1. Interferon, part of our innate immunity 1st line of defense, is deficient in some people. Giving recombinant type I IFN early and the right dose may turn out to be preventive, and there are some clinical trial data to support
2. The antibody response waning in the first 2-3 months is expected, not a concern. Memory B cells and a T-cell immune response are on standby.
3. In severe, critical covid cases there is a chaotic, confused, markedly dysregulated immune response. To exemplify that, part of the cytokine storm can even include the responses one would expect vs a fungus or parasitic helminth (worm) infection
4. What is the explanation for #LongCovid?
There aren't immunologic studies yet.
Akiko has 3 hypotheses:
—a reservoir of virus, hiding, activating, reactivating
—virus particles retained activating an immune response
—infection generates an autoimmune disease
5. To understand whether autoimmunity is taking place, a culprit autoantigen has to be identified. Many groups are working on this. It may also apply, to some extent, to the multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents (MIS-C)
6. Mucosal immunity. There hasn't been that much work on an intranasal vaccine to rev up the IgA response , with nearly all of the ~200 vaccine program being shots to achieve neutralizing (IgG) antibodies. They could wind up being complementary approaches
7. Herd immunity in regions where people show a positive antibody response ~20%?
"It's premature and dangerous to depend on those numbers without a vaccine"
8. What is the optimal immune response to a vaccine?
A robust T cell (CD8) response may ultimately be considered icing on the cake
Not too concerned about antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) or immune complex disease from vaccines
9. Why do men do poorly compared with women?
There's an age-dependent decline in T-cell activation in men, not women
10. What about kids with infections and their ability to transmit?
(Her kids will be going to school, in-person, soon)
11. The rest of our discussion was about Akiko's lab at Yale, her background as an immigrant from Japan, the influence of her parents on her career.
It has been a silver lining of the pandemic to get to know Akiko and learn from her. A veritable phenom!
12a. Learning. That brings in the master educator dimension of @VirusesImmunity's contributions. Like this recent "Immunology 101" tweetorial
This isn't just about facilitating learning about the covid immune response; it's a model for educating life science thru @YouTube and @twitter channels
13. Yet another example of @VirusesImmunity's standout talent as an educator, explaining and contextualizing this new case of reinfection today
Not to detract from the celebration BUT
We just had >128,000 new US infections, another new record.
The hospitalizations continue to rise to almost 59,000 ()(~1,000 more since yesterday)
1,097 more people died. @COVID19Tracking
We have serious work cut out for us
We're about to go to a new pandemic peak in people hospitalized, >60,000
The rise in cases is limitless unless we take aggressive action, which of course should have been initiated months ago. But it's never too late.
Over 100,000 new covid cases today (1st time here or anywhere in the world), more than 1,200 deaths, hospitalizations relentlessly climbing to a new pandemic peak.
Might be a good time for a new strategy. Like having a plan. washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11…
The virus is thriving finding new hosts, making them sick, and killing them. And the pattern is all too familiar. 1. Most new infections for the pandemic, >103,000, on a very steep ascent now @COVID19Tracking
"Voters were deeply divided on what mattered more: containing the coronavirus or hustling to rebuild the economy"
As if this was a dilemma rather than it being fully interdependent.
This one is about what I learned this year, a most challenging one for all of us 1/
For 10 years, I posted biomedical and science stuff mainly about genomics, digital medicine, #AI. As the pandemic became a reality in February, I shifted attention to it, almost exclusively 2/
I'd already been tweeting too much (aka twitterrhea, and sorry for that), but this led to more than doubling or even tripling the posts on any given day due to the outpouring of new information (ideal substrate for an info junkie) 3/
A ladder. Off the chart again with 83,000 new confirmed infections the past 2 days. Years from now people will look back and think how is this possible in the USA. Bleak? 2/
It doesn't have to be. We know we could achieve marked suppression by a universal mask mandate and aggressive non-pharmacologic mitigation measures. That doesn't have to equate to the "L" word. But timing is critical now 3/