THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Does Preexisting Immunity Mean that SARS-CoV-2 Has Already Been with Us?

Does Preexisting Immunity Mean that SARS-CoV-2 Has Already Been with Us?

I am inclined to go with the theory that prior infection with other coronaviruses gave the immunity observed. I had a lot of cold/flu viruses early in life and have had no sign of infection with Covid despite being elderly and despite being in contact with infected people

A preexisting immune response can be seen in adults who have not been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Dr. Paul Alexander, COVID-19 Consultant Researcher in Evidence-Based Medicine, quoted a research study in his Substack blog titled “Making the case that COVID-19 virus was NEVER ever ‘novel’ or new, it was circulating for many years and we had some level of cross-reactive immunity.” According to research, it is more likely that preexisting immunity represents a form of cross-reactive immunity instead of meaning that SARS-CoV-2 was already with us before the pandemic.

Playing a very important role in adaptive immunity, T cells and B cells are formed as a result of encountering a pathogen. With these soldiers, our immune systems produce antibodies that attack foreign substances to protect our bodies from infections and learn how to fight better and faster for the next encounter.

This system works in the same way following exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, it has been revealed in the intensive research on this subject that there is no need for exposure to SARS-CoV-2 for these cells to form. In some individuals, preexisting T and B cells can emerge without exposure to the virus.

Current Study and Main Findings

In 2021, a study published in JCI Insight was conducted by Abdelilah Majdoubi, PhD. from BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and colleagues to investigate the extent of the preformed immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in the Canadian adult population. They also investigated whether this immune response could be explained by existing coronaviruses or direct exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The research was funded by the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Intramural Research Program of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and also in part by the Canadian government via its COVID-19 Immunity Task Force.

This study revealed that most adults in the Canadian population show antibody reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 antigens. However, the authors concluded that it is highly unlikely that this immune response was formed from direct exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There were relatively low cases of COVID-19 after the first wave in the British Columbia region. This greatly reduces the likelihood of a pre-existing and asymptomatic circulation of COVID-19. Also, pre-pandemic sera from adults and sera from infants younger than one-year-old revealed a similar antibody reactivity, which bolsters arguments for cross-reactivity.

Possible Sources of Cross-Reactive Immunity

If COVID-19 was not circulating before the pandemic, then what is causing this immune response? It is widely known that a strong immune reaction, in the form of antibodies or T-cell responses, occurs when the virus itself is encountered or by vaccination. Interestingly, upon exposure to cross-reactive antigens from different viruses, bacteria, vaccines, and even certain food proteins, antibodies can also be formed to create an immune response.

It is hypothesized that exposure to coronaviruses predating COVID-19, particularly common cold coronaviruses, may have created reactive T-cell responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Implications and Conclusion

The fact that immunity has pre-formed in individuals who have not been infected with COVID-19 does not necessarily mean that SARS-CoV-2 is not a newly emerged virus. However, these findings still have important implications.

The presence of cross-reactive antibodies in some people and their absence in others may cause differences in the severity of the disease in different people. The heterogeneity of COVID-19 disease, which is more severe in some people and milder in others, may be a result of cross-reactive immunity.

It is also important to note that pre-existing immunity does not always provide a protection advantage. More research is needed to investigate the extent to which this cross-reactive immunity provides protection against disease.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/does-preexisting-immunity-mean-that-sars-cov-2-has-already-been-with-us-aaf7b2a5

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Does Preexisting Immunity Mean that SARS-CoV-2 Has Already Been with Us?

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