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A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January

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Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January

#31

Retrospective antibody testing should be viewed carefully, given the relatively low specificity (i.e., high rate of false positives). If there’s a high clinical suspicion (could be relevant in this case, though it may also represent the normal flu), the utility of the testing improves.

Where are you getting low specificity for antibody tests? Most I’ve seen are 98+% with lower sensitivities.

Ah, I'd be quite interested seeing your 98+% specificity antibody!

Looking at the three out of four FDA EUA-approved serology tests (see https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/emergency-situations-med...) most do not report sensitivities up to 98%, with the notable exception of Ortho Vitro, though the diversity of the samples they test isn't described.

1. Cellex - https://www.fda.gov/media/136625/download

2. Ortho Vitros - https://www.fda.gov/media/136967/download

3. Chembio - https://www.fda.gov/media/136963/download

Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January

#32
I came back from CES to home in Eugene, OR, and fell ill. I missed 10 days of work. I am an anesthesiologist, and I knew that I have a viral illness (high fever, myalgias, SOB, etc). At the time I tested negative for influenza. Interestingly, I've been in a quarantine for a month. And I wore N95 for two weeks prior to the quarantine, because of my super paranoid wife. So if I can get tested for antibodies, it will be almost certainly CES, if I am positive.

Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January

#34
post #29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three reasons to why it may not have been "noticed": 1. Early on it had only spread in a small percentage of the populace so the absolute number of deaths was too low to be noticed. 2. The deaths from the regular flu this year were very low, see: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ 3. The antibodies test out of Europe and NYC are pointing to an IFC around 0.35-0.6 which could "only" be 3-6x the bad 2017 flu seas…

I'm sorry, what is IFC?

Sorry IFR, infected fatality rate instead of case fatality rate (which is usually confirmed cases)

Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January

#35
I went to CES this year, and a week and a half after (a typical incubation time for Covid-19) I started coming down with a strange lower respiratory illness that involved joint aches (my sacroiliac joint in particular, which I think I had stressed horribly the past year, suddenly became excruciatingly painful as I got sick to the point where I couldn't sleep), and intense on/off fevers/chills that lasted way longer than I am used to... and yet my cough was unproductive, I had no sinus or other involvement (which I always get), and I simply didn't have any other symptoms I am used to with a flu; it essentially seemed like "pneumonia maybe but with the wrong progression".

Regardless, I was knocked out for a while due to the fevers and lack of sleep. When I was just sort of getting better, I was visited by a coworker who, two weeks after he saw me for a day--and he notably spent most of that day with me, including multiple meals: we are two people at the top of a small company and I had been sick a while, so we had a lot to catch up on)--got sick with what we later determined was Covid-19 by positive test (but like, weeks later, at which point I hadn't been sick for a long long time, so there seemed no point in trying to use a viral test on me).

FWIW, we have good alternative explanations for where he got Covid-19, where I got sick with a shorter incubation time (involving me getting very little sleep while traveling to a handful of back-to-back events), and why I had joint pains (a particular series of flights and car trips that were similar to what I think first caused me issues a year ago... I didn't understand this until a month later, btw: I am changing my style and quantity of travel); but I really wish it were easy for me to quickly get an antibody test to see whether I have already had this (though that still won't ever tell me for sure as I could have had an asymptomatic case more recently... le sigh).

Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January

#36
post #20
post #17

Disclaimer: this is my own anecdote. I'm not trying to spread misinformation. These are my personal opinions. I think we'll eventually find out COVID-19 has been around way earlier in 2019 than we thought. I've seen both here on HN and elsewhere anecdotal reports of people having a "flu like nothing before" in late 2019 and early 2020 in the US . There's at least one report of Italian doctors seeing a "strange pneumo…

Same disclaimer applies for my comment, and adding that I'll be throwing out some of my own crackpot theories... I'm in NYC, and am convinced my family had it in February. This leads me to also wonder if it wasn't rampaging its way through NYC for months before we had a confirmed case. My wife went to urgent care in tears because of breathing problems, a fever, etc. All we know was it was not the flu or strep and she…

1. There's a Dr. House episode* about this phenomenon.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox6HWOjbDSI

Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January

#37
post #35

I went to CES this year, and a week and a half after (a typical incubation time for Covid-19) I started coming down with a strange lower respiratory illness that involved joint aches (my sacroiliac joint in particular, which I think I had stressed horribly the past year, suddenly became excruciatingly painful as I got sick to the point where I couldn't sleep), and intense on/off fevers/chills that lasted way longer t…

I was in Seattle (where it supposedly entered the US) in mid-December and got pretty much the same symptoms as you, a week and a half after!

Everyone else on the trip was sick, too.

I've never had the flu.

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