This was completely expected, since this is the case with the other coronaviruses. People that contracted SARS-CoV-1 still have a strong immune response almost 20 years later.
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
That shows that there's clearly some memory in the immune system, but it isn't like they did challenge testing with live SARS-CoV-1 virus to survivors to see if they got sick or not.
And we now know that the presence of a T-cell immune reaction is not sufficient to prevent you from getting sick or hospitalized. The cross-reactive T-cell responses between previously circulating human coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 was found to simply not be protective at all against disease:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/10/do...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...
So the paper on T-cell responses in SARS-CoV-1 patients 17 years later is not remotely as meaningful as some people suggest. It doesn't prove anything about disease or reinfection.
At the same time the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 actually is likely to be durable for many years as has been seen with HCoV-229E:
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
What the researchers there found is solid evidence that our immunity to HCoVs doesn't wane but that the virus mutates in order to reinfect. That contradicts some other studies which seem to show reinfection of ordinary coronaviruses on short timescales, but the methdology of that study seems to be more sound. That's the one that I'd cite as evidence of durable multi-year disease-preventing immunity. Although the catch is that given this viruses ability to mutate in multiple locations around the spike protein while actually increasing affinity it seems very likely that it'll eventually mutate to achieve immune escape. It is looking like it'd be pretty surprising for this to be a one-and-done like measles.
I'm using the example of the cross-reactive immune response from other human coronavirus to SARS2, and the lack of any protection conferred by that immune response towards prevention of disease or hospitalization to be a counter example to the idea that the ex vivo immune response is necessarily predictive of useful infection/disease/hospitalization prevention.
We can't say that the spike in IFN gamma correlates to disease protection 20 years later, there's a lot of dots to fill in.
There's a big difference between an immunologists definition of "immune response" and the public's definition of "survivor island" style bulletproof "immunity".
We know the body still recognizes SARS1 17 years later. We have no idea if that person would get infected if they had dinner with someone who had SARS1. They'd probably do better than an otherwise naive person, and i wouldn't bet against that, but a T-cell response in a dish in a lab, that isn't even neutralizing, is weak evidence of an immune response.
Could you provide a source for this please?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
Asking for a citation for something so trivially discoverable is a weird flex.
Citations are cool!
This is trivially discoverable. Claiming that finding this information was not trivial appear dinhonest to me.
However, the bane of my existence the last year have been people with strong opinions on “the science” on both sides that use “citation please” as a passive aggressive dismissal from a position of ignorance, and will promptly ignore any citations offered. The Internet is rife with it, and I generally avoid these kinds of discussions.
That may not have been the OP’s intent but I was admittedly playing the overwhelming odds. People that genuinely want to know these things can easily find and access most of the primary sources (some government research is non-public). That’s the best source for all information on COVID, the media has done a terrible job representing it. I didn’t have the above citation ready, I googled it and it came up right near the top.
Nature is a reputable publication.
I think this boils down to internet folks assuming their conversational partner has the same level of knowledge they do, don't believe the other party, and then ask for proof, rather than educate themselves. The citation was trivial to produce.
"Citation needed," and it's cousins should be reserved for things that aren't easy to find. This is just embarrassing.
If someone is asking for citations in bad faith, they probably have "educated themselves" already, just with the wrong education. If someone believes a conspiracy, and they "educate themselves" as you propose, they will probably come to believe even more strongly in the conspiracies.
Half the time people ask for citations they probably believe the claim and just want more confirmation. If I ask for citation it's often because I want the authors personal opinion on what sources are good. I don't want to Google, I want to discuss things with people, that's why I'm in a comment section. And, of course, being a comment section sometimes people just stop talking, whether intentionally or not.
I don't like to see people who ask for sources be treated as though they're the bad guys. I'd rather see more focus on sources than less. If you don't want to be asked for sources say "I think...", but don't be upset if you say "studies have shown..." and somebody asks what studies you're referring to.
But this isn't what happened. It wasn't "help me to find good articles on the topics like these" it was "citation needed." In fact, I don't think I have EVER seen anyone ask how to find reputable publications on a certain topic.
I also like sources, and when I'm saying things that have provable claims, I like to back them up. Still, what I DON'T go into the comments for is a long list of people going "citation needed!" I come for interesting debate and perspectives. But that's not what i'm getting—i'm getting people disagreeing with each other by putting the onus on the other party.
I don't know why you think that's obvious. In fact, I wouldn't have expected that query to yield anything relevant, so I wouldn't have even thought to try it. That's what "knows what to search for" means, it doesn't strictly mean "coming up with obscure jargon keywords".
This is HN, so I think we can expect people know how to search google.
* what keywords to search for
* how to quickly judge the reputation of a result
* how to assess the relevance of a result
Some of us don’t know any of the above.
'That's an interesting assertion but I couldn't find anything backing it up searching for "SARS immunity 20 years" or "long lasting SARS immunity", do you have a cite I could read?'
Even showing you've put in even the teensiest bit of effort makes people much more charitable about helping you.
How much effort do I spend assessing whether I believe this research paper? It's probably not what the OP had in mind since it conflicts with what they were saying. Do I make arguments from this paper (either for or against the OP's claim)? Again, it's probably not even what they were referring too.
I know just asking for a source is low effort, but it often seems like the best starting point.