Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Antibody testing is beginning. These test will show who had the coronavirus and as a result their blood contained antibodies to the virus. One of the interesting findings from the initial coronavirus testing found in the San Francisco Bay area was that the total number of infected were 85 times higher than those whose coronavirus test results showed they were currently infected.

Other antibody testing, most recently a test in Massachusetts produced similar results. What does that mean? Several things. First, there are many, many people who are asymptomatic (individuals that do not show symptoms). Second, the coronavirus is endemic in the U.S. population. Third, approaches such as contact tracing is meaningless at this point. Fourth, the fatality rate for COVID-19 is very small, similar to that from the common cold.

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. Participants remained anonymous and provided a drop of blood to researchers, who were able to produce a result in ten minutes with a rapid test.

Sixty-four of the participants tested positive – a “sobering” result, according to Thomas Ambrosino, Chelsea’s city manager.

“We've long thought that the reported numbers are vastly under-counting what the actual infection is," Ambrosino told the Boston Globe. “Those reported numbers are based on positive COVID-19 tests, and we're all aware that a very, very small percentage of people in Chelsea and everywhere are getting COVID-19 tests."

He added: “Still, it's kind of sobering that 30 percent of a random group of 200 people that are showing no symptoms are, in fact, infected. It's all the more reason for everyone to be practicing physical distancing."

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. Since participants remained anonymous, the doctors could not inform those who tested positive of their results.

Researchers hope to establish new test sites in other cities, with plans to obtain the identities of participants so they can be informed of their results.

“Knowing how many people are infected is critical," said Dr. Dean Xerras, medical director of the Mass. General Chelsea Healthcare center. “We need to get them isolated. We need to get masks delivered to the city. We need to launch more safe isolation sites. We need to be able to identify cases and then give people the things they need to prevent perpetuation of the spread."

Massachusetts is currently the third-most infected state in the country, with around 34,400 confirmed cases and 1,400 deaths.

Source: One third of participants in Massachusetts study tested positive for antibodies linked to coronavirus

Last edited by jimmy m on 21 Apr 2020, 3:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Have you watched Dr Chris Martenson's video about the faulty methodology in those samples?

I linked it on Sly's Coronavirus thread (second video), but I don't think I'm allowed to cross-post it here.

I just wonder what your thoughts are on the flawed statistics.

On the one hand that's good -- it means this is much less dangerous that was widely believed. On the other hand, it makes me really wonder about false positives. "Coronavirus" is a category, and I wonder how successful they really are at distinguishing the Wuhan Coronavirus 2019 from others.

No I haven't watched the video but I did read an article that might be related yesterday. I thought about sharing it but I figured it was so far down in the noise level that it would float over most people's heads.

Coronavirus: False Positives, False Negatives And The Trouble With COVID-19 Mass Testing

I wouldn't exactly frame it as flawed statistics but rather error bars. It relates to "false positives" and "false negative". This is a function of Sensitivity and Specificity.

But my sense is that the observed antibody trends are real. This is because there are a variety of different tests regimes being conducted and the results tend to agree. For example, in one nation in Europe they tested the blood being donated to the blood supply and found many, many more people infected than the infection rate observed in coronavirus testing.

^ I think that was Holland where they ran that analysis, another member has posted more details on (I think) Sly’s CV thread in The Haven.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-vaccine-uk_uk_5e9f02c8c5b6b2e5b8385a37
UK trials of a coronavirus vaccine on people will begin on Thursday, health secretary Matt Hancock has said.

The tests in Santa Clara and Chelsea, MA were faulty, including the antibody tests. The actual kits were produced in China and their accuracy rating is below the threshold for proper statistical inclusion. Also, the sponsors of the SC test did not use a random sample of participants and the authors have a conflict of interest. It's a very interesting report.

There is an interesting article on Wired concerning this.

New COVID-19 Antibody Study Results Are In. Are They Right?

All of that might be moot if the testing devices used in both surveys turn out to be flawed. The results come amid widespread concerns about the accuracy of blood antibody tests—especially the rapid lateral flow tests like the ones used in this study. The Stanford preprint referred to a test from Premier Biotech, based in Minneapolis, but that company is only a distributor. The firm that makes the test, Hangzhou Biotest Biotech, was previously identified by NBC as among those recently banned from exporting Covid-19 tests because its product hasn’t been vetted by China’s equivalent of the FDA. A representative for Premier Biotech confirmed to WIRED that the same test was used by the Stanford and USC researchers. (On Monday, a USC spokesperson emailed WIRED a statement from Neeraj Sood, the lead researcher, acknowledging the test’s origins and noting they were exported legally, prior to the ban.)

