Posted on 03/18/2020 2:49:46 PM PDT by LibWhacker
A test can see if a person has ever been infected, even if they had no symptoms. by Antonio Regalado Mar 18, 2020
How widespread is the new coronavirus? How many people get it and don’t even know? What is the actual death rate?
Those are some of the biggest questions that science doesn’t have the answers to. But a team at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City just developed the very test we need to tell us.
Their test, described in a preprint paper released today, looks for tell-tale antibodies to the coronavirus in people’s blood, and is similar to the most widely used type of test for HIV.
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Tests like this show whether a person's immune system has ever come in contact with the virus and could give an accurate picture of how many people have been infected, a figure disease modelers and governments urgently need to gauge how deep society’s shutdown needs to be.
The new coronavirus has killed more than 8,700 people, which is about 4% of the 214,000 confirmed cases, making for a shocking death rate.
But the real fatality rate among everyone infected by the virus is certainly lower, and possibly much lower. The reason epidemiologists can’t say for sure is they don’t know how many people are infected but never go to the hospital or even have symptoms. In essence, modelers are missing an accurate denominator of the death-rate calculation. Sign up for The Download — your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Also stay updated on MIT Technology Review initiatives and events? YesNo
That’s a huge problem for setting policy. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, writing March 17 in the publication STAT, argued that the true death rate could be less than that of the seasonal flu. If so, “draconian countermeasures” are being decided amidst an “evidence fiasco” of “utterly unreliable” data about how many people are infected.
Just this week, a report estimated that early in the outbreak only 1-in-5 to 1-in-10 of the actual infections were being documented documented.
Currently, the US and other countries are ramping up efforts to test people quickly. That diagnostic test, called PCR, looks directly for the genetic material of the virus in a nasal or throat swab. It tells people with worrisome flu symptoms what they need to know: Are they infected with the new coronavirus right now?
The new type of test asks a different question: Has a person’s body ever seen the germ at all, even months ago?
If someone has been exposed, their blood should be full of antibodies against the virus. It’s the presence, or absence, of such antibodies to the virus that the new test measures.
The Icahn team, led by virologist Florian Krammer, says the new test could help locate survivors, who could then donate their antibody-rich blood to people in ICUs to help boost their immunity.
What’s more, doctors, nurses, and health-care workers could learn if they’ve already been exposed. Those who have, assuming they are now immune, Krammer suggests, could safely rush to the front lines and perform the riskiest tasks—like intubating a person with the virus, without worrying about getting infected or bringing the disease home to their families
Other scientific centers, including in Singapore, also say they have antibody tests running as do some US companies selling products to researchers. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also says its is developing one.
To make their version, the Icahn team produced copies of the telltale “spike” protein on the virus’s surface. That protein is highly immunogenic, meaning that people’s bodies see it and start making antibodies that can lock onto it.
The test involves exposing a sample of blood to bits of the spike protein. If the test lights up, it means that you have the antibodies.
To check their test, the team inspected blood samples collected before Covid-19 came roaring out of China this year, as well as blood from three actual coronavirus cases. According to Krammer, the test can pick up the body’s response to infection “as early as three days post symptom onset.”
To learn the true extent of infections, the next step for researchers, in New York and elsewhere, will to carry out "serological surveys" in which they'll do the test on blood draws large numbers of people in an outbreak area. That may tell them exactly how many cases have gone unnoticed.
But it could be sometime before scientists learn the answer. Krammer says the effort to carry out a wider survey is "just starting."
I think my daughter had it, moderately. She works in a destination town that caters to a fair amount of asians
measles/chickenpox/ebola/flu/rhinovirus are just as capable of sending the frail elderly off the heaven just as easily as this china flu....
“different in nation”
Are you saying you are pretty sure it was not the Wuhan virus? How did you treat it? How long did it last.
I think my wife has something like that now. She has chronic heart failure and I am concerned.
I’m very worried about what we are not being told. Last night I spoke with my son who is about to leave to Afghanistan for months. He told me Google is blocking You-Tube videos about Chinese research on using high dosage Vitamin C to save people from the acute respiratory distress of serious Covid-19 infection. I thought he must be wrong, although he has access to information I do not. So, today I checked and found indeed his information appears correct. This link provides information and links for further exploring the Covid-19 research efforts. However, below the link I am adding their quote on the critical censorship issue.
News of vitamin C research for COVID-19 is being actively suppressed
Anyone saying that vitamin therapy can stop coronavirus is already being labeled as “promoting false information” and promulgating “fake news.” Even the sharing of verifiable news, and direct quotes from credentialed medical professionals, is being restricted or blocked on social media. You can see sequential examples of this phenomenon at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/themegavitaminman .
Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has, literally, met with Google and Facebook and other media giants to stop the spread of what they declare to be wrong information. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/02/14/facebook-google-amazon-met-with-who-to-talk-coronavirus-misinformation.html?__twitter_impression=true
Physician-directed, hospital-based administration of intravenous vitamin C has been marginalized or discredited. Scientific debate over COVID-19 appears to not be allowed.
