don't get covid-19
2021-May-20, Thursday 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerDon't get covid. Don't get covid. Don't get covid.
It's been nearly a year since I wrote my opinion that sars-cov-2 infection could be lifelong because its use of ACE2 receptors would allow heart cells to be infected, which would prohibit any easy method for the body to rid itself of that viral infection. The body would have to kill those heart cells, but they're replaced at a rate of only about 1% per year.
Since then, I haven't seen a single article mentioning this possibility. There are lots of stories about "long haul covid", and they cover a wide range of long term effects after primary infection seems to end. I'll still go on record now that if I'm right, then we will see recurring covid infection when previously infected people finally succumb to the next wave of flu that taxes their immune system, allowing a resurgence of covid within their body. That's my prediction.
What has been found instead, though, is just as scary.
That MIT article goes into more details, none of it good. The piece that most interested me, though (bold emphasis mine)...
Don't get covid.
It's been nearly a year since I wrote my opinion that sars-cov-2 infection could be lifelong because its use of ACE2 receptors would allow heart cells to be infected, which would prohibit any easy method for the body to rid itself of that viral infection. The body would have to kill those heart cells, but they're replaced at a rate of only about 1% per year.
Since then, I haven't seen a single article mentioning this possibility. There are lots of stories about "long haul covid", and they cover a wide range of long term effects after primary infection seems to end. I'll still go on record now that if I'm right, then we will see recurring covid infection when previously infected people finally succumb to the next wave of flu that taxes their immune system, allowing a resurgence of covid within their body. That's my prediction.
What has been found instead, though, is just as scary.
Still, what Ring, a shaggy-haired cancer immunologist at Yale University, detected in his blood samples last fall so spooked him that he pulled his nine-month-old daughter out of day care and put his family back on lockdown.
The Rockefeller researchers had identified a single type of antibody primed to attack immune cells. But Ring, using a novel detection method he had invented, found a vast array of autoantibodies ready to attack scores of other human proteins, including ones found in the body’s vital organs and bloodstream. The levels, variety, and ubiquity of the autoantibodies he found in some patients shocked him; it looked like what doctors might see in people with chronic autoimmune diseases that often lead to a lifetime of pain and damage to organs including the brain.
“What rocked my world was seeing covid patients with levels of autoreactivity commensurate with an autoimmune disease like lupus,” he says.
- TechnologyReview (free archive)
The Rockefeller researchers had identified a single type of antibody primed to attack immune cells. But Ring, using a novel detection method he had invented, found a vast array of autoantibodies ready to attack scores of other human proteins, including ones found in the body’s vital organs and bloodstream. The levels, variety, and ubiquity of the autoantibodies he found in some patients shocked him; it looked like what doctors might see in people with chronic autoimmune diseases that often lead to a lifetime of pain and damage to organs including the brain.
“What rocked my world was seeing covid patients with levels of autoreactivity commensurate with an autoimmune disease like lupus,” he says.
- TechnologyReview (free archive)
That MIT article goes into more details, none of it good. The piece that most interested me, though (bold emphasis mine)...
But what exactly is causing this continued immune reaction—whether it’s autoimmune disease and autoantibodies or something else—is “the million-dollar question.” To Heath, the persistent presence of self-attacking antibodies, like those found by Ring and others, seems like a leading hypothesis. He believes, though, that the chronic symptoms could also be caused by undetectable remnants of the virus that keep the immune system in a state of low-level activation.
Don't get covid.