Why do some people not get COVID symptoms? Here's what scientists recently found out about the genetic advantage of "super dodgers."

Here is the study the article references:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06331-x

I found this research interesting because of personal anecdote:

My family and I have joked that my mom must have some kind of immunity to covid. Before a vaccine was available, she had several direct (and sometimes lengthy) exposures… but never any (noticeable) symptoms or illness. And after being vaccinated with the monovalent rounds, she had several direct exposures to omicron… and still nothing

I myself have worked the front lines as an ICU nurse in the US since the first wave, and have never had covid, that I know of. Never symptomatic and never tested positive (granted, I am much more fastidious in regards to infection prevention). The kicker on my end is that my wife is immunosuppressed, and she also has never gotten covid, even with me working covid units and coming home to her (also why I have been so incredibly anal about not bringing it home).

Could be luck, or anything in-between, but I still wonder if my mom and I are resistant. We both have had many (sometimes severe) respiratory infections when I was growing up, and I’ve wondered if those exposures to other Corona viruses helped train our immune systems.

Like I said, that’s my personal anecdote. We both still get every vaccine for covid-19 that becomes available, because fuck all that. But I’ve always been curious what future studies of the immune system might reveal. Because we have been wildly lucky, all things considered

@JCPhoenix@beehaw.org
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That’s like me. As far as I know, I’ve never had COVID. I worked for an IT Managed Service Provider, which is like contracted IT for other businesses, as a field tech from Nov 2019 to March 2021; pretty much the major arc of the pandemic. While we were in lockdown at home in April/May 2020, I was otherwise in and out of our clients’ offices, often in close proximity to them, working on their workstation computers and other equipment. We were “Essential Employees” in our state. At first, no one, even clients knew anyone who had COVID, but I saw the “noose tightening.” A client’s friend or acquaintance or relative got COVID. Then it was someone in their immediate family. Then it was them who had gotten COVID. IIRC, I had at least one coworker out of like 13 of us who got COVID.

But I never did get it. Or at least I was asymptomatic. And I didn’t take any hefty precautions other than masking up, using hand sanitizer, and washing hands frequently. And it’s not like my masks were N95s. I either used cloth masks or those disposable ones. I even flew a couple times during the pandemic, though admittedly, the airports and planes were largely empty anyway.

I did get vaccinated as soon as I could in my state. so like March 2021. I did keep up with all my vaccinations; I’ve had two boosters. I was the first at my company and in my immediate family to get vaccinated. But that was toward the end of my time at the MSP anyway. My next job was/is an office job where we largely were WFH or Hybrid. Interestingly, I’ve seen more COVID among my current coworkers than my previous coworkers, even though my current coworkers tended to be more fastidious about precautions and getting vaccinated and social distancing and isolating and all that, while my previous were much less so (they weren’t anti-maskers, nor anti-vaxxers I don’t think).

I also tend not to get sick very often. At least not like colds/flus. I go years between cold-like illnesses, though I got sick a few weeks ago. According to a couple home tests, it wasn’t COVID though. Just a summer cold. I was also in Chicago while they had the worst air quality in the world from the Canadian wildfire smoke. I’m sure that didn’t help.

syphe
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Yeah I feel my family is one, my wife is even a trainee nurse and hasn’t brought it home, even once she sat next to a classmate for 4hrs who was clearly symptomatic with no mask, kids classes at school have been filled with it, and it’s gone through all my work colleagues, still none of us have tested positive yet

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