Most of you have heard of the Talmud.  This collection of anecdotes, aphorisms, teachings-aka, the oral law of Judaism- is comprised of two collections.  The first one is the Mishna (‘repeated study’).  This is the older collection arranged by Rav Yehuda haNasi (Venerated Prince Rabbi Yehuda, the head of the Sanhedrin) around 200 CE.  Most of this material had been transmitted from generation to generation since the Babylonia Exile (the time of the prophet/scribe Ezra), ca 450 BCE. The Gemara (‘completion’), the discussion and aggrandizement of the facets of the Mishna, was completed two centuries later.  Together, these comprise the Talmud.

Some 6 decades ago, when I began learning the Talmud, I was taught a word to which I refer a lot.   Hefker- הפקר.  It describes what happens when we lose something and the object becomes ownerless.  More importantly, its when the object is untethered to anything.

That’s kind of like how we are living our lives now.  This pandemic quarantine (whether complete or partial) leaves us feeling rudderless.  Which is why every one of us is waiting- with bated breath- for the vaccines that have been developed to undergo FDA evaluation.  No, that’s not really true.  We are hoping these vaccines pass muster- so we can end our feelings of Hefker.

The question will be do we need multiple doses of the vaccine- or do we need multiple vaccines.  Few of us have seen the data.  (As a matter of course, the vaccine developers were so worried that TheDonald would lean on the regulatory agencies to approve the drugs whether they passed muster or not that they elected to NOT submit any data until after the elections.)

Yet, there are larger questions looming.  Questions that have been slinking to the forefront as we learn more about this most nasty coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

Folks who managed to survive COVID-19 and folks who were asymptomatic after infection during the first wave manifested antibodies towards the virus.  But…

A cohort of 365,104 folks (adults) in England who had tested positive for COVID-19 were studied by the Imperial College. This study is known as the Real-Time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT).  The team was comprised of Drs. Helen Ward, Graham Cooke, Christina Atchison, Matthew Whitaker, Joshua Elliott, Maya Moshe, Jonathan Brown, Barney Flower, Anna Daunt, Kylie Ainslie, Deborah Ashby, Christl Donnelly, Steven Riley, Ara Darzi, Wendy Barcaly, and Paul Elliott.

Back during the first wave (around June 2020), some folks (those that were infected)  manifested antibodies.  By the end of September (12 weeks later), the antibody levels had dropped by 26.5%.  Moreover, those who were asymptomatic were more likely to manifest larger drops in antibody levels and faster than those who had clear symptomology for COVID-19.

Now, many of us hoped those antibodies conferred immunity to the disease.   That was the thinking behind collecting blood from those folks who survived COVID-19 and transfusing it to those who were in the throes of full-blow symptoms.  Hoping the transfused antibodies would help the patients resist the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

But, if this loss in antibodies is widespread, it means that the ill-conceived plans of TheDonald and is pseudo-expert (as is true for all of TheDonald’s advisors) Dr. Scott Atlas (who, by the way, hasn’t practiced medicine in a while, is a neurologist, and knows jack-shit about microbes, virology, and infectious diseases) are simply inane.  Because there won’t be herd immunity.  (More to the point, it’s not clear what percent of the population must be infected or inoculated to confer this condition- but it’s clearly closer to 80% than 60%.  Which means waiting for herd immunity will lead to a trebling- or more- of deaths.  And, G-d knows how many more infected folks. And, that assumes that immunity doesn’t evanesce.)

The study provided more interesting results.  Those over 75 y of age lost antibodies much quicker (39%) than folks ranging from 18 to 24 y (14.9% decline).  But, when we think about it, this really shouldn’t be surprising.  This is very similar to the results we know exist with the common cold- another coronavirus.

This new finding changes the calculus on the vaccines, too!

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