Scientists are beginning to come up with answers to the question of how long antibodies from an infection can protect you — and what they'll protect you from.
."In every single immune response, there is a sharp rise in antibodies, a period of sharp decline," and then it starts to stabilize at a lower level.
To estimate how often reinfections will occur with SARS-CoV-2, Townsend and his team have been studying four other coronaviruses. They are known as"seasonal coronaviruses" and cause about 30% of colds each year. But your specific risk for reinfection depends heavily on your personal situation, such as whether you're exposed to lots of people at work or live with children who go to school."So that time frame for reinfection each year or so assumes that we all just relax everything about our protections and just sort of let it rip, basically," Townsend says.
No one knows for sure. But this strategy may be a deliberate one by the immune system, immunologist Jonathan YewdellIn essence, your immune system is allocating resources. And its primary goal is to keep you alive. So the immune system has decided that, with coronaviruses, it's not worth stopping the infection as long as it can stop serious, life-threatening illness.
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