Claims about antibodies and T-cells and Sweden

Buggert’s study in Sweden seems to support this position. Investigating close family members of patients with confirmed covid-19, he found T cell responses in those who were seronegative or asymptomatic. While around 60% of family members produced antibodies, 90% had T cell responses. (Other studies have reported similar results.) “So many people got infected and didn’t create antibodies,” concludes Buggert.

That is from Peter Doshi, mostly a survey on pre-existing immunity, interesting and useful and properly agnostic throughout.  Here is a version of the Buggert piece, also with a link to the published version.

Note two things.  First, “the kooks” saw this possibility first, and insisted on its relevance, to their credit.  Second, many of “the kooks” are overly dogmatic, not always to be trusted, and they commonly shift the goalposts (when predictions about cases are falsified, they switch to pretending those were predictions about deaths).  Often the non-kooks do that too of course.

For a sobering worry, here are some recent numbers from Spain.

The key to interpreting the literature is to focus on the data, and to keep an open frame of mind, rather than digging in to a particular position.  Right now I am focused on observing what kind of second wave London is going to have, and how mild or bad it will be, as that is most likely to induce me to update my positions, in one direction or another.

For the pointer I thank E. Ward.