ExPenhMan wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 1:45 pm ^^^ Apparently, making an effective vaccine for COVID19 will not be an easy task. It's not just about harnessing antibodies, it's about harnessing the right kind of antibodies, called neutralizing antibodies.

Good shortish story in the Scientific American last week, What Immunity to COVID-19 Really Means.

Immunity to seasonal coronaviruses (such as those that cause common colds), for example, starts declining a couple of weeks after infection. And within a year, some people are vulnerable to reinfection. That observation is disconcerting when experts say it is unlikely we will have a vaccine for COVID-19 within 18 months. But studies of SARS-CoV—the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which shares a considerable amount of its genetic material with SARS-CoV-2—are more promising. Antibody testing shows SARS-CoV immunity peaks at around four months and offers protection for roughly two to three years. As Preeti Malani, chief health officer and a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, said in a video interview with JAMA Editor in Chief Howard Bauchner,this period presents “a pretty good time line for thinking about vaccines and therapeutics” for COVID-19.

Even if the antibodies stick around in the body, however, it is not yet certain that they will prevent future infection. What we want, says [Dawn Bowdish, a professor of pathology and molecular medicine and Canada Research Chair in Aging and Immunity at McMaster University in Ontario] are neutralizing antibodies. These are the proteins that reduce and prevent infection by binding to the part of a virus that connects to and “unlocks” host cells. They are relatively easy to detect, and they are far easier for vaccine developers to generate than the alternative: the immune system’s T cells. In contrast, nonneutralizing antibodies still recognize parts of the pathogen, but they do not bind effectively and so do not prevent it from invading cells.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... lly-means/

Electric Earth wrote: ↑Sat Apr 18, 2020 9:53 am ^ That's funny. I'm not quite sure about it being in the covid thread, but it's funny. It would fit well in the Thailand subforum too.

Clemen wrote: ↑Sat Apr 18, 2020 4:02 pm "There's little sign of herd immunity, WHO says

Research suggests herd immunity in the broader population is not occurring on a large scale.(Reuters: Kim Kyung-Hoon)
The World Health Organisation is not sure whether the presence of antibodies in blood gives full protection against reinfection with the new coronavirus, the group's top emergencies expert Mike Ryan has said.

Dr Ryan also said that even if antibodies were effective there was little sign that large numbers of people had developed them and were beginning to offer so-called "herd immunity" to the broader population.

"A lot of preliminary information coming to us right now would suggest quite a low percentage of population have seroconverted (to produce antibodies)," he said.

"The expectation that … the majority in society may have developed antibodies, the general evidence is pointing against that, so it may not solve the problem of governments."
TL;dr don't get your hopes up