Kendall Rogers said:

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Hey gang -- I'm curious about something.

I had COVID back in January and am still testing positive for antibodies. With my job I was in large groups for much of baseball season.

Question: If you have current antibodies and you come in contact with someone who had COVID -- do your antibodies or T-cell immunity, etc, bolster, increase, etc?

How exactly does that work?

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Re-exposure to the antigen will increase your immune response. Your antibody titer should increase. This is why we give boosters of vaccines.

Actual virus experts either dont exist or are not allowed to speak anymore

Kendall Rogers said:

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Hypothetically, is that one of the reasons why reinfection is so rare? Ideally you're constantly exposed .. thus reinforcing your antibody t-cell wall?

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Reinfection is rare because immune systems work. After you have antibodies circulating in your system, a virus that enters should be tagged by antibodies and destroyed. Or if it gets into a cell first, once the cell starts producing virus proteins, it will get taken out. More frequent exposure should result in higher antibody counts and thus able to withstand a higher exposure.

However, the immune system isn't an impenetrable barrier. The goal of the immune system is to minimize downtime, not to ensure a negative test result. The first exposure takes several days to develop antibodies and mount a counter offensive against the virus. If the virus gets going faster than that, you get sick and it takes a while for the immune system to clean up. After that, scaling up the response to fight an infection is faster, but still not instant. Earlier response means less virus, fewer symptoms, and less cleanup.