So You've Never Gotten Covid? Here Are Maybe a Few Reasons Why
It’s rare to find someone who hasn’t had a battle or two with Covid, but some Covid dodgers are still among us. While the Centers for Disease Control has estimated that more than 80% of children under the age of 18 have had Covid-19, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco has discovered a phenomenon (after reviewing data from more than 1,400 people) that some people may never test positive for Covid or have symptoms due to a genetic mutation.
Who has the mutation?
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The mutation is actually not uncommon after research calculated that 1 out of 10 people may have this specific genetic makeup. The team found out that having the mutation does not cause a person to never have Covid enter their body; rather, they just will never notice because their body will fight it off before they could ever test positively.
How does this work?
When a virus enters our bodies, a gene called HLA alerts the immune system to start fighting back. However, when people do not have a mutation, this process can take a while and you will start to feel the symptoms while your antibodies and immune system try to fight and stop the spread.
When people have the HLA mutation, the cells already have the tools to immediately block the virus from spreading around the body, which results in no symptoms. This mutation increases your chances that you will be asymptomatic by 10 times.
You likely had a form of coronavirus before.
People are not just born with the mutation; it’s likely they have been exposed to a kind of coronavirus before. The coronavirus is not new and it’s likely that most people have been exposed to it at some point in their lives, whether they had symptoms or not.
So, if you’ve never felt the wrath of Covid, you may be one of these special people. Lucky you!
