Originally Posted by
marting
Interesting but long paper exploring cross reactivity of other infectious agents including seasonal coronaviruses on increasing immunity among health care workers.
Pre-existing polymerase-specific T cells expand in abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s415..._reference.pdf
I wonder if any studies have been done among other groups such as teachers that are exposed frequently? Might be interesting to see if Covid-19 incidence impacts different professions more than others.
Probably those with greatest occupational exposure will be teachers / child care workers. Occupational mortality for teachers despite high risk of infection was not above average as compared with care workers dealing with the elderly, who had high risk of infection, but not necessarily a high risk of prior infection by other coronaviruses.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...28december2020
There was some work suggesting that the less severe impact in places like Korea, Taiwan was not simply because of greater mask wearing or better public health response but because a significant proportion of the community had been exposed to a related coronavirus and had some cross reactive immunity.
It is likely that any pre-existing immunity from other coronavirus infections will be predominantly T-cell mediated against epitopes other than the spike protein. So immunity will not stop infection but will modify post infection disease (not necessarily in a good way e.g. Dengue).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00460-4