Want some really bad news?

The Wall Street Journal published an article today that led off with:

A large English study showed the number of people with Covid-19 antibodies declined significantly over the summer, suggesting that getting the virus might not confer long-lasting immunity from future infection.

The survey of 365,000 adults in England who tested themselves at home using a finger-prick test showed the proportion of people testing positive for Covid-19 antibodies declined by 26.5% between June 20—12 weeks after the peak of infections in the country—and Sept. 28.

It later continued:

Doctors don’t yet know whether antibodies confer any effective immunity against reinfection by Covid-19. But even if they do and the results of this survey are confirmed, it suggests the prospect of widespread long-term herd immunity to the virus will be difficult to achieve. Herd immunity occurs when enough people in a population develop an immune response, either through previous infection or vaccination, so that the virus can’t spread easily and even those who aren’t immune have protection.

The findings showed 18-24-year-olds lost antibodies at a slower rate than those aged 75 and over. The smallest decline of 14.9% was of people aged between 18 and 24 years, and the largest decline of 29% was of people aged 75 and over.

On Sunday, Mark Meadows implicitly confirmed that the Trump administration is officially pursuing a strategy aimed at achieving herd immunity – namely letting people get sick and just protecting the “most vulnerable” like the elderly and Black people (although I’ve never seen any plan from the WH for actually achieving that protection. I’m sure those details will follow as soon as Trump reveals his plan to replace Obamacare with something much better, which has been two weeks away for approximately the last five years).

This study shows two huge fallacies in Meadows’ “plan”. First, we may very well get to the 70% level of infection that’s probably required for herd immunity, but then find out that the only thing we’ve achieved is a huge increase in deaths, likely into the millions. Not a great gamble to take, no?

Second, since vaccines rely on antibodies to produce immunity, these will probably decline 6-12 months after infection. This means that, when we actually start vaccinating people, the whole process (i.e. vaccinating at least 70% of the population) may have to be repeated every six months. It’s just about guaranteed that more and more people will stop being vaccinated, the longer they have to do this, meaning the virus will get out of control again in a year or two. The article says:

The study reflects earlier smaller trials and suggests that antibodies to the virus decline over 6-12 months after infection, as in other seasonal coronaviruses such as the common cold. The study doesn’t indicate whether other types of immune responses—such as that contributed by so-called T cells—would help protect against reinfection.

In other words, if Donald Trump is allowed to continue as president, the almost inevitable result will be a massive level of coronavirus infections that can’t be wiped out in any way except a drastic lockdown of the entire country for at least a month (kind of like what China did initially). At that point, masks and widespread testing will almost be irrelevant – things will have gone so far.

Now you know what you need to do.

 

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com