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Medicine United States

Nevada Man Becomes First In the US To Catch COVID-19 Twice (nypost.com) 236

A Nevada resident is thought to be the first person in the United States to be infected twice by the coronavirus, according to findings released this week. The New York Post reports: The 25-year-old man, of Reno, experienced a sore throat, cough, headache, nausea and diarrhea -- and first tested positive for the COVID-19 on April 18, according to a study published to the website SSRN Thursday, which has yet to be peer-reviewed. His symptoms had resolved by April 27, and he tested negative for the virus twice in May, the study says. Then on May 31, he sought treatment again for the same symptoms, in addition to a fever and dizziness, according to the study. The patient was hospitalized five days later as his symptoms worsened to include muscle aches, a cough and shortness of breath. He then tested positive for the coronavirus a second time. Another test revealed he had antibodies against the infection. A Hong Kong man was the first patient ever confirmed to be reinfected with the coronavirus. Two European cases of COVID-19 reinfection were reported one day later.
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Nevada Man Becomes First In the US To Catch COVID-19 Twice

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  • by Jamu ( 852752 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @06:12AM (#60452206)
    There are two significant strains of Covid-19: The original Chinese "D" and the newer, more infectious, European "G" strain. Someone catching Covid twice isn't reason to think immunity to Covid, at least for a specific strain, doesn't persist.
    • There are two significant strains of Covid-19: The original Chinese "D" and the newer, more infectious, European "G" strain. Someone catching Covid twice isn't reason to think immunity to Covid, at least for a specific strain, doesn't persist.

      Perhaps we can subscribe to this theory...right up until people start catching COVID a third and fourth time, which will likely happen.

      Perhaps we should stop calling them "antibodies" now. Or perhaps we should stop assuming we'll find a vaccine, since it appears to be about as "easy" to play catch-up with COVID-19 mutations as the common cold.

    • People can catch ordinary flu many times during their life. They can catch colds many times. ...

      Why would COVID be any different?

      • Re:Two Strains (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @07:33AM (#60452354)

        The point here is that he caught Covid-19 twice within around 7 weeks, the immunity conferred by recovering the first time around should have lasted at least twice as long as that.

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Because flu viruses (we know of what, 200-ish of them?) is endemic in the wild.

        Novel coronavirus is a zoonotic novel virus that doesn't have a natural reservoir of its human variant. It only exists as long as there are human carriers for it. That makes it completely different in nature from "ordinary flu" or what is correctly called common cold family of human flu viruses.

        • Novel coronavirus is a zoonotic novel virus that doesn't have a natural reservoir of its human variant. It only exists as long as there are human carriers for it.

          You're a complete fucking moron who continues to spew bullshit out his ass on every subject that sounds sciencey, but without reading anything at all from reliable sources. It is a pure synthesis of credulously repetition and original fantasy.

          May your dreams be haunted by the screams of a million minks!

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            When you hit a nerve, you get a reaction. And boy does it look like I hit a nerve.

            Now, I wonder why you have such an emotional reaction to a fairly simple and self-evident statement as to wish a horrible fate on me personally.

        • what is correctly called common cold family of human flu viruses.

          One of these things is not like the other - Sesame Street

      • People can catch ordinary flu many times during their life. They can catch colds many times. ...

        Why would COVID be any different?

        Actually people *rarely* catch the ordinary flu more than a couple of times, and you realise the "ordinary flu" is actually a season group of many different strains of influenza viruses right? Of course you don't.

        Here's a hint: When the immunisation program needs to change the formula every 6 months to suit the strains going around, you're not catching the same virus.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      Oh bull. Trump-like BS detected.

      From the very beginning it was likely that there would be no lasting immunity to this COVID based disease. The 4 other COVID diseases in humans (common cold) do not confer immunity. If they did, we'd only catch a cold 4 times in our life.

      This particular COVID virus is something to avoid at all costs. Not only can it be deadly, but it can also make you very sick with lingering symptoms that look like they are going to be permanent. Many patients are reporting mental defici

      • COVID based disease

        Before the end of the sentence you managed to tell everyone you have no clue what you're talking about. Thanks for saving me the effort of reading the rest of your post.

    • by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @07:27AM (#60452334) Homepage

      There are two significant strains of Covid-19: The original Chinese "D" and the newer, more infectious, European "G" strain.

      Nope. Sorry no.
      That's not how viruses work. They are not what you think: they are not two distinct subspecie of the virus with radically different behaviours/properties.

      This is a RNA-based virus, it mutates slowly over time (at a 1:4 slower pace when compared to Influenza, for various biochem reasons).
      Over time it drifts and some mutations appear in some individual viruses which are spread to the next, etc.
      You can build a phylogenetic tree out of those mutations to get an idea of how the virus circulated. BUT they are all SARS-CoV-2, just slightly differing in the mutaiton they have accumulated over the lifetime of the pandemic.

