Speaker 1: It's Friday, October. I'm Oscar Ramiras from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. A
Speaker 1: study out of Britain this week said that people with
Speaker 1: detectable antibodies for coronavirus fell about over a period of
Speaker 1: three months over the summer, calling in a question how
Speaker 1: long immunity lasts. But health experts say this is not
Speaker 1: a cause to worry. Anybody's tend to wane over time, naturally.
Speaker 1: A Porva Mondavilli, reporter at The New York Times joins
Speaker 1: us for what to know about this anybody's study? Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Apporva, thanks for having me. What did
Speaker 1: you talk about this English study that we found out
Speaker 1: about earlier this week that showed that the number of
Speaker 1: people that had COVID nineteen antibodies declined over a period
Speaker 1: of time over the summer that they were studying this,
Speaker 1: And you know, it calls into questions about long lasting
Speaker 1: immunity from further infection. It's something that we haven't been
Speaker 1: able to really pinpoint yet. You know, how long are
Speaker 1: you immune from getting COVID nineteen after you were cover
Speaker 1: from it? But a lot of experts said these worries
Speaker 1: are overblown. This is actually something that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: When we recover. Antibodies tend to go away a little bit,
Speaker 1: and there's other mechanisms in the body that keep our
Speaker 1: hopes of not being reinfected alive. So apport but tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit more about what we know about
Speaker 1: the study and then what the experts are saying about it. First,
Speaker 1: I want to say, you know, what you said is
Speaker 1: absolutely right, that the study is not something to worry about.
Speaker 1: So let's start from there. These British researchers have been
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how many people in the population
Speaker 1: are exposed to the virus, and so they've been sending
Speaker 1: out periodically these antibody tests, because the presence of antibodies
Speaker 1: tells you if somebody has been exposed to the virus
Speaker 1: and been infected, even if they didn't have symptoms. So
Speaker 1: they did that a few months ago, and they've done
Speaker 1: it three times over the course of many months. And
Speaker 1: what they found is that from the first time they
Speaker 1: did it to this last one in September, the percent
Speaker 1: of people who tested positive for antibodies dropped from six
Speaker 1: percent to four point eight percent, and that works out
Speaker 1: to something like a drop. So that is what got
Speaker 1: reported and got everybody worried because it read like a
Speaker 1: third of people are losing their antibodies. First of all,
Speaker 1: this is a population based studies, so it wasn't the
Speaker 1: same people, so they weren't looking at some set of
Speaker 1: people three months ago and then going back to those
Speaker 1: same people and seeing that they no longer had antibodies.
Speaker 1: This is just a snapshot of people three months ago,
Speaker 1: a new snapshot now. So that aside, it's also not
Speaker 1: very surprising that over time people would lose some antibodies.
