Billionaire Elon Musk -
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Elon Musk called on Space X employees for science, asking them in April 2020 to participate in a study on the protection against the coronavirus provided by antibodies.
More than 4,300 employees of the space exploration company went through a monthly blood test and thus contributed to a large program, reports
The Verge
.
The importance of symptoms
The results of this study were published on February 15, 2021 in
Nature Communications
and tend to show that the effectiveness of the immunity developed by people who have suffered from Covid-19 depends on the severity of their symptoms during the illness.
The more severe the effects of the infection, the better the protection against the virus that patients subsequently receive.
The vaccines would nevertheless lead to greater immunity than that of former patients who had presented few symptoms, also reports the study.
The authors hope that their findings will allow a better distribution of limited vaccine stocks within the population.
However, research has not made it possible to precisely establish the level of antibodies from which a subject is immune to Covid-19.
A controversial position
The study protocol was developed by the medical director of Space X and two American doctors.
92% of Space X volunteers were male, however, which is likely to skew the results.
The research was notably funded by the Gates Foundation, NASA and the charity founded by Elon Musk.
The CEO of Space X appealed to his employees a few weeks after telling them in an email that they were more likely to die in a car accident than from the coronavirus.
Although he was very vocal against the health measures imposed at the start of the epidemic, he insisted on adding his name to the list of the 30 co-authors of the study.
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