Why is Everyone Sick all the Time?

[james1131]

@sonobia Same

 

[amelia97]

@sonobia Why not both?

 

[marie2018]

@7thunders Scary! But this is a false conclusion.

There's no evidence to suport the argument - that "covid infection cause immune damage" so "your immunity to illness has been affected by a covid infection". It just isn't supported by the one article you link to here. The TIME article references this same study and speculates. It's not a confirmation of the study.

From the study:

people who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 prior to vaccination produced spike-specific CD8+ T cells at considerably lower levels—and with less functionality—than vaccinated people who had never been infected. Moreover, the researchers observed substantially lower levels of spike-specific CD8+ T cells in unvaccinated people with COVID-19 than in vaccinated people who had never been infected.

So having contracted Covid meant that one kind of response to Covid vaccines was blunted. "Previous exposure limits peripheral CD8+ T cell responses after mRNA vaccination".

This could be a consequence of viral persistence. We suggest that chronic activation probably leads to reduced virus-specific memory CD8+ T cells

So this blunting of NK T cell response seems to be Covid-to-Covid vaccine specific, probably due to residual virus presence. And it's a lessening, not a wipeout of CD8+ (natural killer T cells). Also, CD4+ (helper T cells) response was unchanged.

I don't see any research into lasting Covid-induced lymphocytopenia. Did you mean to link an article? Any infection temporarily resudces white blood cell count - this is expected.

So it's misleading to conclude to say that the immune system as a whole - an immune response to pathogens - is damaged.

 

[jeanjason0209]

@marie2018 I have a few thoughts here, but 1) we don't have a lot of detailed longitudinal data on post-Covid T cell recovery, but can estimate that most people recovering from Covid may have at least a couple weeks of lymphopenia/reduced immune function, which could be enough time to encounter new pathogens to which they are not as easily able to respond to, and 2) there are several lines of evidence that suggest that at least a subset of the population does experience persistent immune dysfunction resulting from Covid perturbations of NK/T cells and gut microbiota.

A longitudinal study tracking 173 individuals found that T cell numbers and function did recover in most people after Covid by 6 months, but a subset of people exhibited persistent lower CD8+ T cell counts for months. Patients exhibited lower CD3+ T cell stimulation in response to a variety of viral antigens during acute Covid infection, and while functional response improved for most antigens at 6 months, responses remained significantly lower against adenovirus in people who had recovered from either mild or severe Covid.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/all.15372

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.931039/full

Covid perturbs T cell communities and T cell exhaustion markers can remain elevated for months. Perturbations in T cell communities include long-term changes in maturation and differentiation of NK and CD8+ T cells. This can lead to reduced activation in response to other pathogens, like fungal infections.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.954985/full

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/14/5/1082

https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/23/6/3374

Covid also perturbs human gut microbiota, which can regulate/modulate immune responses. This article proposes a model for how Covid infection could lead to gut dybiosis, which could theoretically also affect how individuals may respond to new infections: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41575-022-00698-4

 

[marie2018]

@jeanjason0209 Covid can be severe, leading to all kinds of issues. This doesn't show, however, that Covid has something about it that makes it broadly responsible for "damaged" immune systems across the board.

people recovering from Covid may have at least a couple weeks of lymphopenia/reduced immune function

Isn't this is expected from viral infections? It's why bacterial ear infections/bronchitis is so common in the wake of a cold.

at least a subset of the population does experience persistent immune dysfunction resulting from Covid

Severe viral infection is severe. A hallmark of severe and persistant infection is persistant symptoms, impared immune response, and lengthy recovery.

I don't buy that COVID-19 has a unique property "like HIV" as OP claims, that impairs immune systems. Yes, a massive outbreak of a novel viral disease impacts people in all kinds of ways, and lots of people getting severely ill means lots of people recover over long timeframes.

But claiming otherwise-unseen long term immune system consequences even in mild cases? Definitely a stretch.

 

[jeanjason0209]

@marie2018 Here's one that challenges that perspective, although it's drawing from the subset of people experiencing persistent symptoms after a mild infection (e.g. Long Covid post-mild to moderate symptoms during the acute infection).

Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x "Here, we studied individuals with LC compared to age- and gender-matched recovered individuals without LC, unexposed donors and individuals infected with other coronaviruses. Patients with LC had highly activated innate immune cells, lacked naive T and B cells and showed elevated expression of type I IFN (IFN-β) and type III IFN (IFN-λ1) that remained persistently high at 8 months after infection."

And two that looked at persistent changes/immune dysfunction after more severe cases:

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-02228-6?mibextid=Zxz2cZ "This study found persistent changes to the peripheral immune system of SARS-CoV-2 convalescents until at least 6 months post-infection...which could have implications for how individuals recovering from SARS-CoV-2 infection respond to other infections encountered in this period"

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.676932/full "The immunological and inflammatory changes following acute COVID-19 are hugely variable...we demonstrate myeloid recovery but persistent T cell abnormalities in convalescent COVID-19 patients more than three months after initial infection." These included reduced naive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and higher levels of activated CD8+ T cells.

