still Have Strong Pre-Existing Antibody Protection Against COVID) was originally published on Collective Evolution and is published under a Creative Commons license.