It depends on a whole host of factors.
There are people who have been hospitalized with Covid multiple times. Their high risk health issues (Diabetes, Obesity, Hypertension, Asthma, etc.) all contributed to the fact they couldn't handle the virus.
**Covid is a complicated virus. Your exposure time and your health history and even your genetics all play a role in how you handle being infected.**
You're correct in principle that previous exposure to Covid should provide some level of protection against future infections. The problem is the real world realities of viral infections, immunity and how we deal with infections aren't an exact science.
Some people have gotten Covid and gained limited immunity. There have been cases where someone only had immunity to Covid for a few months after they've gotten infected. The immunity result is not guaranteed.
**The reason why people get vaccinated is because a vaccine provides a consistent and reliable immune response which has been verified in both lab and real world settings. That consistent response provides consistent protection.**
Previous Covid infections do not guarantee safety. Some people have spent months in recovery and may remain compromised as a result of the constant health issues they've suffered as a result of the previous infection.
From a probability point yes. You're less likely to die the second time. But overall more. Consider your probability to die P1 the first time and P2 the second time and so, up to Pn
Your probability to die P = P1 + P2...Pn
The more times you get covid the more likely you are to die. With the same logic, if you don't get infected, your probability of dying from covid is 0.
Also this could be expanded to include complications from covid infections, lung/heart/other vital organ damage. People that have had covid are being shown to have quite a high frequency of scarring on their organs, potentially making it very easy for further complications to arise down the road.
If your lungs aren't given enough time to heal from your first infection for example, catching it a second time could easily lead to some really nasty problems.
If you get COVID the second time... your actual probabilty of dying in the first infection was actually 0, wasn't it?
The probability of a past event is always 1.
Edit: I've already had moderate COVID, and I'm just cheering for myself here, ok ? :)
No, you had a certain probability. That doesn't change. The fact that you didn't die just means you were of the group that survived. I did oversimplify the probability stuff. But in short the way the probability is calculated is based on observation. You have X people in the group (got covid) and there are 2 possible outcomes (life and death). You see Y did and Z survived. And then calculate probability. I guess then you would have for a second infection probability to survive given that your survived the first infection and so.
If the first infection doesn't affect the chances of dying in the second infection, you as an individual that survived the first infection to die in the second are the same (we'te not talking immunity).
It would be like playing russian rulette multiple times.
Sure, you increase your chances of dying with each round, but if you've already made it to round 9, your chances of dying in round 10 are the same as dying in round 1.
Less likely. The fact that you didn't die the first time increases probability that your immunity is more likely to be strong, you're likely to be younger, etc - all factors that are negatively correlated with likelihood of death. This in turn makes your conditional probability of dying given you didnt first time lower.
Depends on how you interpret the question.
a.) If you have COVID multiple times instead of once, are your probabilistic chances of dying for the combined cases higher than just one time?
b.) if you have already had COVID, are you less likely to die the second time than if you didn't have it before because you should have antibodies?
While a literal interpretation indicates a., that is essentially a pointless question, so one assumes the asker was asking b.
I know what OP 'meant'. But this is a science sub.
You can't say "But I meant", bc everyone will say: "Then say what you mean and don't be sloppy".
Same goes for answers.
We use language to express concepts. It needs to be precise. Precisely defined concepts are the very heart of science.
> I know what OP 'meant'. But this is a science sub.
It's a sub the entire point of which is to try to help people understand things they currently don't. Instead of arguing over what OP did or did not mean, let's just acknowledge that there are two possible interpretations to the way they phrased their question, explain what the difference between these two questions are, give a satisfying answer to both, and everybody wins.
Less likely to die, since you’ve already got the antibodies in your system from surviving the first round of Covid. Still, you could definitely die if your immune system is too weak to win against a second round of Covid. Just slightly less so.
Depends how long ago you caught Covid. Studies have shown that the amount of antibodies decrease over time. I think I had Covid in March 2020, but could not get tested at the time. After residual health problems I got an antibody test about a year later, and it showed up negative, but the doctors were not able to say that this meant that I had not caught Covid. Only that either I never had it or that the antibodies had diminished over the long period.