Speaker 1: And that's because when your body first encounters a virus
Speaker 1: or bacterium, it makes antibodies because you know, the infection
Speaker 1: is new and it needs all these antibodies to kind
Speaker 1: of fight the virus. But once that immediate infection is gone,
Speaker 1: that those huge levels of antibodies that are produced have
Speaker 1: to go back down, just as a matter of sort
Speaker 1: of physical space. Even in your blood, you can't possibly
Speaker 1: carry high levels of antibodies to everything the virus your
Speaker 1: body has seen. COVID is not the only thing you're
Speaker 1: going to fight for the remainder of your life. Basically,
Speaker 1: that's right, and you've probably seen, you know, dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of rhinoviruses and other seasonal cold coronaviruses, common cold viruses, measles,
Speaker 1: god knows what you've been exposed to. Write, all of
Speaker 1: those produced auto bodies, and so your blood just can't
Speaker 1: have high levels of all of those. So what happens
Speaker 1: always is that those levels come back down after the
Speaker 1: initial infection and they kind of go to some sort
Speaker 1: of steady state. And there are these memory B cells,
Speaker 1: they're called that B cells are the cells that make
Speaker 1: the anti bodies, and some small number of them are
Speaker 1: these memory cells. They basically remember what the virus looks like,
Speaker 1: and if you ever see that virus again, those memory
Speaker 1: B cells can produce out of bodies pretty quickly, within
Speaker 1: a matter of hours. So there's no need to have
Speaker 1: auto bodies actually in your blood because those B cells
Speaker 1: can make them again if you need them, and that's
Speaker 1: something that the study really didn't show. They didn't look
Speaker 1: at do these will still have immune memory. And also
Speaker 1: there are other cells called T immune cells that can
Speaker 1: also fight the virus. There are TEAM memory cells. Just
Speaker 1: like there are B memory cells. There are T cells
Speaker 1: that can actually destroy the virus. There's all kinds of
Speaker 1: basically immune mechanisms at play. We just happened to always
Speaker 1: end up talking about aunti bodies because they're the easiest
Speaker 1: things to measure, but they're far from the only things
Speaker 1: that your body has. Yeah, one of the other interesting
Speaker 1: things about this study is that you mentioned how the
Speaker 1: government was sending people these tests to administer themselves. They
Speaker 1: were fingerprick tests, they weren't blood draw tests or anything
Speaker 1: something that was done in the lab. So the possibility
Speaker 1: that it could have missed somebody with lower antibodies. They
Speaker 1: might have still had some maybe just not at such
Speaker 1: high levels, was part of it. And then they did
Speaker 1: also say that there might have been something about you know,
Speaker 1: like asymptomatic people, maybe they didn't have as high an
Speaker 1: antibody count as somebody who had the disease more severely.
Speaker 1: That's right. We know that people make all different levels
Speaker 1: of antibodies, just like they're all different kinds of people.
Speaker 1: Everybody's immune response is just a little bit different. Some
Speaker 1: people make a ton of anti bodies, and that's usually
Speaker 1: the case if they've been really severely sick. Makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: you have really severe symptoms or your body is fighting
Speaker 1: really hard. So you have a lot of anti bodies,
Speaker 1: but if you just had really mild symptoms, you may
Speaker 1: not have had that many antibodies to begin with. And
Speaker 1: so you know, when you see that decrease that I
Speaker 1: was saying earlier is basically normal, you may go below
Speaker 1: the level that this sort of crude test can pick up.
Speaker 1: You know, these tests are great for looking at population
Speaker 1: white prevalence, but in any one person they can actually
Speaker 1: miss low levels of aunt of bodies. The sensitivity is
Speaker 1: something like which means in a hundred people who have antibodies,
Speaker 1: it would miss sixteen people. So it's not crazy good
Speaker 1: let's say, right, well, it's good to know that we
Speaker 1: can kind of dispel some of this and not worry
Speaker 1: people about thinking there is no elastic immunity at all
Speaker 1: with the coronavirus. You know, as we're still learning so
Speaker 1: much about the virus as we go along, and I
Speaker 1: know we're waiting for vaccines, so there's still a lot
Speaker 1: yet to know about this virus. So but at least
Speaker 1: in the meantime, not nothing to worry about as we
Speaker 1: go through this. We are still learning a lot about
Speaker 1: this virus. But I think it's always important to remember
Speaker 1: that it's a virus. We know about viruses generally, and
Speaker 1: there's really nothing about this virus that is biologically that
Speaker 1: different than other viruses. You know, it's more severe, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't behave basically that all that differently than a
Speaker 1: lot of other respiratory viruses. So we know kind of
Speaker 1: what happens. We don't know how long the immunity lasts,
Speaker 1: but guessing from other coronaviruses, probably good chances at least
Speaker 1: a year. So I don't think we should panic quite yet.
Speaker 1: A porva. Manda Velli, reporter at the New York Times,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm lost for Ramirez and this has been reopening America.
Speaker 1: Don't forget different today's big news stories. You can check
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