Close contacts are able to gain T-cell immunity against SARS-CoV-2 despite lacking a detectable infection; imagine, just from exposure to an infected person, and shows the potency of cellular immunity

by Paul Alexander

This shows the beauty and magnificence of our immune system...the elegance, the versatility and the power of it that it can protect us just by being exposed...need not be infected...FASCINATING

I found this piece of research to be fascinating and so wanted to highlight it.

Wang et al. highlighted for us that T-cell immunity is critical for recovery from COVID-19 and provides heightened immunity from re-infection. They examined the proliferation and activation capability of the SARS-CoV-2 memory T cell pools of a large cohort of recovered COVID-19 patients, close contacts, and unexposed healthy individuals. They underscored that when the CDC and NIH and Fauci and Walensky and television medical experts in US and Canada and UK etc. were telling us (summer 2020 and fall 2020 and winter 2021 that our antibodies in the blood was waning after recovery from infection so your immunity (natural immunity) is waning and does not last, they knew that this was a lie. They knew that antibodies in the circulation are one aspect of immunity and it is your cellular immunity (memory B and T cells) that is a key aspect and is long-lived and even more important than antibodies and that memory B cells churn out new antibodies (long lived bone marrow plasma cells) with re-exposure. They were openly lying to scare you to vaccinate.

This is why children who reportedly have a defect in B cell immunity (so cannot make antibodies effectively so to speak) still can confront and recover from measles due to the cellular immunity component whereas those with intact B cells but deficient cellular immunity can get infected and even die from measles. It supports a much more potent role for the cellular compartment and a lesser role, albeit important one, for antibodies. In fact, leads someone like me, who is not an immunologist, to speculate that one may not need the antibody response and that a stronger cellular immunity (T cell response) can handle the situation effectively. I am doing deeper study to learn as much as I can.

They performed an elegant experiment to understand the SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell immunity in virus-exposed individuals and report on virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell memory (cellular immunity/natural immunity) in recovered COVID-19 patients and close contacts. They also show that the size and quality of the memory T-cell pool of COVID-19 patients are larger and better than those of close contacts. They show that close contacts are able to gain T-cell immunity against SARS-CoV-2 “despite lacking a detectable infection…close contacts, who are SARS-CoV-2-exposed, are often both NAT negative and antibody negative, indicating that SARS-CoV-2 failed to establish a successful infection within these individuals, presumably due to their exposure to limited numbers of viral particles or a short time of exposure. However, our analysis of the samples from 69 of these close contacts showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 specific memory T-cell immunity.” They report that the discovery of the presence of significant levels of SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T-cell immunity in a group of individuals (close contacts) who were exposed to but not infected by the virus “highlights some unique characteristics in the dynamic interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and its human host.”

Similarly, Zhao et al. in the MERS epidemic reported that high-risk persons such as camel workers who had NAT negative and antibody negative tests did reveal appreciable levels of MERS-CoV memory T cells, showing the potency of exposure in driving the immune response. Also fascinating and vital for our present landscape, is that asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID-19 patients contain similar levels of SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell memory. The results showed that the COVID-19 patients and close contacts “developed SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell immune memory. In addition, comparable levels of SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells were detected in the samples of asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID-19 patients.”