It has happened frequently over the last two years: one or more members of a family becomes ill with COVID-19, while one family member remained perfectly alright. He or she is tested and nothing is found wrong. He or she simply didn’t catch the virus, didn’t get sick — nothing.
Now, British research explains why this happens: it’s because these people have high levels of immunity against certain versions of the common cold.
Imperial College London has published research which concludes that “the presence of T cells that have been induced by a ‘coronavirus cold’ can reduce the risk of becoming infected with covid when exposed to the virus.”
“Our study provides the clearest evidence to date that T cells induced by common cold coronaviruses play a protective role against [COVID] infection,” senior researcher Professor Ajit Lalvani explains. “These T cells provide protection by attacking proteins within the virus, rather than the spike protein on its surface.”
Related: Natural Immunity Versus Vaccine Immunity
“Being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t always result in infection, and we’ve been keen to understand why,” says Dr Rhia Kundu of Imperial’s National Heart and Lung Institute. “We found that high levels of pre-existing T cells, created by the body when infected with other human coronaviruses like the common cold, can protect against Covid-19 infection.”
Of course, she goes on to say that this isn’t the only form of self defense people should rely upon, because not every “common cold” is also a “coronavirus.” But those who do have T cells generated from an earlier viral infection seem to enjoy protection against different coronaviruses, among which is the one let loose by China on the world two years ago — pardon me, of course I meant to say: the virus that just so happened to rear its ugly head in Wuhan, China, after which it completely accidentally spread over the entire world.
Anyone who mentioned this 20 months ago was blasted out as being a conspiracy theorist. We are where we are.https://t.co/WocD3KdVB5
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) January 10, 2022
According to the aforementioned Dr. Lalvani, all of this means that “future vaccines” (oh, yes, there surely are more to come) should be developed based on these “conserved, internal proteins.” After all, “they would therefore induce broadly protective T cell responses that should protect against current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants.” These would work differently than the current vaccines, whose results against omicron are less than stellar.
Suddenly, it makes perfect sense that Spain wants to treat COVID like the flu, doesn’t it?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member