Some experts thought that children may be less susceptible to COVID-19 because they carry more antibodies to other coronaviruses, like the common cold. That theory would also explain why some people have milder cases of COVID-19.

But, according to The New York Times, a new study published on Tuesday in the journal Cell found that seasonal antibodies have no impact on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“By entering this study, we thought we would learn that people who had pre-existing and pre-pandemic antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 would be less susceptible to infection and suffer from less severe COVID-19 disease,” said Dr. Scott Hensley, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania. “This is not what we found.”

While they researchers said that about 20% of us do carry antibodies from seasonal colds that recognize the current coronavirus, these antibodies are not able to neutralize and disarm SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the Times.

They also found that both adults and children have the same amounts of antibodies, a fact that disputes a previous study that was published last December in in the journal Science. The December study found that 5% of adults carried these antibodies and children had 43% of them.

The earlier study that was conducted in Britain also found that children had “very high levels of pre-pandemic cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies.” This means that the antibodies in children were able to attack different viruses. Hensley’s study did not find this to be accurate, according to the Times.

Other experts tend to lean more toward Hensley’s research results, saying that his data is more convincing of the two as well as being more consistent with the actual numbers of people being infected by COVID-19.

For example, 76% of those attending a summer camp in Wisconsin were infected by a single camper, said Dr. John Moore, a microbiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. Moore said this is not an infection rate you would see if antibodies were widespread among youngsters.

“The idea that having the snuffles a while back somehow protects you from SARS-CoV-2 infections has always left me cold, but it’s been a persistent urban legend throughout the pandemic,” he said, according to the Times. “Hopefully, the new paper will finally cool everyone down and put such thoughts in the freezer.”