Very Promising Covid News Comes Just as Pandemic Takes a Dark Turn
Amid a worsening death toll and other ugly news, glimmers of hope on vaccines and immunity
If you thought 2020 was the year of Covid overload and we’d soon move beyond the fatigue of daily pandemic revelations, well, welcome to the first week of 2021, in which this preventable pandemic continues to rip through the U.S. populace, shatter finances and tear at the very binds of society. While the bad and ugly news this week came via a firehose of science and data, some hope trickled out, too, including several brand new findings from scientists and a fresh expectation that President-Elect Joe Biden will release more vaccine doses to states as soon as he takes office.
The good news
Immunity from infection seems to last months, at least. People who catch Covid-19 appear for the most part to retain immunity to reinfection for at least eight months, according to a small new study in the journal Science. The research involved 188 people who mostly had mild symptoms, though 7% of them had been hospitalized. The study, which builds on previous research indicating the disease conferred six months of immunity, concluded that multiple aspects of the immune system remember the coronavirus and are prepared for a response if it…
