Covid’s scientific silver lining: A chance to watch the human immune system respond in real time Helen Branswell By Helen Branswell March 28, 2024

https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/28/covid-immune-system-response/?utm_campaign=morning_rounds&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=300173672&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-95Agty6VUArBCC-UeJ8eS99pwg_JSOIn8ZHfrhuj5IPCi1AshMiFzNAiHqZQjL5csjc6Wi7HyMqQ9ZjNndInDspvgUTg&utm_content=300173672&utm_source=hs_email Immunologists would never deny Covid-19’s worldwide devastation, but if you look through their eyes back to 2020, when the disease still had no name but was spreading across the world, you’ll see a silver lining. For a window of time that has now closed, they could watch what happened when 8 billion people were exposed to a novel coronavirus. They had a front-row seat to witness how we developed immunity to the virus — and its variants — at a cellular level. Pandemics have emerged before, but this time scientists had the tools to study how the immune system awakens to a new threat and develops defenses against it. “You see textbook immunology happening in real time,” said Marc Veldhoen, a professor of immunology at the University of Lisbon. “You couldn't have designed a better experiment,” said Stephen Deeks, an HIV researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. STAT’s Helen Branswell tells us what they did with this opportunity — and what they learned.