FYI - this may end up being similar to the flu: where the virus changes slightly every year, and thus can indeed reinfect folks. But those infections will likely be less severe, as the body had previous exposure to another version of the virus. It's very much a case of the immune system having a quickly developing partial response to such a bug, rather than a delayed one.

In other words, it is no reason to stop wearing a mask if you do get and recover from COVID-19 while a pandemic is going on.

I hope you're right. But I still have no desire to send tim back out into the world. There is still too much unknown, still too many could be and maybes. 

16 minutes ago, MichaelS36 said:

I hope you're right. But I still have no desire to send tim back out into the world. There is still too much unknown, still too many could be and maybes. 

Oh, I get that. The numbers make for hopeful news, but we don't know what seasonal changes this thing is capable of making. THAT ... next year, when we see if it comes back like influenza, that'll be the real test. That and how people who've had it previously or have been vaccinated (that's coming)  react to the new versions.

It may be like measles, where we get it once and we're done. Or it may be like a cold, where we get them almost every year. Frankly, it's more likely to be similar to a cold or the flu - as the common cold virus is a coronavirus too. There are still unknowns. We've still got to be careful - all of us.

Yet, this is a hopeful thing. Once fought, the specific version of SARS-CoV-2 cannot re-infect a person (unless there's an extraordinary event like a complete eradication of the immune system).

To be clear, Covid-19 is nothing like the flu, number wise. In the USA, 2019, 35.5 million people got the flu, 34,200 died. 8.19 million people have been infected with Covid-19 and 220,000 have died. Those numbers paint a bleak picture, you are very much more likely to die from Covid-19 than influenza. 

1 minute ago, Talo Segura said:

To be clear, Covid-19 is nothing like the flu, number wise. In the USA, 2019, 35.5 million people got the flu, 34,200 died. 8.19 million people have been infected with Covid-19 and 220,000 have died. Those numbers paint a bleak picture, you are very much more likely to die from Covid-19 than influenza. 

You're right.

I'm talking immune response, not lethality or infective doses.

Which makes it even more hopeful to get news related to immunity.

I get wanting to be cautious. But the sample size in this is pretty astounding. Even the abundantly cautious medical providers I work with were optimistic. Cautious, yes but optimistic.