In article <4i7s1q$ssr at newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
JRicklefs <jricklefs at aol.com> wrote:
>What does it take to be immune to a virus?
I wrote a lay-type thing on this a while back; it's saved at
<http://www.panix.com/~iayork/vaccination.html>
>How long does the immunity last?
Depends on the type of immunity and the virus - there's no general
answer. Ranges are from weeks to a lifetime. A reasonable, common length
of time would be on the order of a year to five years.
>Can you become immune to the Ebola virus?
Probably, but the tests haven't been done in any strict way. (If the
test was tried, and you turned out not to be immune after all ...) Note
that it's possible to measure correlations with immunity in the test tube
(i.e. antibody titers and so forth) but for specific viruses you can't be
sure that these actually do cause immunity in the body.
Ian
--
Ian York (iayork at panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
