Posted on 04/19/2020 3:27:33 PM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
Around a third of participants in a Massachusetts study tested positive for antibodies linked with coronavirus, according to researchers.
The Mass. General study took samples from 200 residents on the street in Chelsea, MA.
Sixty-four of the participants tested positive – a “sobering” result, according to Thomas Ambrosino, Chelsea’s city manager.
Ambrosino called Chelsea the epicenter of the crisis in Massachusetts. Chelsea has the state’s highest rate of confirmed cases, with at least 712 confirmed cases and 39 deaths – an infection rate of around 2 percent. ....
Doctors used a device made by BioMedomics to analyze the samples. The test hasn’t been approved by the FDA, but Mass. General approved the device for use.
....
While the participants appeared healthy, about half told the doctors that they experienced at least one symptom of COVID-19 in the past four weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Here are some links about the Stanford group / one of the key players:
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was one of the participants in the recent Santa Clara study that was quite interesting.
Preprint of the paper.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1
Conclusions The population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases. Population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections.
Good interview with him:
The Fight against COVID-19: An Update from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7v2F3usNVA
Well well well...probably the crud we and everyone else in the valley had half the winter was cv.
He knows it was a bio weapon and therefore not a regular virus. And who knows if/when China along with whoever else helped this along might decide to get another version going, which might be worse.
That’s one issue.
There’s still debate going on as to whether they are now immune. This is an incredibly important question.
This probably can’t even properly identify actual past infections.
They need an actual government study.
(I know, usually i wouldn’t say that, but now for this, i do)
I can assert with 99% confidence that myself, my wife, my youngest child, and two co-workers had the China Virus (I live in central Maryland) back in mid January—before anybody in America was talking about it. We all had bizarre symptoms—a very, very dry cough that practically burned your throat when you coughed. I could run on a treadmill for 35 minutes without issues but if I walked up a flight of stairs I had to catch my breath for 10 seconds. The ones who went to the doctor tested negative for the flu. The docs would say “It’s probably some type of bronchitis.” The same docs have told us recently that we definitely had it, as the symptoms are the exact same. Ironically, my wife’s friend lives in Iowa and tested positive for the China Virus. She had the EXACT symptoms, even the oddity of being able to run for long periods on a treadmill but being very winded by walking a flight of stairs. THIS VIRUS HAS BEEN LOOSE IN AMERICA SINCE AT LEAST THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR.
Chelsea is a dump. Believe me. I lived in Charlestown for over a decade. Parts of that were a dump too, but Chelsea is way worse
It’s not exactly random, though, is it? They sampled people who are inclined to be outdoors and walking about. I would hazard that skews it toward younger and healthier people.
They have antibodies. We HOPE they are immune. There seems to be some uncertainty about that.
The “D” in Covid stands for Disease, namely Corona Virus Disease. But there is a medically recognized difference between Disease and Infection. So in this study 30% are infected but do not have the Disease. This significantly changes the numbers that have been used to order responses. We’ve been baited and switched.
Could someone tell me the salient point in this brief excerpt.
Plain words...is finding antibodies a good thing or a bad thing?
I am not in the medical field and I don’t play one on TV.
Blessed Lord’s Day to you Null!
“Herd Immunity”
Here on FR people seem to use their own proprietary definitions for things as you were wisely pointing out the other day with CFR, case fatality risk, which they call case fatality rate. Here they changed that to mean the number of people dying solely because of COVID-19 over against all humans who have coronavirus antibodies. These definitions are fine until you try to compare this epidemic with historical epidemics.
In the case of this term, “herd immunity” would mean that susceptible people are partially protected because there are so many people immune. The virus cannot find them to infect them. The term does not presuppose eradication or suggest that eradication is possible without a vaccination program, because new births are happening and as more people are born the infection returns. The wikipedia article on “mathmatical modeling of infectious disease” is what I am going by.
What are you really asking? I wonder if I know, but I think that the term will probably not help with convincing people to restart society. Traditional established mathmatical epidemiology has not been followed by so many even here on our forum that there is no way for people to realize that there are legitimate models that can answer these questions. In other words, IMHO, those who reject mathmatical epidemiology should not borrow terminology from it.
Without an accurate R-naught you cannot compute the herd immunity threshold anyway. Estimates for this disease run from 83% to 94%. So if we say we go back to society when we reach herd immunity it could be years.
