The CDC disputes this.
Anti-EA IgG appears in the acute phase of illness and generally falls to undetectable levels after 3 to 6 months. In many people, detection of antibody to EA is a sign of active infection. However, 20% of healthy people may have antibodies against EA for years.
Source
Yes, and some percentage of healthy people have sniffles and runny noses for non-infectious reasons. Does that mean that sniffles and runny noses mean absolutely nothing in terms of possible infection? Just because some healthy people have sniffles and runny noses, does that automatically mean everyone with sniffles and runny noses are healthy?
Some apparently healthy people have the symptom, therefore the symptom means nothing in the context of obvious ill health? I don't think so. It's that kind of poor logical thinking in medicine that drives me nuts.
There are many logical questions here. By what standard were the healthy people defined to be healthy? Do we
know they didn't have subclinical infections or that they didn't start showing symptoms within days of the test? What testing was done to confirm the people were completely healthy? What percentage of non-healthy people have detectable levels of antibodies against EA? Is it still 20%? Is it more? Is it less? How long do these healthy people retain EA antibodies? Did they only look at people within the first 5 years after infection? Would it mean something different if the EA antibodies were still detectable 20-30 years after the initial infection? Don't EA antibodies
along with symptoms of the infection mean something different than EA antibodies in a patient without symptoms? Did they look at the strength/functionality of the immune systems of the healthy people with detectable antibodies compared to the immune systems of non-healthy people with detectable antibodies or healthy people without EA antibodies? Could the 20% of healthy people with EA antibodies have more active immune systems than the remaining 80% of the population? If so, it wouldn't make sense to extrapolate data about that 20% to the remaining 80% of the population. Would EA antibodies in people with less active, or even weakened, immune systems mean something different?
I could go on like this for hours. Gross over-simplification of available information, poor interpretation of that information, and extrapolation
far beyond that data run rampant in medicine. Use logic, people!