Always good to have some encouraging news, even though I don't think we're close to the final word on this.
This is the New York Times making a mountain out of a molehill. They list five studies. Study 1: You've got antibodies for two or three months but in one out of five cases, they do fuckall. Study 2: Covid gives you antibodies. Study 3: You have Covid antibodies in your snot for up to 115 days after having Covid. Study 4: Covid gives you antibodies for up to 3 months. Study 5: We can tell that you had Covid up to 75 days after you had it. None of this is encouraging. What it says, over and over and over again, is that nobody can detect any evidence of COVID immunity after 120 days. Which is exactly the problem the livestock industry has had with Coronavirus since they first started vaccinating against PEDv 30 years ago, and why "we can put a man on the moon but we can't cure the common cold" has been a refrain in late night comedy routines since the early 70s.RBD- and S2-specific and neutralizing antibody titers remained elevated and stable for at least 2-3 months post-onset, whereas those against N were more variable with rapid declines in many samples. Testing of 5882 self-recruited members of the local community demonstrated that 1.24% of individuals showed antibody reactivity to RBD. However, 18% (13/73) of these putative seropositive samples failed to neutralize authentic SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Unbiased principal component analysis (PCA) revealed a clear segregation between memory T cells from patients with acute moderate or severe COVID-19 and memory T cells from convalescent individuals and healthy blood donors (Figure 1B), driven largely by the expression of CD38, CD69, Ki-67, and PD-1 in the CD4 compartment and by the expression of CD38, CD39, CD69, CTLA-4, HLA-DR, Ki-67, LAG-3, and TIM-3 in the CD8 compartment
Anti-CoV-2 antibody responses were readily detected in serum and saliva, with peak IgG levels attained by 16-30 days PSO. Whereas anti-CoV-2 IgA antibodies rapidly decayed, IgG antibodies remained relatively stable up to 115 days PSO in both biofluids.
We found that recovered individuals developed SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibody and neutralizing plasma, as well as virus-specific memory B and T cells that not only persisted, but in some cases increased numerically over three months following symptom onset.
Between 14–28 days from onset of symptoms, IgG, IgA, or IgM antibody responses to RBD were all accurate in identifying recently infected individuals, with 100% specificity and a sensitivity of 97%, 91%, and 81% respectively. Although the estimated median time to becoming seropositive was similar across isotypes, IgA and IgM antibodies against RBD were short-lived with most individuals estimated to become seronegative again by 51 and 47 days after symptom onset, respectively. IgG antibodies against RBD lasted longer and persisted through 75 days post-symptoms.