A silver lining to the inconvenience of a mild COVID-19 infection is that for most people it is followed by a honeymoon period — an idyllic time when the immune system is firing on all cylinders and preventing reinfection.
But all good things must come to an end. At some point, the surge of protective antibodies wanes.
With each new variant, that period of protection keeps getting shorter. In the past few weeks, studies out of South Africa, the U.S., and China have revealed that omicron subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 are alarmingly good at escaping immunity from a previous omicron infection.