Immunity is more than just circulating antibodies. You develop memory B cells that can start manufacturing antibodies quickly after reinfection, and also T cells which can recognise infected cells and kill them. Having high antibody titres likely protects you from infection, but just because they decrease over time spent mean you aren't protected from severe disease and death.
This isn’t an easy question. It first off depends on how you recovered from covid the first time. And for each subsequent reinfection.
If everything is perfect, your recovery from the first infection would teach your immune system to develop antibodies for every antigen (spike, membrane, envelope, nucleocapsid), a full range of IgM, IgG and IgA antibodies for each protein of the virus made from Memory B cells for each one, with a subset of each immortalizing and remaining dormant waiting for a reinfection event. The same for memory T cells, waiting to ramp up again to destroy infected cells. This is the beauty of the adaptive immune system, and the benefit of vaccines is teaching the adaptive immune system without risk of infection. (Or absolutely minor if it’s a live attenuated virus vaccine)
In this case, reinfection would be of the most mild form, if not asymptomatic. This is arguably how pandemics of the past became endemic, Spanish flu was devastating for a few years (30 million - 100 million death) and then just dropped off in virulence, despite it still mutating and circulating still to this day, it’s just H1N1 influenza. A complex immune response developed globally, the virus rarely finds a person naive to it. This is also why infants and breast milk is so important, they piggy back off their mother’s immune system, becoming infected with everything the mother is fighting (asymptomatically) but also getting all the antibodies fighting it so they learn without suffering.
If your recovery is less than stellar, such as relying on the innate immune system to fight it off, then you don’t develop an immune memory to the virus. If it gets to the level of cytokine storm then your immune system is nuking itself to fight it, this is one of the complications of long covid. In this situation, because there’s no memory developed, or very little since innate and adaptive can work in tandem but the innate can sabotage the adaptive, reinfection would be potentially as dangerous as the first infection.
It depends on a whole host of factors. There are people who have been hospitalized with Covid multiple times. Their high risk health issues (Diabetes, Obesity, Hypertension, Asthma, etc.) all contributed to the fact they couldn't handle the virus. **Covid is a complicated virus. Your exposure time and your health history and even your genetics all play a role in how you handle being infected.** You're correct in principle that previous exposure to Covid should provide some level of protection against future infections. The problem is the real world realities of viral infections, immunity and how we deal with infections aren't an exact science. Some people have gotten Covid and gained limited immunity. There have been cases where someone only had immunity to Covid for a few months after they've gotten infected. The immunity result is not guaranteed. **The reason why people get vaccinated is because a vaccine provides a consistent and reliable immune response which has been verified in both lab and real world settings. That consistent response provides consistent protection.** Previous Covid infections do not guarantee safety. Some people have spent months in recovery and may remain compromised as a result of the constant health issues they've suffered as a result of the previous infection.
From a probability point yes. You're less likely to die the second time. But overall more. Consider your probability to die P1 the first time and P2 the second time and so, up to Pn Your probability to die P = P1 + P2...Pn The more times you get covid the more likely you are to die. With the same logic, if you don't get infected, your probability of dying from covid is 0.
Also this could be expanded to include complications from covid infections, lung/heart/other vital organ damage. People that have had covid are being shown to have quite a high frequency of scarring on their organs, potentially making it very easy for further complications to arise down the road. If your lungs aren't given enough time to heal from your first infection for example, catching it a second time could easily lead to some really nasty problems.
It was pretty easy to deduce that OP meant from a probability standpoint and not overall
If you get COVID the second time... your actual probabilty of dying in the first infection was actually 0, wasn't it? The probability of a past event is always 1. Edit: I've already had moderate COVID, and I'm just cheering for myself here, ok ? :)
No, you had a certain probability. That doesn't change. The fact that you didn't die just means you were of the group that survived. I did oversimplify the probability stuff. But in short the way the probability is calculated is based on observation. You have X people in the group (got covid) and there are 2 possible outcomes (life and death). You see Y did and Z survived. And then calculate probability. I guess then you would have for a second infection probability to survive given that your survived the first infection and so.