Ironically, Facebook, blocking any significant users’ sharing of the news of approved vitamin therapy research, is itself blocked in China by the Chinese government. As for the internet, yes, China has it. And yes, it is censored. But, significantly, the Chinese government has not blocked this real news on how intravenous vitamin C will save lives in the COVID-19 epidemic. Here is the protocol as published in Chinese: http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v16n11-chi.shtml
Medical orthodoxy obsessively focuses on searching for a vaccine and/or drug for coronavirus COVID-19). While they are looking for what would be fabulously profitable approaches, we have with vitamin C an existing, plausible, clinically demonstrated method to treat what coronavirus patients die from: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or pneumonia.
And it is available right now.
My entire life I have read about conspiracies to suppress Vitamin C therapies for one disease after another.
60 years of conspiracy to suppress means only one thing to me now. More quacks pushing the same old conspiracy to sell their overpriced supplement version of a very cheap vitamin. It’s right up there with the 100 mpg carborator being suppressed by big motor companies.
There are numerous published studies of various quinine based malarial drugs being used effectively as well as several others. Powerline had a nice set of links to some.
The media is on fear-mongering overdrive because they want to trash the Trump economy and they have succeeded. Covid is a problem, but not a plague level problem.
My daughter believes several members of our family had it in February. We thought it was the flu, but the symptoms were not typical of flu. The cough was terrible, and I ended up having a chest xray to rule out pneumonia.
My son is certain he had the virus in Dec. West coast business visit, ended up at home at VA emer room twice with
pneumonia. Lungs filled with fluid. He is convinced his San Fran/Seattle experience was the culprit.
Except for a few “specialty” VItamic C products with other substances included, Vitamin C itself is very inexpensive. On the other hand if Big Pharma can suppress information about the effectiveness for C for the very serious lung difficulties, then people will have to buy their expensive drugs and vaccines. The fact is that other animals our size produce 2 to 4 grams of C a day. I have taken 3 to 6 grams a day over 3 or 4 spacings since our bodies secrete excess in 5 or 6 hours for over 45 years. I take the higher doses when allergies are bad—house dust, cool weather mold, ragweed among others. If I start to houseclean my nose will get completely stuffed up until I remember to take one or two grams of C. Then my sinuses open up again in about 20 minutes. When I think of the money I have saved not having to buy a $4 box of 20 allergy tablets when I could get the C for 5 cents a tablet or less. I did see a report that Vitamin D might also be helpful which I have to research, but I am already taking 2000 to 5000 units of D a day. At this point I just want to live to be 82.
I do hope you actually read the link I posted before debunking my comment. I would not even have known about the current suppression if my military son had not told me, which turned out to be correct.
Bookmarking
What I’m saying is... I don’t believe that conspiracies to suppress information can exist globally and over 60 years. For every study saying it does X there is another that says no statistical difference from placebo.
The fact is that the medical community right now is doing trials of a very old and cheap malarial drug to treat Covid-19 in multiple countries and rapidly publishing their results. Nobody is going to make money off of it anymore than they would if it was vitamin C.
Or - they will suddenly agree - great way to get even more DNA samples than they have already collected........
Tonic water contains quinine. My husband had malaria as a kid and would drink tonic water if he started feeling ill.
Google search:
“Quinine’s primary benefit is for the treatment of malaria. It’s not used to prevent malaria, but rather to kill the organism responsible for the disease. When used to treat malaria, quinine is given in a pill form.”
And, “Today, quinine is rarely used for medicinal purposes. The FDA recently banned its use as a cure for leg cramps due to the negative side effects that can result from ingesting large amounts, such as headaches and fever. Some bad reactions to quinine have even been fatal.”
My husband has been making his apple cider vinegar potion with tonic water for years.
There isn’t enough quinine in tonic water to make you sick unless you are allergic to it.
It was pills that the “more is better” nimrods were overdosing themselves with.
Hallelujah
I made a correction different in nature than a typical cold/virus. I do suspect it was WUFLU.
I hope your wife is doing ok, be vigilant to keep her away from people. I]
It would be useful for getting people back to work period.
We are doing well. Self quarantining, exercise equipment, cooking, gardening when not raining:)
The nephew is a thoracic surgeon at a local hospital and he caught it from the resident who trains under him who caught it from a patient they operated on about two weeks ago that ended up having the virus.
The fiance is an anesthesiologist at another hospital and the hospitals are hesitant to test their staff because they're fearful of ending up short of doctors and workers.....
High doses of vitamin C are not harmless. It can cause kidney damage, among other things.
One should not take very high doses 10 or more grams for long periods of time. But as a rare life saving measure it is very helpful in reducing inflammation and has anti-histaminic and white cell producing benefits. A very few cases of kidney stones have have been caused by long term high dose use. I have taken 3 to 6 grams a day for over 45 years and never gotten the excretary symptoms of burning urine or acid gas. When my allergies to house dust, cigarettes, cool weather mold, and ragweed flare up I can tell by my nose getting stuffed up or sneezing. I take 1 gram, and if my nose hasn’t cleared in an hour I take another gram, that almost alway proves to be enough.
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