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Genetic Linkage

Can Past Coronavirus Infection Protect Against COVID-19? Hints from Smallpox Vaccine

In ordinary times, a new report describing experiments on bits of smallpox scabs nestled in Civil War museum artifacts would have been mildly interesting. But these days, clues in old poxvirus genomes are especially intriguing because they may explain how some people resist COVID-19, perhaps thanks to a past run-in with a different coronavirus. According to another recently published study, these individuals haven't tested positive for COVID-19 or SARS or had contact with people who have, yet they have immune memory – T cells that recognize a coronavirus that infects bats.

 

Could exposure to one type of coronavirus protect against infection by another?

 

"The origins and genomic diversity of American Civil War era smallpox vaccine strains," published in Genome Biology, looks at a possible precedent to answer that question. Such cross-reactivity happens when an antibody or T cell recognizes a surface molecule common to more than one species of pathogen. It's a little like recognizing Eric Clapton in different bands.

 

A Brief History of Smallpox Vaccination

 

To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.

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A Necessary Retelling of the Smallpox Vaccine Story

People once feared that small cows would emerge from the arms of vaccinated people. Ignorance about vaccines persists.
A curious confluence of events unfolded January 10. Just hours before President Obama uttered the powerful “science and reason matter” in his farewell address, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the incoming president had tapped him to head a committee on vaccine safety.

RFK Jr. is not a pediatric immunologist nor an epidemiologist, but a vocal "vaccine skeptic". Although the PEOTUS dialed back on the purported appointment shortly after social media erupted, a tweet from March 28, 2014 clarifies the new president’s analysis of the history and science of vaccines:

Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!  Read More 
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