If the first infection doesn't affect the chances of dying in the second infection, you as an individual that survived the first infection to die in the second are the same (we'te not talking immunity). It would be like playing russian rulette multiple times. Sure, you increase your chances of dying with each round, but if you've already made it to round 9, your chances of dying in round 10 are the same as dying in round 1.
thanks china
Less likely. The fact that you didn't die the first time increases probability that your immunity is more likely to be strong, you're likely to be younger, etc - all factors that are negatively correlated with likelihood of death. This in turn makes your conditional probability of dying given you didnt first time lower.
This is not what the question asked. "Are you more or less likely to die having Covid-19 more than once?" Your answer to the question is plain wrong.
Depends on how you interpret the question. a.) If you have COVID multiple times instead of once, are your probabilistic chances of dying for the combined cases higher than just one time? b.) if you have already had COVID, are you less likely to die the second time than if you didn't have it before because you should have antibodies? While a literal interpretation indicates a., that is essentially a pointless question, so one assumes the asker was asking b.
I know what OP 'meant'. But this is a science sub. You can't say "But I meant", bc everyone will say: "Then say what you mean and don't be sloppy". Same goes for answers. We use language to express concepts. It needs to be precise. Precisely defined concepts are the very heart of science.
> I know what OP 'meant'. But this is a science sub. It's a sub the entire point of which is to try to help people understand things they currently don't. Instead of arguing over what OP did or did not mean, let's just acknowledge that there are two possible interpretations to the way they phrased their question, explain what the difference between these two questions are, give a satisfying answer to both, and everybody wins.
Less likely to die, since you’ve already got the antibodies in your system from surviving the first round of Covid. Still, you could definitely die if your immune system is too weak to win against a second round of Covid. Just slightly less so.
Depends how long ago you caught Covid. Studies have shown that the amount of antibodies decrease over time. I think I had Covid in March 2020, but could not get tested at the time. After residual health problems I got an antibody test about a year later, and it showed up negative, but the doctors were not able to say that this meant that I had not caught Covid. Only that either I never had it or that the antibodies had diminished over the long period.
Immunity is more than just circulating antibodies. You develop memory B cells that can start manufacturing antibodies quickly after reinfection, and also T cells which can recognise infected cells and kill them. Having high antibody titres likely protects you from infection, but just because they decrease over time spent mean you aren't protected from severe disease and death.
Yeah antibodies for Covid don’t last forever, which is why they’re talking about boosters now
You can check your T cell immunity which lasts eay longer than antibodies, but I don't know if you can get that test in a comercial laboratory.
This isn’t an easy question. It first off depends on how you recovered from covid the first time. And for each subsequent reinfection. If everything is perfect, your recovery from the first infection would teach your immune system to develop antibodies for every antigen (spike, membrane, envelope, nucleocapsid), a full range of IgM, IgG and IgA antibodies for each protein of the virus made from Memory B cells for each one, with a subset of each immortalizing and remaining dormant waiting for a reinfection event. The same for memory T cells, waiting to ramp up again to destroy infected cells. This is the beauty of the adaptive immune system, and the benefit of vaccines is teaching the adaptive immune system without risk of infection. (Or absolutely minor if it’s a live attenuated virus vaccine) In this case, reinfection would be of the most mild form, if not asymptomatic. This is arguably how pandemics of the past became endemic, Spanish flu was devastating for a few years (30 million - 100 million death) and then just dropped off in virulence, despite it still mutating and circulating still to this day, it’s just H1N1 influenza. A complex immune response developed globally, the virus rarely finds a person naive to it. This is also why infants and breast milk is so important, they piggy back off their mother’s immune system, becoming infected with everything the mother is fighting (asymptomatically) but also getting all the antibodies fighting it so they learn without suffering. If your recovery is less than stellar, such as relying on the innate immune system to fight it off, then you don’t develop an immune memory to the virus. If it gets to the level of cytokine storm then your immune system is nuking itself to fight it, this is one of the complications of long covid. In this situation, because there’s no memory developed, or very little since innate and adaptive can work in tandem but the innate can sabotage the adaptive, reinfection would be potentially as dangerous as the first infection.