That was my understanding - that the body should remember how to produce the antibodies but I keep reading breathless reports about reinfection and lack of immunity that I was beginning to question my layman’s knowledge.
There’s also some speculation that the virus goes dormant for awhile and then comes back which is why the tests are “clear” - but I still think that comes back down to test failures.
I don’t read too much into those news stories. The media never gets stories about science or technology right. Call it incompetence or call it intentional sensationalism meant to drum up fear and panic; either way don’t put much stock in that. Look to the underlying sources instead. I’ve yet to see anything suggesting an individual who has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 lacks immunity post infection. Unless and until I see evidence to the contrary, I’m going to assume this virus works the same way most others do and our immune system is doing its job.
There are some pathogens that know how to fool our immune system or that simply attack and destroy it. HIV, Ebola, and others are known to work this way. HIV in particular is incredibly resourceful at hiding from the immune system, which is why a vaccine has never worked (a vaccine just shows the immune system what the pathogen looks like, but if the immune system sees it and goes “yeah? so what?”, you don’t build any immunity). But SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t seem to work like that. When it does kill, it seems to do so by basically sandblasting your protective lung tissue such that other pathogens can hop in and create major problems. But your immune system recognizes it for what it is (a foreign pathogen). So I’m not too worried about that.
Reinfection is not conclusively proven - as opposed to “it was dormant for a while”.
Right now, looking at South Korea, Taiwan, etc. it seems that there is no reinfection.
The virus is also not highly deadly like ebola.
The way to kill it is either everyone get infected at once - a theoretical impossibility and also one that would tax the hospital system — OR, isolate, reduce the spread and let it die due to no hosts.
That’s why the masks - reduce the chances of spread.
Studies indicate that the number of virii “absorbed” at a time also is a factor - not conclusively proven, but indicative. So the mask an asymptomatic person wears reduces the spread and the person wearing a mask (say the new infected) has a better chance of his own body fighting this off.
I really give you Vietnam, Slovakia, even much of East-Central Europe as proof that if you take 6 weeks of strict masks, quarantine, etc. it works and the economy can get back roaring after the 6 weeks.