Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, April six. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Are some people super immune to COVID? There are many
Speaker 1: who have had COVID multiple times, while others have avoided
Speaker 1: infection altogether. Researchers are currently studying healthcare workers whose bodies
Speaker 1: fought off infection but never created specific anybody's for it.
Speaker 1: The hope is that understanding what kept them from getting
Speaker 1: sick could lead to better vaccines. Madison Mueller, health reporter
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg News, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Madison,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me after Well, let's talk about this
Speaker 1: interesting notion regarding COVID nineteen. Are some people super immune
Speaker 1: to this? You know, you start off your story talking
Speaker 1: about how you've had COVID twice. Your sister managed to
Speaker 1: hold off not getting it until just last week. I
Speaker 1: myself have not had COVID nineteen throughout this whole pandemic.
Speaker 1: Knock on wood, Hopefully it doesn't come for me soon.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's a lot of researchers, scientists looking
Speaker 1: at people that that have fared well, have not gotten it,
Speaker 1: and seeing if there's something in their system that can
Speaker 1: help them avoid it even more, and obviously, looking towards
Speaker 1: vaccines and things like that, it could really help inform
Speaker 1: what we're doing on that side of things. So Madison,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I was really surprised to see the data that over
Speaker 1: fifty of the United States still hasn't had COVID. That
Speaker 1: was shocking to me as someone who's had it twice
Speaker 1: and you know, I have friends and family that haven't
Speaker 1: had it, but still that seems like a large number
Speaker 1: of people. But scientists in the UK started looking into
Speaker 1: this in the early stages of the pandemic, so prior
Speaker 1: to vaccines, they were looking at a cohort of health
Speaker 1: care workers in the UK, and we're looking at natural immunity.
Speaker 1: So these people, these super immune people in in some
Speaker 1: rare instances, seem to have a an immune response that's
Speaker 1: better than the average person, and their bodies are able
Speaker 1: to actually fight off the virus before it has sting
Speaker 1: positive for it, which is really interesting and you know,
Speaker 1: some of the data some of these studies can actually improve,
Speaker 1: like you said, our knowledge of of COVID in general
Speaker 1: and potentially be applied to therapeutics and vaccines down the road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty interesting what was happening with those healthcare workers.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, they were able to fight off the
Speaker 1: virus before testing positive or even developing the antibodies to it.
Speaker 1: And the thought process was as well, COVID nineteen is
Speaker 1: a coronavirus. There are other coronaviruses that we've been exposed
Speaker 1: to for our entirety of our lives, you know, things
Speaker 1: that cause it common cold and other things, and they
Speaker 1: do share some some commonality. So maybe because their body
Speaker 1: was at deept to fighting that off, they were able
Speaker 1: to fight off COVID nineteen. Yeah, that's exactly right. So
Speaker 1: T cells, we all have them, it's they're a critical
Speaker 1: part of our immune response, and in these healthcare workers
Speaker 1: exposure to prior coronaviruses, So these coronavirus seasonal coronavirus to
Speaker 1: cause cold like symptoms, and the thought processes that these
Speaker 1: healthcare workers, their prior exposure had primed their T cells
Speaker 1: to recognize this genetic part of the of COVID that
Speaker 1: is the same across coronaviruses, and to then be able
Speaker 1: to have an immune response and effective immune response without
Speaker 1: actually creating specific antibodies to fight off the virus, which
Speaker 1: is cool and really interesting. And yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: definitely definitely I think and new were finding at the time.
Speaker 1: And yeah, right, and part of it too, you know,
Speaker 1: you go on to explain the article that you know,
Speaker 1: right now, when we're getting these covid vaccines or we're
Speaker 1: getting infected naturally with it and we're fighting it off,
Speaker 1: you know, the body is targeting the spike protein, and
Speaker 1: what these healthcare workers were doing was kind of targeting
Speaker 1: more the inside machinery of the virus instead of just
Speaker 1: the spike protein. That's why they might have been more
Speaker 1: adepti fighting it off. And that's kind of what a
Speaker 1: scientists are looking for trying to understand. So when we
Speaker 1: do talk about future vaccine development or what a lot
Speaker 1: of people are really hoping for is some you know
Speaker 1: of some kind of universal coronavirus vaccine that will target
Speaker 1: multiple ones at the same time. That's really what's going
Speaker 1: to get us a leg up on these types of viruses, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that internal machinery stays the same and spike proteins,
Speaker 1: as we know, that's something that easily mutates and can
Speaker 1: cause some issues for vaccine makers and for people trying
Speaker 1: to create therapeutics to fight the virus. So that's why
Speaker 1: this study is so significant, because they found an element
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus that you know, can be recognized and
Speaker 1: because it doesn't change, and so that could be something
Speaker 1: that's really effective in the future, and it's something that
Speaker 1: some labs, some researchers are looking into now. And yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see if some people truly are
Speaker 1: super immune to this and really just are able to
Speaker 1: fight it off and don't get it, or or if
Speaker 1: maybe some people are just lucky, maybe they've they've taken
Speaker 1: all the proper precautions and have really just avoided it
Speaker 1: just well enough. But just an interesting notion to think about.
Speaker 1: Madison Mueller, health reporter at Bloomberg News, thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramires and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's
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