jedishrfu said:
There are also multiple strains of Coronavirus so while you may have beaten one strain, there's another right around the corner perhaps not a virulent since you've battled its cousin but still something you can get.
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...are-there-two-strains-and-is-one-more-deadly/
peanut said:
Yeah, I have learned there are reportedly 8 strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the world. We need nine lives!
atyy said:
I think we discussed this earlier in the thread (there should be an informative post by
@Ygggdrasil somewhere back there), and this finding is likely over-interpreted (ie. there are two "strains", but the data is not strong enough to support the idea that one is more deadly than the other).
Here is what I have said about the different "strains" of the virus in
previous posts:
The
paper making the claim about two different strains of the virus has been criticized by other researchers in the field:
An analysis of genetic data from the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak was recently published in the journal National Science Review by
Tang et al. (2020) 84. Two of the key claims made by this paper appear to have been reached by misunderstanding and over-interpretation of the SARS-CoV-2 data, with an additional analysis suffering from methodological limitations. [...] Given these flaws, we believe that Tang et al. should retract their paper, as the claims made in it are clearly unfounded and risk spreading dangerous misinformation at a crucial time in the outbreak.
http://virological.org/t/response-to-on-the-origin-and-continuing-evolution-of-sars-cov-2/418
According to the Tang paper, the S and L strains they identify are primarily differentiated by two mutations, one in the
orf1ab gene and the other in the
ORF8 gene. Neither of these genes are expressed on the surface of the virion, so the mutations will not affect immunity to the virus, and I would expect immunity to one "strain" to confer immunity to the other "strain." The spike protein is the main protein on the surface of the virus, so scientists should monitor mutations in the spike protein to find potential mutations that could affect immunity against the virus.
Regarding the eight "strains" of the virus, the fact that we observe different genotypes because the virus has accrued various mutations, does not mean that these different "strains" of the virus are capable of re-infecting individuals. As an analogy, human individuals differ by ~20 million base pairs, but (as far as we know) all are equally susceptible to the Coronavirus (so to the virus, there is only one strain of human). Only very specific mutations could allow a human to be immune from the virus (e.g. in the case of
HIV), and likewise, only very specific mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus would allow it to evade immunity in vaccinated individuals.
Thus, many mutations will not have any effect on the virus, and we would mainly care about mutations that affect the behavior of the virus. So far, we have not seem much meaningful change to the viral genome, and the various mutations that differentiate the "strains" (while useful for tracking the spread of the virus) are not expected to affect our immunity to the virus:
Since the start of the pandemic, the virus hasn’t changed in any obviously important ways. It’s mutating in the way that all viruses do. But of the 100-plus mutations that have been documented, none has risen to dominance, which suggests that none is especially important. “The virus has been remarkably stable given how much transmission we’ve seen,” says
Lisa Gralinski of the University of North Carolina. “That makes sense, because there’s no evolutionary pressure on the virus to transmit better. It’s doing a great job of spreading around the world right now.”
There’s one possible exception. A few SARS-CoV-2 viruses that were isolated from Singaporean COVID-19 patients are missing a stretch of genes that also disappeared from SARS-classic during the late stages of its epidemic. This change was thought to make the original virus less virulent, but it’s far too early to know whether the same applies to the new one.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/biography-new-coronavirus/608338/
(note: this article from the Atlantic is a great, popular press summary of what we know about how the virus differs from other coronaviruses, and how those differences may lead to its success in spreading across the globe).
Now, that is not to say that the virus won't or cannot mutate to evade immunity. These types of mutations are certainly possible, and people are monitoring virus sequences to monitor for that possibility. Because the immune system recognizes the protein on the surface of the virus (the spike protein), it is very important to monitor changes to the spike protein as these types of mutations do carry the possibility of altering how our immune system recognizes the virus.
A greater concern is some of the research mentioned by
@mfb suggesting that some fraction of people with mild COVID-19 infections have very low levels of antibodies against the virus after recovery.