Hyperventilation and misleading analysis from the New York Times…"Getting the coronavirus again"

 Hyperventilation and misleading analysis from the New York Times…"Getting the coronavirus again"

What this  specific incident really shows is that a second infection is possible but very rare. 

This possibility  of reinfection always exists and has basically nothing to do with achieving herd immunity. 

The patient apparently has a strong immune system. The second time he  was infected he was completely symptom-free.

What we should  learn  is whether the second  infection  made him an infectious carrier for any period of time,... and  if it did we should gather specific details of his infection  so we can use this case in developing population screening/ testing programs 

Getting the coronavirus again

It’s official: Humans can get reinfected with the coronavirus. The first documented case is a 33-year-old man in Hong Kong who caught the virus at the end of March and, more than four months later, picked it up again during a trip to Europe.

The proof lay in the genome sequencing of the virus from both of the man’s infections, which researchers found to be significantly different. The second strain was one that had been circulating in Europe when he was there.

The theoretical possibility of reinfection does not come as a surprise. “We expected that the immunity to the coronavirus might last less than a year because that’s how it is with common cold coronaviruses,” Apoorva Mandavilli, a Times science reporter, told us.

The man experienced mild symptoms the first time he had Covid-19 but had none the second time — an encouraging sign, and very likely an indication that his immune system had been trained by the initial infection.

If the research is buttressed by subsequent cases, it will underline the need for a comprehensive vaccine. “We can’t just get to herd immunity the natural way because only vaccines may be able to produce the kind of immune response that can prevent reinfection,” Apoorva said.

Forget antibody tests. Many of the current ones are inaccurate, some look for the wrong antibodies and even the right antibodies can disappear, experts at the Infectious Diseases Society of America have advised. And because antibody tests can’t tell you if you’re immune to subsequent infections, they’re useless in deciding whether to ease up on mask-wearing and other social-distancing precautions.