Coronavirus Antibodies Common After Infection — But Not Often Protective

New data suggest it may be vaccine or bust.

In what seems like 10 years ago, but was actually just 6 weeks ago, I said this:

“This is COVID that allows us to open up more quickly, assuming antibodies are protective, which, let’s be honest, if they aren’t we’re sort of screwed no matter what.”

Cut to a couple of days ago, when I come across this article in Nature — the first deep dive attempting to answer the question of just how protective those coronavirus antibodies are.

And, at first blush at least, the news isn’t great.

Researchers recruited patients who had recovered from COVID-19 from the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York. The 111 individuals enrolled had to have been asymptomatic for at least 14 days. They also recruited 46 asymptomatic household contacts and some controls who had never had COVID-19.

Now, a brief refresher on antibodies. There’s several different types, but we broadly think about immunoglobulin M as the acute antibody, generated in the throes of the illness and…