Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day forty nine
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story,
Speaker 1: immunity has come up a lot recently as governments consider
Speaker 1: whether and how to reopen. Some have floated immunity passports
Speaker 1: that would allow people who have successfully thought off the
Speaker 1: virus to go back into society. Trouble is that assumes
Speaker 1: an understanding of coronavirus. We still don't have. Whether having
Speaker 1: the virus makes you immune to future infections, and if so,
Speaker 1: for how long is still unclear. So who's really immune?
Speaker 1: But first, here's what happened today. The US recession has
Speaker 1: officially begun. After eleven years of record growth. The economy
Speaker 1: shrank at a four point eight percent annualized rate in
Speaker 1: the first quarter, with a coronavirus forcing businesses to close
Speaker 1: and consumers to stay home around the country. It's likely
Speaker 1: to be the deepest recession in at least eighty years.
Speaker 1: That's right, eighty years. The current quarter is expected to
Speaker 1: be far worse. Bloomberg Economics projects an annualized contraction of
Speaker 1: a staggering thirty seven percent. The Trump administration has launched
Speaker 1: a project to fast track a coronavirus vaccine. The goal
Speaker 1: is to make enough doses for most Americans by the
Speaker 1: end of the year. The program, called Operation Warp Speed,
Speaker 1: will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and the military.
Speaker 1: As part of the arrangement, taxpayers will shoulder much of
Speaker 1: the financial risk that vaccine candidates may fail instead of
Speaker 1: drug companies. There was good news from the pharmaceutical industry
Speaker 1: today which brought hope that the first effective treatment for
Speaker 1: coronavirus could be around the corner. Gilead Sciences said that remdesvie,
Speaker 1: their experimental drug to treat the virus, worked better than
Speaker 1: standard care in a clinical trial. The coronavirus outbreak is
Speaker 1: at different stages around the world. In Europe, some countries
Speaker 1: are seeing fit to loosen restrictions on movement, others fear
Speaker 1: a second wave. France and Spain took cautious steps towards reopening,
Speaker 1: but in Germany new cases rose for the first time
Speaker 1: in three days as the government weighed removing more curbs.
Speaker 1: New York reported a fourth day of declining deaths, though
Speaker 1: new hospitalizations rose slightly. In other regions, the virus is
Speaker 1: taking an even more serious toll. Brazil is rising in
Speaker 1: the ranking of most hit places by the coronavirus. It
Speaker 1: is now the country with the third largest number of
Speaker 1: deaths reported over the past twenty four hours, after the
Speaker 1: US and the UK, and now our main story. As
Speaker 1: states grapple with the question of when it will be
Speaker 1: safe to reopen businesses and relax social distancing, there's increasing
Speaker 1: urgency to better understand who's immune to COVID nineteen. Does
Speaker 1: having the virus and recovering from it mean you can't
Speaker 1: get it again, or at least that you can't be
Speaker 1: reinfected for some time. The problem is no one yet
Speaker 1: has good answers to these questions. Here's Bloomberg reporter Kristin V.
Speaker 1: Brown with more on the science of coronavirus immunity. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid and I got the chicken pox,
Speaker 1: one of the things I remember my mom telling me
Speaker 1: is that I couldn't get the virus that caused the
Speaker 1: chicken pox again. She told me that I was immune. This,
Speaker 1: I think is common wisdom when it comes to viruses.
Speaker 1: That is, after all, how vaccines work. You're exposed to
Speaker 1: a virus like polio or the measles, your immune system
Speaker 1: identifies that virus and figures out how to produce antibodies
Speaker 1: that fight it off. Next time you run into that
Speaker 1: same virus, your immune system is ready for battle. The
Speaker 1: thing is, that's not always how it works. Immunity is
Speaker 1: actually a spectrum. There are viruses like the measles that
Speaker 1: you can for never worry about again. On the other
Speaker 1: end of that spectrum, there's HIV, in which the antibodies
Speaker 1: you developed just act as a sort of marker rather
Speaker 1: than actually protecting you from anything. Stars cove to. The
Speaker 1: virus that causes COVID nineteen is still pretty much a mystery.
Speaker 1: We just don't know that much about how the body's
Speaker 1: immune system responds to it. Recently, Anthony Fauci, the leading
Speaker 1: infectious disease expert in the country, was on Good Morning
Speaker 1: America talking about exactly this. We do not know exactly
Speaker 1: what an anybody tie to means. I mean, there's an assumption,
Speaker 1: a reasonable assumption, that when you have an anybody that
Speaker 1: you will protect it against reinfection. But that has not
Speaker 1: been proven for this particular virus. It's true for other viruses.
