Antibody testing

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/immunity-passports-could-speed-up-return-to-work-after-covid-19

Our mortality stats are not accurate if we don’t know the total number of cases.  Is it possible that we have all been exposed and are now immune??? 

 Is it possible that we have all been exposed and are now immune??? 
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Who is we?  The entire population of the US? World?  If that were the case then why are there new cases?   Get real

Thanks for the correction. I meant: Is it possible a large percentage of Californians were already infected and only had mild symptoms?

It's unlikely that asymptomatic immunity is a common thing.  Covid is deadly.  It's fatal to somewhere between 0.1% (fatality rate for the flu) and 1% (fatality rate in Wuhan) and we haven't seen those kinds of fatality numbers in CA.  (The actual fatality % won't be known until there's more testing available, but Covid 19 is definitely more fatal than the flu.)

BTW, CA is doing a really good job with social distancing.  We passed 100 deaths on Sunday, compared to NY's 1300.  For perspective, we have a population of almost 40 million people compared to NY's 8.6 million.

Keep an eye on places like Florida (pop. 21.6 million) if you want to see what we're trying to avoid.  It's more than a little sad to see the Governor there so slow to issue a state-wide stay in place order.  Those crowded beaches are going to kill a lot of people in another week when the 14-day incubation period is over.

Moving past the rhetorical comments, I think we'll have an anti-body test and in the coming months it will be as important as the detection test is today, if a foolproof "passport" system ca be implemented it will allow a quicker return to normalcy for them, and ultimately for everyone else. IMO.

Moving past the rhetorical comments, I think we'll have an anti-body test and in the coming months it will be as important as the detection test is today, if a foolproof "passport" system ca be implemented it will allow a quicker return to normalcy for them, and ultimately for everyone else. IMO.

I agree. And I think it will also do wonders to calm some to the hysteria.

There surely are (and have been) many with moderate symptoms and probably a good number that were asymptomatic who were never tested. Would you go in for testing if you only had mild symptoms, and risk getting infected? Personally, I'd like to stay as far away from hospitals as possible. That is to say that I think it's pretty clear that we're only testing the sickest.

As one small datapoint, I'm on the faculty at SJSU, and I saw a lot of students who returned from China in January coughing and sneezing during the first few weeks of the semester. One of my Chinese master's students was quarantined in China before he could return for school (he had a fever when trying to board public transportation). So far, I've only heard of 2 people associated with SJSU who tested positive. That's simply implausible, IMHO. But, of course, the only way to know for sure how large of a population has had it is antibody testing.

As to the death rate, the numbers from South Korea are the most reliable as they've tested the largest percentage. But even there, it is just an upper bound. In any case, it's highly dependent on age and other risk factors. The median age for those who have died in Italy, for example, is nearly 80, and the vast majority of those had other significant health issues.

So, we have an easily identifiable at-risk population, and an easily identifiable virtually-no-risk population (under 40 without other risk factors). To think total lockdown is the only way to deal with it is, IMHO, absurd. Locking down rural areas with low population densities makes little sense. Personally, I think there should be a lot more experimentation going on to see what works. In that respect, it'll be particularly interesting to see what happens in Sweden if they stay the course with their non-lockdown approach.

It's unlikely that asymptomatic immunity is a common thing.  Covid is deadly.  It's fatal to somewhere between 0.1% (fatality rate for the flu) and 1% (fatality rate in Wuhan) and we haven't seen those kinds of fatality numbers in CA.  (The actual fatality % won't be known until there's more testing available, but Covid 19 is definitely more fatal than the flu.)

BTW, CA is doing a really good job with social distancing.  We passed 100 deaths on Sunday, compared to NY's 1300.  For perspective, we have a population of almost 40 million people compared to NY's 8.6 million.

Keep an eye on places like Florida (pop. 21.6 million) if you want to see what we're trying to avoid.  It's more than a little sad to see the Governor there so slow to issue a state-wide stay in place order.  Those crowded beaches are going to kill a lot of people in another week when the 14-day incubation period is over.

NY’s problem is there states size to person ratio, Cali is way bigger then NY. If we rounded the number you got about 4.5 X the residents in Cali in an area larger then 4.5 X the size of NY. It’s contagious they got less room to stay away in!

Plus Cali and the Bay Area got in front of this early. New York still had crowded subways and trains as they started to spike. Our governor and the people that advise him have done a great job not to mention the mayor’s and county supervisors

Yeah, my point was that California was way ahead in declaring SIP, so we're showing much lower infection numbers. It's amazing to see the difference leadership, information, and population can have.  All 50 states and the federal government are different in terms of all three.

We are _really_ lucky that our leadership had it's particular batch of information, chose to issue a SIP request, and that the population followed it. NY had good leadership, and a good population, but insufficient information (they realized infectious spread too late), so they're getting crushed.  Florida doesn't seem to be doing well on any of the three fronts.  DeSantis still hasn't ordered SIP across the state, suggesting that only some of FL is at risk.  They're going to see high infection numbers in the next couple of weeks...

Its the same with Taiwan.  My relatives live there and say things in Taiwan are fairly stable and movement is normal with cautions in place. 

Singapore and South Korea, although dense in population, were able to go on with business as usual without SIP because they were testing 20,000 people per day, both symptomatic and asymptomatic. They started testing aggressively early on.

Today I just got an email from kaiser telling me I don’t need to get tested if I have mild symptoms. That’s the problem here in the states. We aren’t testing enough, and we need to test asymptomatic people.

If you look at the number of tests administered versus the number of positives it becomes clear that the tests are mostly being used to confirm suspected cases.

I guess that’s better than nothing, but until we start testing on a much larger scale we’ll miss a  vast number of people who are either asymptomatic (and will remain that way) or asymptomatic because they are still in the incubation period.


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Singapore and South Korea, although dense in population, were able to go on with business as usual without SIP because they were testing 20,000 people per day, both symptomatic and asymptomatic. They started testing aggressively early on.

Today I just got an email from kaiser telling me I donÂ’t need to get tested if I have mild symptoms. ThatÂ’s the problem here in the states. We arenÂ’t testing enough, and we need to test asymptomatic people.

Interesting. Not too long ago my daughter (17 months old) had a little bit of a fever and seemed to have a sore throat. Based on the fact that her cousins (who she saw frequently before the SIP orders took hold) had recently tested positive for strep, we contacted Kaiser to ask if she should be tested for strep, too.

I learned two things. First, kids her age very rarely get strep throat (woohoo!). Second, Kaiser was no longer offering strep tests. They needed ALL of the throat swabs for covid-19 testing. They said they had switched to a policy of prescribing antibiotics based on phone/video appointments alone if they suspected strep. Seems like a recipe for growing antibiotic resistant pathogens, if you ask me!


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German antibody study

For $125.00 you can get the antibody testing. The lab is in Richmond and the results are available in about 15 minutes. They may have other labs around the Bay Area.

https://testmeforcovid.com/ads/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsefu4_nY6AIVUDpPCh3-Jg2VEAEYASAAEgJNjfD_BwE