      There's a mutation which happened rather early in the pandemic (D614G). Over time one of the two was seen more in Europe than the other. Some people are trying to speculate if there's a reason for that. The scientific jury is still out if this did indeed have any impact of infectivity of the virus as the mutation happens to be on the surface protein that virus uses to attach to target cells. It might be that's the case, or it might be that the later variants just happens to be the one that arrived in Europe, so of course it's a mutation that will be carried around there, and then there's good documentation that a lot of the virus carried into the US were from Europe. So it might be just some random effect of which copy of the virus hapened to be on which plane.
      At this point in time you shouldn't read too much into it.

      Here's a very nice twitter thread by a PhD Emma Hodcroft [twitter.com] (whom [ncs-tf.ch] we are collaborating [github.io] with) another by her PI Prof. Richard Neher [twitter.com].

      News article [theatlantic.com] about it.
      scientific paper [doi.org] about it.

      Also another argument: we are sitll in a very new pandemic with a virus that didn't even exist 1 year ago. It hadn't had time to evolve much yet and hasn't been under any peculiar evolutive pressure (as opposed to HIV which has been aroudn for serveral decades and where mutant which happen to resist to the current drug taken by the patient have a better chance of surviving than the others).
      There's low chance for us to already observe dramatic shift in the virus population. Yet.

      Someone catching Covid twice isn't reason to think immunity to Covid, at least for a specific strain, doesn't persist.

      Again nope.
      The only difference is a single amino acid in the specific sub part of one of the surface protein that is used to attach the virus to its target.
      This might or might not have some influence in the chance of the virus to successfully enter its target. Or might be just random chance.

      But every other amino acid on any other protein visible on the surface of the virus is virtually going to be the same.
      Antibodies that bind M or E porteins (membrane, envelope) or any other part of the Spike beside this specific pocket of the Spike, are all going to bind all the same D or G variants.
      At this point in time of the pandemic, there's no such thing as a strain-speific antibody (yet). Of course if the US doesn't manage to get hold of the virus, by next ~4 years we could see strains that as so different from the current one that antibodies don't work any more, they same way that the influenza managed to come up with such new versions roughly every year (remember the 1:4 mutation rate mentionned above). But that will be roughly by 2024, and we're still in 2020 now.

      What happens is

      • by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @07:39AM (#60452368)

        I'm not sure if this should be modded up because it is a sensible, non-political, informed piece or modded down because such writings do not belong on this site any more.

      • by Knuckles ( 8964 )

        Thank you

      • by dknj ( 441802 )

        Thank you for all of your time and effort you have put into this

      • Thank you for this, was very informative.
      • fantastic post. thanks.
    • Re:Two Strains (Score:4, Interesting)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday August 29, 2020 @07:39AM (#60452366)

      From what I've read so far is the G and D strains are not sufficiently different from each other to make re-infection a risk. This is also why all the efforts for immunisation are also only focusing on a single strain. What has been determined as the only differentiation so far is that the G strain may be more infectious, but that is under debate.

      It stands to reason that with both strains out there we'd see a far higher number of re-infections by now than 4 across the planet if this were a case.

      • by Jamu ( 852752 )
        From what I understand the D614G strain has a different protein spike on its coat, which I've assumed means that antibodies to the "D" strain wouldn't attack it. But if they do that's good news, although that wouldn't explain why someone can be reinfected after developing antibodies.
    • Uuum, AFAIK the European strain is also much less harmful. (Makes sense. A parasite that kills its host and reproduces badly is not a successful parasite. Look at herpes. Half of humanity has it. Most don't even know. Or mitochondria, which technically are or have been a foreign organism too.)

    • At this point, there are many strains. The evidence of reinfection would be a lot more convincing if full genome sequencing was done on the samples from both the first infection and the second. If the virus in both cases is identical or virtually identical, the odds are strong that this was a relapse (perhaps, withdrawing effective treatment too early) rather than a reinfection.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Also it's worth noting that these reinfections are probably rare events.

      There have been over six million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, of which 3.4 million are recovered. That is a large base to look for rare events in.

      Thus far we have four total apparent cases of reinfection. That is undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg, but if that iceberg were large relative to the entire ice sheet we'd certainly know it by now.

      If these reinfection cases stand up to scrutiny, and they turn out to be because of viru

    • Wait, there's seven strains of COVID-19!?

  • just to watch him die of Corona.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's difficult to PROVE that someone has been re-infected. It requires analysis of complete virus sequences. Testing does not routinely generate these sequence data, so relatively little systematic effort has gone into looking for reinfection. As a result, we know it CAN occur, but still do not know how common or uncommon reinfection occurs. An important point of this study is not that reinfection is prevalent, but that it is a thing and we should probably start measuring its frequency.
    • This is the curse of the internet, where perspective is all but forgotten.
  • of infectious disease: Never catch something they have to name after you.
  • Isn't that lovely? The covid-go-round
  • The New York Times telling you /today/ : https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]

    "Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldnâ(TM)t Be."

    Duh.

    NYT saying that maybe 90% of the positive tests aren't sick people.

    Live virus at no more than 9 days (1.3 weeks). PCR tests detecting fragments to 12 weeks. 1.3/12=0.11%. So 89% of positive tests are measuring people without live virus.

    • it's because you had it, got sick, recovered and by the time they got around to testing you thanks to severe testing shortages you were over it and only dead virus was in your system.

      This is an indictment of our entire response to the disease. If this is happening it's because we fucked up royally.

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