I suspect there is a fatal flaw to my logic, but if you were a nurse or doctor who has had Covid-19 and recovered ...
1) Wouldn't it make sense to deliberately maintain exposure so you don't lose your antibodies (or whatever allowed you to beat the virus)?
2) If you were maintaining such a state of immunity, would you be a risk of exposure to others (aside from contact transmission)? Right or wrong, I am thinking that the virus needs to gain a solid presence in your body before using you to replicate itself.
I'm sure I am missing something because I have not heard of anyone doing this, so where is the fault?
Thanks!
I don't think you understand how the immune system works – and you wouldn't be the only one. That includes just about every news reporter who ever wrote something about SARS-CoV-2.
When I first learned about it, as a grad student, there was a lot that defied common sense, and still does.
Here goes Immunology 101, with lots of broad generalizations and over-simplifications.
An immune response to an infectious disease (virus, bacteria, or other pathogenic single-cell organism like tuberculosis or malaria) doesn't happen overnight. It can take anywhere from about 2 weeks to as long as 6 weeks. It ends up becoming a race between the virus and the immune system.
The first response usually has low specificity to the foreign pathogen (lets say virus), but it happens quickly. It may be enough to blunt the disease, but not eliminate it. The second wave of immune response takes at least 2 weeks or longer, but it is highly specific to the virus, and can eliminate it both with antibodies that mop up any virus particles circulating in the blood, and with Killer T-cells that directly kill the host cells that are already infected with the virus. Key to the second wave are the so-called Helper T-cells that signal Killer T-cells and antibody producing B-cells to get busy. These Helper T-cells, highly specific to the foreign invader, are what takes at least 2 weeks to develop.
Once you recover from a viral disease, the second wave is shut down, but your immune system isn't done yet. It develops what is called 'memory cells'. They sit around quietly, responding only if you get re-exposed to the same virus at a later time. Those memory cells quickly respond, bypassing the first response that I described above, and immediately going into the second wave.
1) Wouldn't it make sense to deliberately maintain exposure so you don't lose your antibodies (or whatever allowed you to beat the virus)?
No, because the presence of circulating antibodies doesn't matter if you have the memory cells standing by as a ready reserve. These memory cells respond to the presence of a new viral infection by dividing and rapidly stimulating the production of new Killer T-cells and antibody producing B-cells with the same high specificity as in the second wave immune response. (These memory cells are the goal of any good vaccine, and are the reason why many vaccines require a booster shot. The first shot stimulates the primary immune response, and the booster stimulates the secondary response, as well as the memory cell response.)
2) If you were maintaining such a state of immunity, would you be a risk of exposure to others (aside from contact transmission)? Right or wrong, I am thinking that the virus needs to gain a solid presence in your body before using you to replicate itself.
No, most virus infections usually go immediately into rapid replication mode*. Without that, they would fail at their primary function, to reproduce. It's up to the immune system to respond as fast as it can. As I said above, it's a race. Once you develop a specific state of immunity, that viral infection is a goner. You may still have plenty of damage left behind, making for a slow, or even failed, recovery (
See TLS Guy's post #3024 above), but you shouldn't be infectious to others.
That's about as short as I can make my answer. I hope some of it makes sense.
* As usual, there are exceptions to the rule. They would be the so-called retroviruses, such as HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), HTLV (Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus), or other leukemia viruses. These viruses can go into an active infection similar to other viruses, or they can go dormant where they do not replicate directly as a virus. Instead, they incorporate their viral DNA into the DNA of the host cell they've infected. They quietly remain disguised in the host cells' DNA, replicating only when the cells divide. At some later time, these dormant viruses can be stimulated into an active infection. They can be particularly insidious. Some of these retroviruses can cause leukemia or lymphoma while they are dormant, as they cause the host cell to become transformed into a cancerous state. HIV is particularly bad, as it infects only Helper T-cells (mentioned above) that are key to fighting all infections. HIV leads to the AIDS syndrome where no functional immune system remains.
