I am not an expert in immunology but here goes.Anyone understand the science in this paper enough to comment.
Someone says it infers that Covid will become endemic as in effect just a version of a cold and not much more dangerous.
Looks improbable but not impossible.
I know the T cell discussion suggests there is a path toward relative immunity here but basically Covid becomes a bad cold?
Do they have any real evidence here?
COVID-19 and the Path to Immunity
This Viewpoint reviews what is known about acute and long-term B-cell, antibody, and T-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and explains how each are implicated in vaccine candidates likely to be effective and durably protective again COVID-19.t.co
Basically the paper is summarising what is known about the adaptive immune response to SARS CoV2 so far and speculating what this implies for the future of the disease in man as a result of this knowledge the main thrust of the speculation is about the implications for vaccine development rather than the overall future clinical course.
Without scanning all the references etc I would imagine if it is published in JAMA the reporting of what is known so far is very accurate.
Speculation about the implications of this knowledge is necessarily uncertain, I don't think they are saying it will become a bad cold but they are saying that this is real possibility based on what we know. The basic problem is that we have not seen many other emerging viruses like this to compare so they are essentially using logic but in complex systems much is inevitably unknown.
They clearly think vaccination is the most likely way forward and are relatively optimistic about the future of a vaccine because it appears that the immune response is likely to both decrease the severity of any illness following infecion and possibly prevent it all together in many people. It also appears unlikely that the immune response generated by vaccination is likely to enhance the disease, an early concern.
All this understanding is based on less than 10 months of observation and extrapolation of this into the future course of the disease is necessarily uncertain.
