It's Wednesday, April six. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. Are some people super immune to COVID? There are many who have had COVID multiple times, while others have avoided infection altogether. Researchers are currently studying healthcare workers whose bodies fought off infection but never created specific anybody's for it. The hope is that understanding what kept them from getting
sick could lead to better vaccines. Madison Mueller, health reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Madison, Thanks for having me after Well, let's talk about this interesting notion regarding COVID nineteen. Are some people super immune to this? You know, you start off your story talking about how you've had COVID twice. Your sister managed to hold off not getting it until just last week. I myself have not had COVID nineteen throughout this whole pandemic.
Knock on wood, Hopefully it doesn't come for me soon. But you know, there's a lot of researchers, scientists looking at people that that have fared well, have not gotten it, and seeing if there's something in their system that can help them avoid it even more, and obviously, looking towards vaccines and things like that, it could really help inform what we're doing on that side of things. So Madison, tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah, So I was really surprised to see the data that over
fifty of the United States still hasn't had COVID. That was shocking to me as someone who's had it twice and you know, I have friends and family that haven't had it, but still that seems like a large number of people. But scientists in the UK started looking into this in the early stages of the pandemic, so prior to vaccines, they were looking at a cohort of health care workers in the UK, and we're looking at natural immunity.
So these people, these super immune people in in some rare instances, seem to have a an immune response that's better than the average person, and their bodies are able to actually fight off the virus before it has sting positive for it, which is really interesting and you know, some of the data some of these studies can actually improve, like you said, our knowledge of of COVID in general
and potentially be applied to therapeutics and vaccines down the road. Yeah, it was pretty interesting what was happening with those healthcare workers. As you mentioned, they were able to fight off the virus before testing positive or even developing the antibodies to it. And the thought process was as well, COVID nineteen is
a coronavirus. There are other coronaviruses that we've been exposed to for our entirety of our lives, you know, things that cause it common cold and other things, and they do share some some commonality. So maybe because their body was at deept to fighting that off, they were able
to fight off COVID nineteen. Yeah, that's exactly right. So T cells, we all have them, it's they're a critical part of our immune response, and in these healthcare workers exposure to prior coronaviruses, So these coronavirus seasonal coronavirus to cause cold like symptoms, and the thought processes that these healthcare workers, their prior exposure had primed their T cells to recognize this genetic part of the of COVID that is the same across coronaviruses, and to then be able
to have an immune response and effective immune response without actually creating specific antibodies to fight off the virus, which is cool and really interesting. And yeah, so it was definitely definitely I think and new were finding at the time.
And yeah, right, and part of it too, you know, you go on to explain the article that you know, right now, when we're getting these covid vaccines or we're getting infected naturally with it and we're fighting it off, you know, the body is targeting the spike protein, and what these healthcare workers were doing was kind of targeting more the inside machinery of the virus instead of just the spike protein. That's why they might have been more adepti fighting it off. And that's kind of what a
scientists are looking for trying to understand. So when we do talk about future vaccine development or what a lot of people are really hoping for is some you know of some kind of universal coronavirus vaccine that will target multiple ones at the same time. That's really what's going
to get us a leg up on these types of viruses, right. Yeah, so that internal machinery stays the same and spike proteins, as we know, that's something that easily mutates and can cause some issues for vaccine makers and for people trying
to create therapeutics to fight the virus. So that's why this study is so significant, because they found an element of the coronavirus that you know, can be recognized and because it doesn't change, and so that could be something that's really effective in the future, and it's something that
some labs, some researchers are looking into now. And yeah, well, it'll be interesting to see if some people truly are super immune to this and really just are able to fight it off and don't get it, or or if maybe some people are just lucky, maybe they've they've taken all the proper precautions and have really just avoided it just well enough. But just an interesting notion to think about. Madison Mueller, health reporter at Bloomberg News, thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramires and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.