1/3 of randomly tested people in Massachusetts has antibodies to covid

Serology testing is not useful to detect infection because it becomes positive too late. It is useful for detecting immune response but has limited use at this stage.

Probably its most immediate use is identifying candidates for convalescent plasma therapy which has some applications in severe cases but not without its problems (cost, scalability, transfusion reactions).

Detecting asymptomatic spread in the community after the fact is somewhat useful to strategize ways to reduce community spread and improve the accuracy of models.

But using it to identify immunity for return to work is actually not possible right now because of two key questions we don’t have enough information to answer. 1) what level of antibodies gives is immunity if any level does? 2) how long does that immunity last?

It will be a while before those two questions can be answered and we will have to depend on data from China and S Korea about reinfection rates since they were the first countries to have cases.

 

But isn't this precisely what we've been concerned with from the beginning?

Please, enough with the reliance on Communist China for anything. They are confirmed incorrigible liars. They simply cannot be trusted. You only discredit yourself by suggesting them.

 

Nope. The real concern is the patients in hospital that are overwhelming hospitals and dying. Knowing how many asymptomatic cases there are does not help them. It does help those who try to downplay the severity of covid19 by falsely suggesting that lots of asymptomatic spread means this disease has low mortality rate and is nothing to worry about. But as I keep saying, the mortality rate is not the main problem with covid19.

They have the patients who have recovered the longest so useful immunity data will come from them first. The Koreans will be close behind. I don’t trust the Chinese government at all but Chinese researchers and doctors know that if they want international respectability they need to be truthful and will be quickly discovered if they are not in this question since the rest of the world will soon catch up to them with recovered cases.

 

It looks like you are deliberately trying to cloud the issue or sidestep the question here. If there is zero concern about those who have the virus but don’t warrant testing or treatment, then there is zero reason to shut everything down as they have done. The only solution would be to build, supply, and staff more hospital facilities to take care of patients. Why in the world would we not want to know the details on the path of the pathogen ASAP?

It looks like you deliberately have your head in the sand here. Imagining that the Chinese Communist medical community is entirely separate from the Chinese Communist government is grossly naïve.

 

As I have said many times before, the main problem of covid19 and why we need social distancing and lockdowns is not the mortality rate of covid19 but it’s infectivity and hospitalization rate. We already knew there many undetected and asymptomatic cases. Having more accurate data on that would show an even higher infectivity rate than our data suggests, justifying the lockdowns even more. The hospitalization rate would be calculated as a lower percentage (something like 10% instead of 20%) of cases and the peak might be lower. It would still overwhelm health systems due to the shear volume and need social distancing and lockdowns to prevent health system collapse and to buy time for management/treatment options.

 

You have to look at motivation for lying. There is no motivation for lying about research that will easily be disproven a few weeks later. It would destroy your career as a researcher.

 

Normally yes. When there are political stakes, all bets are off. This is why Dr. Oz is so concerned about the current politicization of medicine. Politics is about lie and win now, apologize later. The ends justifies the means.

 

I agree that the politicization of medicine is a big problem. If research or doctors are supported or vilified because their findings or actions support the views of a political leader or party instead of long established medical practices, like using randomized control trials over anecdote and opinion to establish the efficacy of drugs, that is a big problem.

 

Dr. Oz has been calling out this lie as well. He's basically calling you a liar, claiming all the studies are anecdotal. Yes, randomized placebo studies are preferable, but when there is no time for that, there are other numbers you can look at. I've heard many doctors explaining their clinical studies, comparing their results to what they would expect from the current statistics on the disease. The findings were significant. Yet, because of politics, they are called anecdotal. You've been participating in this, unforiuttnalty, being hyper-political yourself.

 

You just did it again. Sidestepped, ignored, clouded. Who said anything about mortality? I didn't, only you did. I can well understand your fears. But those aren’t data. How do you know what you will find without doing the actual investigating? How do you even know how well people are practicing social distancing? Again, why would you not want to know the details on the path of the pathogen ASAP?

 

Their career and reputation belong to the state. They will do what they’re told, or else. If the state wants to delay something a bit longer for whatever reason, they're expendable, and so are their families.

 

I would think liability alone is a motive for the Chinese government to cover this up. They will deny this to the bitter end.

 

I directly addressed the issue of whether knowing more accurately the level of asymptomatic cases would change the need for lockdowns. It does not because the lockdowns are in place because of the number of hospitalized patients.

It is still useful to know for modelling purposes and eventually when we get more information about immunity.

 

And the state wants to show the world they conduct world leading research. If it is easily shown 1 month later their research was flawed, yes the state would destroy their careers.

 

Communist China doesn't want to show the world anything, it only wants to deceive the world into believing its lies. By causing and exacerbating this pandemic, they have shown the world who and what they really are—a worldwide menace. Of course most sensible people were already well aware of that, but now everyone should be painfully so, those that manage to live through it, that is.

China should lose all credibility, but won't because of it's stranglehold on so many, including the WHO.

How WHO Became China’s Coronavirus Accomplice

 

You are merely assuming the reason for the current status based on your own confirmation bias. You do not know how well people are actually practicing social distancing, and the "lockdowns" won't hold for long.

The rate of hospitalization is much lower than predicted, but there is no proof why. We do not know the rate of infection, and we do not know how many have already had the virus or how many now have the virus. All we know are the stats on those actually tested. This outbreak is not just being politicized, it’s also being monetized, incentivized, so that accurate statistics may never be available.

 

So it is just my assumption that lockdowns and social distancing is trying to reduce infection spread, hospitalizations and prevent health systems from getting overwhelmed? Where have you been for the last 2 months?

Like I said ealier, serology results are important for those who for political reasons are trying to downplay the seriousness of covid19 because they are hoping people aren't very good at math and can't calculate that a lower percentage of a bigger number of infected people is still the same number of hospitalizations that overrun health systems and the same devastating number of deaths.

It changes where the peak is but it doesn't even matter what will happen in the future. There could be zero deaths and zero cases from now on and what has already happened is already devastating. Yet somehow if the death rate was only 1% and not 5%, that matters to some people when you are talking about 40,000 lives in 7 weeks.

 

This is the issue right here. It's not the death rate or the infection rate, it's the high number of deaths in the short amount of time. It's over 42,000 deaths now.

 

You know, for someone whining so much about others bringing up the mortality rate, you sure do it a lot yourself. I didn’t bring it up, you did. And you’re missing the point.

We need studies and testing to determine the reality of the actual spread. We don’t even really know how well people are practicing social distancing. Extended shutdowns without really measuring this is tantamount to going by confirmation bias.

Seems there were some gradeschool jokes about that sort of thing with the punchline, “See how well it works?”

And this has been going on since December cloaked in Communist China-WHO lies, not 7 weeks.

 

Well, it's 5 hours later and the death toll is 43,200.