Ignore that viral article about the risk from COVID reinfections

Exactly how quickly and how often reinfections happen is murkier. A few recent studies have shown it’s possible to get reinfected with another variant (or even another omicron subvariant) in as little as 20 days; back in January, Slate ran an account of a woman who was likely infected with delta one month and omicron the next. But these rapid reinfections still seem to be rare, and there are, as best as I can tell, no documented cases of people getting reinfected again one month, and then again the next, and then again the next. And while getting COVID “just” twice inside of a year might feel like a horror take on Groundhog Day, the “Forever Plague” author seems to be painting a picture of a nightmare world where the default human state is a constant state of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This is simply not the case.

Overall, our bodies are actually getting better at fighting off COVID. All else being equal, the immune system more deftly fends off the same pathogen—or variants of it—with each exposure. The ability of omicron’s spawn to dodge vaccine- and infection-induced antibodies is disappointing. But our immune systems’ defenses are not all-or-nothing. Even antibodies generated by other variants have retained some power to neutralize the heavily mutated omicron. And the immune system is much more than antibodies. T cells help subdue the virus after infection, reducing the severity of the disease and preventing death. The good news is the parts of the coronavirus that T cells recognize have remained largely unchanged since the virus burst onto the scene in 2019—which explains why the vaccines against that original strain have remained so effective at preventing hospitalization and death no matter which variant we encounter. To claim, as the “Forever Plague” author does, that the “each and every infection will damage your immune system regardless of how mild the symptoms” is an insult to immune systems.