[Kim Jaeho's Life Story]<197> The Power of Neglected Immune Cells

At the end of 2019, the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), which first appeared in China, spread at an incredible speed and eventually came to dominate the globe. The number of confirmed cases has exceeded 30 million, and the death toll is approaching 1 million. Although it is not yet comparable to the Black Death of the 14th century, smallpox of the 18th century, or the Spanish flu of 1918, its impact on daily life and the economy is tremendous.

The media continuously reports on vaccines and treatments, but there is no certainty as to when COVID-19 will be subdued. People wait anxiously for vaccines and treatments while enduring inconvenient lives to avoid infection, accumulating stress. Even today, with the tremendous advancement of science, vast knowledge and information about infectious diseases, and thorough investigation of viruses, one wonders how people in the past managed to overcome epidemics when they did not even know about the existence of pathogens.

Scientific progress has revealed that immune cells possess powerful strength to overcome pathogens entering the body. Pathogens that survive through multiple layers of defense are detected and destroyed by white blood cells. Even if symptoms develop, the disease only heals after the immune cells attack and kill all pathogens. At this time, white blood cells produce antibodies to easily destroy the same pathogens if encountered again. In times when knowledge about infectious diseases or proper means to overcome them were scarce, the powerful force of immune cells served as a guardian for humanity.

The strong power of immune cells can be found not only in common colds or flu but also in COVID-19. In any case, it is the immune cells, not treatments, that eliminate viruses and cure infectious diseases. Some treatments only help by suppressing viral replication, assisting immune cells in killing the virus. When COVID-19 patients receive hospital care, the hospital’s role is mainly to isolate them from others to prevent further infection and to alleviate discomfort or assist patients using oxygen respirators and other means.

Consider the example of the Guro-gu call center cluster infection that occurred last March, where more than half of the employees working in the same office tested positive. Given the crowded, confined space where they worked together, it is more likely that most of the employees who tested negative were actually infected but did not develop symptoms because their immune cells eliminated the virus. If antibody tests had been conducted on those who tested negative at that time, antibodies?evidence of infection?would have been found in many people.

Look at the example of New York, USA, which suffered severe damage from COVID-19. In April, to estimate how many residents had been exposed to COVID-19, antibody tests were conducted on a sample of 3,000 people, and 21% of those tested had antibodies. Based on this, it was estimated that about 1.7 million New York residents had been infected with COVID-19, while the confirmed cases so far were only 245,000. This shows that thanks to the powerful destructive ability of immune cells, relatively few infected people tested positive.

Today, humanity forgets the gratitude owed to immune cells, neglects them, and relies on less effective means. Many people believe that if a pathogen enters the body, infection is inevitable. When symptoms do not develop in situations where infection is assumed, people think they were lucky not to be infected, rather than considering that their immune cells overcame the infection.

A more serious problem is that people are unaware that their poor lifestyle habits greatly reduce the ability of immune cells, increasing the risk of infectious diseases when exposed to various pathogens. As a result, they do not make efforts to restore immunity, causing the power of immune cells to decline further.

The key to countermeasures against infectious diseases lies in the immune cells within everyone’s body. Since how well immune cells suppress infected viruses or bacteria depends on their performance, government policies and individual efforts should focus on maintaining immunity. People should maintain healthy lifestyle habits to keep immune cells in optimal condition (see Life Story episode 68), and during the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to prevent infection together can be a good approach.

If a highly effective vaccine is developed quickly, it could help to some extent, but since vaccine effectiveness is generally limited, strengthening immunity is more important. For example, the flu vaccine’s preventive effect in the U.S. generally remains at 40-60%, and still about 50,000 people die from the flu each year, showing that vaccine effectiveness is often not perfect.

Kim Jae-ho, Independent Researcher