 

[weepingsinner7]

@7thunders Thank you so much for the information regarding children. This paired with the recent study that vaccination before initial COVID infection reduces the risk of long COVID makes me feel even better about vaccinating my son when he turned 9 months.

This is very thorough thank you.

 

[euthymios]

@7thunders I think this is a brilliant post! Entirely anecdotal, but I’m a ‘novid’ (one of those few who is yet to catch covid). I still wear an N95 in most crowded/health locations. My health is genuinely never been better, so I doubt mask wearing is the issue.

I should add as an aside that my parents and brother have all never had covid and don’t mask anymore, and my parents travel all over the world and my brother is at university. My daughter hasn’t had it either but she is obviously around me all the time and I’m fairly cautious.

 

[jblazy]

@7thunders Fantastic representation of correlation, not causation. Everyone should take this information with a huge grain of salt. While this is decent and not inaccurate information - it is simply not possible to control for other factors. There is just no way to say that COVID is definitively the cause of all of these symptoms. How can we know it's not diet or something else?

For the record, I don't think that OP is saying this necessarily, but I think that this is a big claim to make and would be super easy to make inferences.

 

[laterrainfot]

@jblazy The statistics on long-covid incidence are also suspect because they are self-reported and there's no control group.

 

[stignet]

@7thunders So there is such a thing as "immune amnesia" with measles. When you catch measles, it not only makes you sick, but it also destroys your body's immune memory cells, making all your previous vaccinations and illness exposures worthless. Your immune system resets, essentially. After measles, every illness you catch is like the first exposure again and your body must make new memory cells all over again. But it doesn't permanently damage your immune system in the sense that your immune system no longer works at all or creates autoimmune disorders. It just resets it to a non-exposed immune system. It can take 2-3 years(!) for your immune system to catch back up, during which you would see a big increase both in number and severity of other illnesses. Good summary article from American Society of Microbiology

I've heard rumblings that covid might have similar immune amnesia effects, which is fascinating and could explain increases in other illnesses post-covid. But I can't find any actual evidence of that in the scientific literature. Here's an editorial from Aug 2023 about that very question. And an easy to read article from McGill University that compares how HIV and measles affects our immune system versus what we currently know about how covid does. (To be clear, I'm not calling OP an alarmist. The McGill article has a bit of a condescending tone at times, but I thought that the information was worth the link.)

 

[electro]

@stignet Even if it was 'benign' amnesia, seems like it would still have the affect of indefinite immune dysregulation on the population level cause many are regularly catching covid multiple times a year.

 

[pal1322]

@7thunders I'm probably not the healthiest of people, and used to average about four colds a year that would take weeks of recovery, sometimes leading to bronchitis, and I had insufferable allergies all damn year long. I haven't stopped masking since the onset of the pandemic and luckily wfh, and haven't had any respiratory illnesses in almost four years and my allergies have almost disappeared. All anecdotal. But in addition to the perceived increase illnesses that I am seeing, I know so many people who are now having wild health issues: strokes at a young age, aggressive cancers at a young age, prolonged loss of sense and taste from a COVID infection, sciatica and other conditions related to inflammation, random other bouts of unexplained illnesses and symptoms. Could be aging (my age group is in our 40s) but could also be that we still don't know a lot about the longterm effects of a still somewhat novel virus.

 

[2the1whojudgesjustly]

@pal1322 Are you vaccinated? Vaccines in general improve overall immune fitness, ability to fight all illness, and lower all cause mortality. Anecdotally, I would get bronchitis 2-3 times a season until I started getting a yearly flu shot. Now I'm hardly ever sick. I get my Covid boosters too, but I'm a SAHM now so I can't say what's the booster and what's not being in retail anymore.

 

[eeasuper]

@pal1322 I now lose the sense of smell/taste with EVERY single cold i get. And i get many many many colds now (toddler in daycare bringing tons of viruses home). It's super sad because i live for food

 

[lamourhjackson]

@eeasuper This started happening to me, too! It only takes a few days to regain the ability to smell again, but it was definitely weakened. Over the summer I finally went more than six months without a cold and it seems to have recovered fully, but we'll see if it survived the next cold.

 

[traciethered]

@pal1322 There's data on all this. Does that match your perception?

 

[lisazh001]

@7thunders Thanks for posting! Great info

 

[ermcon]

@7thunders Thanks!! Rarely read this much in a post but was all great so I read every word!

 

[lamourhjackson]

@7thunders Do you have the statistics on what illness(es) have been increasing, and in what populations? Anecdotally, I have noticed a decrease in illness in my region of the US, but I'd love to see some data on it.