For most people, when they get covid, nothing happens.
At least nothing that they notice.
For those who get covid and have symptoms, they will be better in two weeks.
And they will be immune. They will have received nature’s vaccination.
That’s the part of covid that doesn’t make the evening news. Instead, we get a nightly helping of crying nurses and grieving families. It’s all about worst-case tragedies and healthcare workers melting down. And while those sad realities are part of the truth, they are such a relatively small part of the truth that they are misleading.
Whether that deception is on purpose or not is a topic for another day. But there can be no doubt that the reality of the covid virus in the lives and bodies of the overwhelming majority of Americans is vastly different from what the television networks are offering.
Here’s the reality: Over a two or three week period, you get sick, you get better, and you get immune. That’s what people need to understand, and that’s what will mostly drive the course of this disease.
Because while, yes, the rollout of as many as a half a dozen covid vaccines in less than a year is the medical miracle of our age, and will do much heaven-sent good to stop this pandemic, the natural process of infection and resultant immunity will likely play an even bigger role.
Here’s what I mean.
Last week, there were a million new covid cases diagnosed through testing in the United States. That means that in two weeks, as the course of the infection progresses in those people, there will be about a million Americans newly immune to the covid virus.
More, actually.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, for each person testing positive for covid in America, there are actually about eight times as many who have the virus, but either have no symptoms or have negligible symptoms, and either don’t seek medical attention or don’t get caught in mass screening.
The federal government calculates that each covid positive test translates to eight people in the country who have the virus.
That means that last week’s million positive tests reflected eight million infected people who, in two weeks, will be eight million immune people.
Week after week after week, with the number rising until spring. That’s an awful lot of people acquiring immunity from the disease and – presumably, if covid is like almost every other infection on the planet – being removed from the pool of people who can pass the virus to others.
But that’s just going forward.
Almost a year of the virus on American shores has already involved a great many people.
The federal government’s numbers show that there have been 14.7 million confirmed cases of covid this year. If you multiply that by the CDC’s factor of eight, that equals 117.6 million immune Americans. That’s one third of the American population.
That is a very powerful natural immunization, far larger than any single pharmaceutical vaccination and quite possibly the single-largest blow in the fight against covid.
That is in no way an argument against vaccination. It is better to be vaccinated than infected. But as the disease moves among us, it is dishonest not to recognize and be grateful for the resultant immunity it is giving us.
Oddly, in this disease wherein people seem intent on seeing the worst, many claim that the immunity of infection may be fleeting and brief. Even though they have no evidence for this, and most survived diseases leave an immunity that lasts at least for years, they downplay the immunity of recovered persons.
Those lining up to get a vaccine should hope they are wrong, as vaccines do their wonderful work by stimulating the same immune response that infection does. If infection doesn’t provide immunity from covid, then neither will vaccines.
But, in every reasonable likelihood, they both will. And they both will be great protectors of our species in its war with covid.
The vaccines are coming soon; natural immunity is here now. As we fight our way back to normal, we need to recognize this unmentioned and invisible ally.
And we need to recognize that, in the rising numbers of infection, we are seeing risk, but also reward. Not that we should welcome or seek infection, but if it comes, it ultimately brings benefit.
A silver lining to the dark clouds on the evening news.