I think it’s a very good thing, if the findings are representative of the population at large, and the tests are accurate. Because, if they are accurate, it means that the percentage of severely affected people is lower than we thought. It also means that it might be closer to burning itself out than we’ve been told.
Of course, if the test gives a lot of false positives, then it is meaningless. We will see.
Chelsea is also VERY densely populated.
Thank you so much. I feel kinda better now.
You are not being told about the current testing what is coming:
Roche announced plans to launch its own COVID-19 antibody blood test early next month as a complement to its previous high-throughput test for active infections authorized by the FDA in March.
The company’s Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 serology test is designed to identify people who have previously been infected by the virus, especially those who may not have displayed symptoms, by detecting the body’s immune response to the infection.
“Every reliable test on the market serves its purpose for healthcare systems to help us overcome this pandemic,” CEO Severin Schwan said in a statement. “Roche is collaborating closely with health authorities and ramping up production to ensure fast availability of the test globally.”
The antibody diagnostic could also support screening of high-risk groups, such as healthcare and food supply workers, and potentially allow them to return to work with a measured immunity to the disease, according to the company.
Designed for Roche’s cobas analyzers, the blood test could also be used in epidemiological research to better track the global spread of the coronavirus. The fully-automated hardware can provide COVID-19 results in about 18 minutes and process up to 300 tests per hour with certain equipment.
“The antibody test is an important next step in the fight against COVID-19,” said Thomas Schinecker, CEO of Roche’s diagnostics division. “Roche’s antibody test can be quickly scaled and made broadly available around the world as our instrument infrastructure is already in place.”
The company said it is working with the FDA to secure an Emergency Use Authorization, though the agency is currently allowing developers to distribute validated serology tests ahead of official review.
Roche also plans to launch the test in European countries accepting the CE mark and said it is aiming for monthly production in the “high double-digit” millions by June.
RELATED: Roche begins shipping 400K coronavirus test kits per week in the U.S.
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/roche-to-launch-covid-19-antibody-blood-test-early-may
That system has been used by UC Davis for at least 4 weeks.
The same reliable test, S. Korea has been using has been available for about a 3-4 weeks in America at UC Davis, California
So what kind of games are being played at the testing level?
UC Davis Health speeds up COVID-19 testing [video]
Academic medical center in unique position to benefit patients in the Sacramento region
(SACRAMENTO) — Clinical pathologists, infectious disease physicians and scientists at UC Davis Health are collaborating on new reagents (substances used for chemical analysis), diagnostic tests and a vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus in hopes of preventing and ultimately treating the infection.
UC Davis Health’s Clinical Laboratory began internal testing March 19 with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assays (tests to determine presence of infectious agents) while, at the same time, developing high-throughput assays on the Roche Diagnostics cobas® 6800 System to meet an expected surge in cases. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted “emergency-use authorization” to UC Davis’ test in mid-March.
This week, UC Davis Health Clinical Laboratory specialists developed the capacity to run as many as 200 tests a day. The commercial device has the capacity to perform more than 1,000 tests per day if the need arises.
Lydia Howell, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Nam Tran, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and senior director of clinical pathology in charge of the COVID-19 testing at UC Davis Health, discuss the instruments, the testing and their implications for COVID-19.
Q: When did UC Davis Health acquire the Roche cobas 6800 system?
Howell: It was delivered in December. We had chiefly purchased it for oncology testing. We didn’t anticipate it was going to be used for this, yet there it was ready to go when this crisis came up.
Q: Describe the instrument and UC Davis Health’s strategy in putting it into operation.
UC Davis Health clinical lab scientists load the university’s newly installed Roche Diagnostics Cobas 6800 instrument for high-speed COVID-19 testing.
Tran: The Roche cobas 6800 is effectively a giant robot the size of an SUV. We knew we’d have to move with the flow of where the demand was then be able to scale, so we came up with a three-pronged approach:
The above tests and more tests are out there and more coming out on a regular basis.
“It’s small, but it is probably less systemically biased than many of the tests that have been reported. These are asymptomatic volunteers.”
Quick simple and similar to what Stanford did on the west coast.
Pure random not some statistician doing voodoo to get massaged results.
They were exposed sometime in the past and are now immune.
Quiet, now, you could ruin a billion $ industry built on bs.
Not. The decisions made were done with the best available data at the time. Intelligent decision-makers adapt as new facts become available. I consider Trump an intelligent decision-maker, don't you??
Which is why I said that getting to true randomness can be "difficult".
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