Speaker 1: I think it's a reasonable assumption. So you wouldn't say
Speaker 1: you know that's an absurd idea. It isn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: it happens with other viruses, But we don't know how
Speaker 1: long that pt action, if it exists last is it
Speaker 1: one month, three months, six months, a year? So that's
Speaker 1: a lot to unpack Foult. She was talking about a
Speaker 1: few different things. There are two key questions that scientists
Speaker 1: are trying to answer when it comes to antibodies and
Speaker 1: the new coronavirus. How long did antibodies two stars covie
Speaker 1: to remain in the body and for how long do
Speaker 1: they actually prevent you from catching it again if at all. Ideally,
Speaker 1: what you want is lifelong immunity, something you can give
Speaker 1: people a vaccine for that lasts forever. But early evidence
Speaker 1: suggests that stars CoV two is going to be a
Speaker 1: bit more complicated than that. The new coronavirus is a
Speaker 1: member of the same group of viruses as Stars and merrs,
Speaker 1: as well as the seasonal coronaviruses that cause the common cold.
Speaker 1: They're named coronavirus is has The proteins that the virus
Speaker 1: has used to attach to cells in a host body
Speaker 1: are kind of spiky, like a crown. Here's Harvard scientist
Speaker 1: David wall. To explain this a little bit, coronavirus is
Speaker 1: similar to the one that we're dealing with now COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: such as the first Stars epidemic and the Mirrors infections
Speaker 1: that occurred primarily in the Middle East a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Those antibody responses were transient. That is, individuals who were
Speaker 1: infected lost their immunity after somewhere between two months and
Speaker 1: eighteen months, so that most individuals who were affected are
Speaker 1: no longer protected against those viruses. Stars and MERS are.
Speaker 1: The virus is most closely related to STARS Kobe two,
Speaker 1: and a few studies have shown that after a few years,
Speaker 1: antibodies to the virus disappear, meaning there's potential to get reinfected.
Speaker 1: Studies of both of those viruses also haven't actually shown
Speaker 1: the antibodies prevent reinfection. To further complicate things, not only
Speaker 1: are antibodies potentially time limited, but not all antibodies are
Speaker 1: actually capable of preventing infection in the first place. Some
Speaker 1: can recognize the virus but not actually latch onto it
Speaker 1: in order to fight it off. The antibodies you want
Speaker 1: are called neutralizing antibodies. Antibodies that cannot just recognize the
Speaker 1: virus but kill it. There's also the chance that the
Speaker 1: virus could mutate enough the antibodies you have no longer
Speaker 1: protect against it. One study from the nineties showed that
Speaker 1: was possible with a seasonal coronavirus. The present thinking is
Speaker 1: that people who have been exposed develop some immunity to
Speaker 1: the virus, but we do not know how long that
Speaker 1: persists and whether that is even going to be protective
Speaker 1: over a long period of time. The reason all of
Speaker 1: this matters is that understanding whether people are immune to
Speaker 1: the virus will help make decisions about how and when
Speaker 1: to lift restrictions like shelter and place. Test that measure
Speaker 1: antibodies to the virus have been sold as a major
Speaker 1: part of efforts to restart the economy and get people
Speaker 1: back to work. New York State has approved an antibody test.
Speaker 1: Fauci himself at one point even suggested that certificates of
Speaker 1: immunity might be required for returning workers. But that only
Speaker 1: works if we know the antibodies actually fend off the virus.
Speaker 1: Here's Fauci again. So the assumption that with the tests
Speaker 1: that are out there, if you haven't anybody positivity, you're
Speaker 1: good to go. Unless that test has been validated and
Speaker 1: you can show there's a correlation between anybody and protection,
Speaker 1: it is an assumption to say that this is something
Speaker 1: that we can work with. We still have a way
Speaker 1: to go with them. The good news there is some
Speaker 1: early evidence that antibodies means some sort of protection against
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. For example, inexperimental treatments where critical patients are
Speaker 1: given blood plasma transfusions from people who have recovered from
Speaker 1: the illness. It seems to make a difference. But there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of work that needs to be done
Speaker 1: before we can answer these questions and develop vaccines and
Speaker 1: reopen the economy. That was Kristin V. Brown and that's
Speaker 1: our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one
Speaker 1: and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave
Speaker 1: us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Speaker 1: It's the best way to help more listen nurds find
Speaker 1: our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is hosted by
Speaker 1: me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by me Tophor Foreheads,
Speaker 1: Jordan Gaspoure and Magnus Henriksen. Today's main story was reported
Speaker 1: by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo sidron Our.
Speaker 1: Editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.