Interesting report on reinfections came out today.
“PHE scientists working on the study have concluded naturally acquired immunity as a result of past infections provide 83% protection against reinfection, compared to people who have not had the disease before. This appears to last at least for 5 months from first becoming sick.”
Which, because you only get five (or ten) words, shows up on the headlines as “Past Covid infection gives 5 months of immunity, study suggests”.
I expect many will read just the headline, and start to claim that it is known that past Covid infection gives exactly 5 months of immunity, and this will become the commonly remembered message going forward.
2 of the 44 reinfections are ‘possible’ reinfections and the other two are only ‘probable.’ So my presumption here is that we had zero cases of reinfections that caused serious illness, since none of them were even confirmed. So...
I didn’t look at the study itself, but how do they know the initial infections were “real” infections? Is it possible they are effectively just finding the false positive rate from the initial infection testing?
Interesting report on reinfections came out today.
“PHE scientists working on the study have concluded naturally acquired immunity as a result of past infections provide 83% protection against reinfection, compared to people who have not had the disease before. This appears to last at least for 5 months from first becoming sick.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/past-covid-19-infection-provides-some-immunity-but-people-may-still-carry-and-transmit-virus?fbclid=IwAR3JeNgUqIa44Wsr8Y-79XVk8PyPNvaSLCUwASqQzAaC7OT4lnBxWu3vDag
Which, because you only get five (or ten) words, shows up on the headlines as “Past Covid infection gives 5 months of immunity, study suggests”.
I expect many will read just the headline, and start to claim that it is known that past Covid infection gives exactly 5 months of immunity, and this will become the commonly remembered message going forward.
2 of the 44 reinfections are ‘possible’ reinfections and the other two are only ‘probable.’ So my presumption here is that we had zero cases of reinfections that caused serious illness, since none of them were even confirmed. So...
I didn’t look at the study itself, but how do they know the initial infections were “real” infections? Is it possible they are effectively just finding the false positive rate from the initial infection testing?
Agreed on both comments. Hopefully the pre-print is more clear