At Stanford, the researchers performed their own validation of the tests and found only false negatives, not false positives.
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That, at least, is one point everyone in this debate agrees on: More serosurveys are a good thing, and will ideally involve properly validated tests and representative populations. “We should be rolling out these tests to everybody,” said Martin Hibberd, an infectious disease researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

While Hibberd called the methods used in the Santa Clara study “dubious,” he also said the group’s conclusions do likely point in the right direction—that the fatality rate will come down as more undetected cases are uncovered. That’s true of any disease outbreak. Other initial serosurvey results trickling in over recent weeks, from places like Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, as well as China, seem to back that up. While the rates of seroprevalence vary—from 1 percent among Scottish blood donors tested in mid-March to 15 percent in one hard-hit German town—they all generally point to lots of untested people. But it’s still a matter of how many. “It’s been guesswork really,” Hibberd added. “Just to see the first bit of data is quite exciting.”

In the Netherlands, for example, the seroprevalence figure of 3 percent released Thursday by Sanquin, the national blood bank, wasn’t exactly cause for celebration. “I hoped for a few percent more,” Hans Zaaijer, a microbiologist at Sanquin who is leading the testing effort, wrote in an email to WIRED. He noted false positives are an issue with the test they used as well. (More accurate lab-based blood tests are currently being reserved for health care workers; Sanquin’s study anonymously tests the blood of anyone who donates to the bank.) But for Zaaijer, the takeaway is clear: With only 3 percent of the population showing the antibody, many more people could still be infected by Covid-19, and herd immunity—if it exists—is a far-off vision. The plan in Holland is to keep on testing the blood bank supply once a month.

That kind of repetition will be important if we want to answer more complicated questions about the disease, according to Michael Busch, director of the Vitalant Research Institute, which is partnering with the National Institutes of Health to test antibody prevalence in blood donations in six cities across the US. Those tests will also happen monthly, which is useful not only for tracking the spread of the disease over time, but for validating results and ironing out potential biases. (Blood donation tests aim to be more representative than Facebook targeting, but they also skew toward healthy people who are eligible to give blood.)

Their method involves lab-based blood tests from Abbott and Ortho, which were validated in the past week by the FDA and are generally held to be more accurate than the finger prick tests. They will do additional validation on all results that come back positive. “That’s what we do, always,” he said. “We do repeat testing and confirmatory testing so we’re absolutely sure it is a positive for antibodies.” A separate study is also planned to track individuals with confirmed infections to see whether these people’s antibody levels wane over time, and use that data to help calibrate the population-based results. And there are plans too to expand to more cities over time to get a better sense of the national picture.

In short, it’s likely we’ll have to wait a little longer before we have clear numbers about how many people have been exposed to this virus and how many have died from it. And when making important policy decisions that affect life and livelihood, that’s a good thing, Busch said: “It’s a big deal to do it right.”

Thanx, mate.

I'm not arguing with you, about the American "Fox News".
I just don't know.
But, over here in Australia, Fox/Sky News is a quality information outlet,
Moreso than the heavily left-leaning ABC, which by the way, is meant to be politically impartial.

BTW,
Australia is more secular than America.
A lot of conservatives, here, don't have a significant religious affiliation, if at all.

My information source is predominantly Sky News,
And I have found it very reliable.
They also have left-wing political commentators on many of the shows I watch, giving a more balanced assessment of world and domestic events.

From what I have seen, CNN is not a particularly reliable news source, and extremely left-wing.
From what I have seen, they are *extremely* anti-Trump.
I have a major problem with partisan journalism.

OI!
I saw here first!
I call dibs.



I find that hard to believe.

The presence of CV is so low, here in Australia, that I have lifted my boycott on some fast foods.
(KFC chicken pieces have always been on my menu because I re-deep fry.)

I also prefer watching Sky News and especially the Bolt Report.

It is great to have a forum like this where Aspies can share their experiences with inherent resistance to social conditioning. If anybody is like me, they have an extremely fine-tuned BS meter...and especially when it comes to anything out of the WHO.."the virus is caused by bats, but reopening of the wet markets is a-okay".

There is a fine line between the "surreal" and the "unreal" and it's like walking on the razors edge.

Oh, in Victoria, you can't go fishing in a tinny alone because you'll be killing someone's grandma...in New South Wales, we can still go out fishing alone in a tinny because there is no risk...so apparently, the coronavirus can tell what state it is in because the leaders of that state say so.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-09/ ... t/12132614

The virus also knows racial differences too! If you are a Koori, social distancing rules don't apply because that is "white man's law"..skin colour makes you immune it seems.

Oh and the virus also respects politicians..."you must stay at home unless you are doing something essential...and voting in a council by-election IS essential".

Not to mention that I am not allowed to sit alone on the beach, but going into Woolies on pension day is a-ok.

All the Humanitarian lawyers have thrown their collective hands up in the air going "whatever"..

I mean, this is hard enough for a neurotypical person to get...but for an Aspie, it's like "just tell me when the meteor is gonna come that blows us all to smithereens... kthxbai"

More non-coronavirus patients may die than coronavirus patients because they're not getting the care they usually would.

“I think the toll on non-Covid patients will be much greater than Covid deaths,” a New York cardiologist said.

From the New England Journal of Medicine:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/N ... 4?query=RP

They're quite anti-Trump, but to claim they're left-wing is to ignore how they actually cover left-wing causes and progressive politicians. They're deeply establishment, populists like Sanders and fake populists like Trump terrify them, but it doesn't make them left-wing.