Originally Posted by
wco81
There must be some number of recovered who have immunity?
It's a small percentage of those infected but it has to grow and eventually grow faster than new infections eventually.
Or else it's really grim.
Yes, based on what we know now, people who have recovered have immunity. And it may not be a small percentage since many infections were never identified. There is no evidence of anyone being infected twice. If seasonal variants emerge down the road, then things might be different but a vaccine can be tailored to that over the long run. We will get that data over time once this peak surge gets hammered down and resources can shift to researching immunity. Immunoglobulins from recovered patients are now being used in treatment trials.
On the Diamond princess cruise ship which was a concentrated cesspool of viral load, everyone was tested, and where people with interior rooms were only allowed out for 1 hour a day, there were:
3,711 passengers
3,077 never tested positive (still surprising for something this contagious)
Half of the 638 who tested positive never had symptoms. The other half were symptomatic with a 1.2% case fatality rate in a population skewed toward older but with reasonable medical resources once they were able to disembark.
I would maintain that many of the 3,711 were exposed and may have made a little immunity without symptoms despite not testing positive. The nasal swab can have some false negatives if the test is not done deeply enough into the nasopharyngeal cavity.
For the short run, we should all do many things to be a grey person on that infographic
People are selfish. When you show them that infographic, tell them that everyone in gray DID NOT GET SICK and most people in pink did.
Choose gray, and choose your health. Don't be a statistic.