The past six months has provided us an education in epidemiology, virology, and human behavior. While we didn’t sign up for these lessons, they became prerequisites for making sense of living during a pandemic and predicting what’s next. How will our kids be educated? Will elections be safe and fair? Will the newly unemployed be hired? Will the entertainment businesses survive?
We are seeing signs of coronavirus outbreaks slowing in Arizona, Texas and Florida. This is likely the result of human behavior changes in staying home, wearing masks, hand washing, and social distancing. We are also learning valuable insight to how our immune systems combats the coronavirus. This new insight may not impact the fall, though it may have a major impact on 2021.
Our National Institute of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins highlighted this week new insight on how our T cells fight COVID-19. While the antibodies produced by our immune systems get most of the media attention related to vaccines, therapeutics and testing, the human T lymphocyte (T cell) needs to be added to our vocabulary and discussions.
The findings of a new study reported in Nature, suggests these T cells may protect some people newly infected with SARS-CoV-2 by remembering past encounters with other human coronaviruses. Four of the six known coronaviruses are responsible for the common cold. This might explain why some people get very sick while others are asymptomatic.
This study indicates we need to add T cells to the general publics epidemiology and virology curriculum. T cells may soon become part of our testing, therapeutics and vaccines discussions.
When it comes to managing the complexity of living during a pandemic,
developing predictions based on our understanding of many impacting elements is essential. These predictions will become the foundation for our strategies to new manage the complexity of 2021.
Image: Scanning electron micrograph of a human T lymphocyte (T cell) from a healthy donor’s immune system from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/NIH.
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