Does SARS-COV2 infect your immune cells during COVID-19? Let’s talk about COVID-19 caused lymphopenia in blood, and how this is different from immune suppression that you observe in other diseases like AIDS. A thread on due diligence before RT. 1/7 https://twitter.com/CurlyJungleJake/status/1248161735455830016

Many studies now show that patients with severe SARS-COV2 infection suffer from lowered wbc count (lymphopenia) -> T-cells (immune cells that kill the infected cells) are lower in blood of patients and are in lungs causing excessive damage (partly why they need intubation). 2/7

Big fear here is COV2 infecting T-cells can compromise immune system like HIV infecting T-cells. The study was one bad experiment in artificial T-cell line suggesting can infect. Read this great thread for technical details https://twitter.com/enhancerleo/status/1248335396414480385