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I was reading another forum on C-D and several mentioned that because of giving blood or some other reason they found out they have the antibodies. They were not sick or if they had mild symptoms they did not go and get tested. I know there are stories of people getting it twice. But would it not make sense to see who has at and at least their risk factor as well as likelihood they will give it to someone else will be greatly reduced?
Obviously you cannot force everyone to get tested. But make it free, anonymous and encourage it. I imagine most people will opt in.
Moderator edit: FYI for all participants in this thread. The OP has since made it clear that he is talking about voluntary testing.
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 09-10-2020 at 04:35 PM..
A few reasons, but a main one is this: Those tests are not "instant." Just because you tested negative TODAY means nearly nothing.
If you test positive today - it does not mean you're contagious. You may have had it months ago. So there is some small benefit there - you can stop worrying about catching it.
But the number of contagious folks who are NOT showing symptoms across the USA is quite small...maybe 1 in 300 or less? And the tests aren't 100% accurate either. And as you pointed out, "most" people might do it - but some, not. So - if the stars align nicely, it is possible it would make a tiny difference. But consider this:
Most spread is from folks not doing the right thing (masks or distance) to other folks not doing the right thing (distance) - and those folks are not likely to do the right thing (Pin prick test) if it were optional.
CoV testing is a political talking point ("Look how much testing we're doing!" vs "You're not doing enough testing !")...It has no practical medical value and only limited epidemiological value.
a)The tests are not very accurate. You can't trust the result.
B) A negative test today doesn't mean you won't be positive by the time you get the results. The result of the Ab test doesn't necessarily mean you're not shedding the virus.
c) It isn't certain that the Ab measured confers lasting immunity. (Although with 27,000,000 confirmed infections world-wide, maybe there's two cases of re-infection known.)
4) We don't know the mutation rate for CoV...Eg- if you had influenza last year, you're probably still immune to that particular strain, but this year's strain is most likely a different one, so you can get flu again. Knowing your immune status to last year's strain won't help this year.
Given the near useless value of doing large scale testing, why waste the money better spent elsewhere?
Politics have blown CoV way out of proportion. Young kids essentially aren't affected by the bug; college age kids are 30x more likely to die from alcohol related problems than CoViD; Adults 45-65 are just as likely to die in an auto accident as from CoV....
Only those 65+ are at real risk...Only they need to take particular precautions.
Unfortunately Covid testing has been politicized, but testing for antibodies are a different animal. To test everyone would require a sophisticated testing program that doesn't exist here. A lot of the tests for antibodies are not accurate.
Just because the press isn't reporting reinfections of Covid doesn't mean they don't exist. I personally know of a case here that the media never talked about. Was it reported to the CDC? If it was, are those numbers covered up? If there's one case like that, there's many many more that we don't know about.
If someone tests positive for antibodies they may wrongly assume that they can just go about their life before Covid, and that's just wrong. Testing has shown that antibodies wear off which means you very well may get the virus again. Until we know for sure, we all have to remain vigilant.
You are 100% spot on for point number 4 guidoLaMoto. Influenza will always be a part of our yearly infections, just like RSV. There are two subgroups of RSV and several strains in both subgroups that circulate yearly. Influenza has about 3 strains that circulate. If Covid mutates like RSV? I shudder to think. You would need multiple tests to figure out which strain, and by the time you do? It's already spread like wild fire. We know how contagious this is.
Young people die from this, and I personally know of a 30 year old male nurse that died in the big box hospital I used to work at after being on a ventilator since April. People young and old have long term complications. Some are lucky that they are asymptomatic carriers. This bug is not to be taken lightly. We are creeping up on 200,000 American's dead. The H1N1 pandemic killed around 12,000 in a year with around 60 million infected here. Covid has killed over 10x that amount in 8 months with over 6 million infected.
Nobody should want to play Russian Roulette with this bug. Nobody!
Antibody testing is useless at this point because we simply don't know enough about the virus, how it's mutated, and if you can get it again.
As has been mentioned, testing doesn't reveal much except the status of the person tested--AT THAT MOMENT..The next day that person could very easily become infected while waiting for the test results which deem them to be infection free. We can only wade through this by taking every precaution available to us, masking up, cleaning up, isolation as much as possible, etc. We're all hoping for a more efficient treatment regimen, vaccinations being up in the air, with all manner of political leanings surrounding that issue.
Most of the politicization of this viral disease stems from the fact that American's have failed to take the needed precautions in order that they aren't "inconvenienced" or held back from their need to be entertained at every opportunity. Religious rallies have recently been held wherein people are not wearing masks, so testing of any kind can't compete with that kind of carelessness. The fools will hold the rest of us in their grip of give a damn, because that's how the new freedom riders roll.
Since people have already gotten it more than once, I’m not sure what benefit it would serve. It would just be like testing for a cold. Apparently one person who got it again didn’t have symptoms the second time, but that didn’t mean he was not able to transmit it. Social distancing isn’t just to keep you safe, but to keep others safe. Since there are several strains, all the antibody test tells you is that you got one of the strains.
I was reading another forum on C-D and several mentioned that because of giving blood or some other reason they found out they have the antibodies. They were not sick or if they had mild symptoms they did not go and get tested. I know there are stories of people getting it twice. But would it not make sense to see who has at and at least their risk factor as well as likelihood they will give it to someone else will be greatly reduced?
Obviously you cannot force everyone to get tested. But make it free, anonymous and encourage it. I imagine most people will opt in.
I'm pretty certain my wife and I had China virus in December. Initially I thought I'd get tested, but then thought better of it. I don't want my name on some faceless bureaucrat's list if they decided they need to track for some reason. I also never bought into the fear porn that so many have. And now we are seeing as many suspected, they inflated the death numbers and manipulated other numbers to keep people scared and to harm Trump.
The biggest reason to test for antibodies is to locate people who can donate plasma. Convelescant plasma is possibly the best treatment for those with Covid-19 that we have available today.
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