Previous Vaccines and Masks Could Reduce Covid-19 Severity, Some Researchers Say

Applehu Akbar shared CNN’s article about why some people experience Covid-19 differently: “When we looked in the setting of Covid disease, we found that people who had prior vaccinations with a variety of vaccines — for pneumococcus, influenza, hepatitis and others — appeared to have a lower risk of getting Covid disease,” Dr. Andrew Badley, an infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night… There’s been no definitive evidence of any other vaccines boosting immunity against Covid-19. But some researchers have suggested it’s possible…. Last month, researchers found that countries where many people have been given the tuberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guerin had less mortality from coronavirus, a finding that fits with other research suggesting the vaccine can boost people’s immunity in general. But once you’re infected, how much of the virus made it into your body could also have an impact on what your experience is, another expert told CNN on Monday. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California, San Francisco, has been working with a team of researchers to understand how more people could go through their infections with minimal or no symptoms. About 40% of people infected with the virus don’t have symptoms, according to an estimate last month by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gandhi’s team found masks make a difference. “What the mask does is really reduce the amount of virus that you get in, if you do get infected,” she said. “And by reducing that… you have a lower dose, you’re able to manage it, you’re able to have a calm response and you have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.”