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New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

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Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#121

Post by squnch »

samatman wrote: post #99
ghshephard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay - I'm going to reveal my statistics ignorance here - but if they did get a false positive, how does 0.0% fall within the range of possibilities (or is that allowing for it might be 0.0499..% or lower?)

All of the sibling answers are correct, but ignoring another possibility: that the timeline is simply wrong, and SARS2 was present in the US early enough that the "false positive" is in fact a true positive. Which can't lead to a "true 0%", since there's no such animal. But it could mean that all of the tests gave correct answers, in the trial.

They could be testing this on five year old samples.

Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#122

Post by bookofjoe »

charliea0 wrote: post #33

It is refreshing to read a headline about an antibody test that conveys useful information about specificity and sensitivity rates. This really helps to inform about how useful a test could be for serological surveys. Well done Hacker News.

I wrote the headline from information in the abstract.

Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#123

Post by MarkusQ »

xyhopguy wrote: post #94
jrockway wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on being open to thinking that COVID-19 arrived earlier than was initially thought. When I first shared my "weird cold" story on HN, the consensus was that I was a crazy person and there was no way that could be COVID-19. There would be more deaths if it had been here. But now there are some deaths, and a large number of people with "weird cold" stories, and it really makes me think that a lot of peo…

people say that because .25% of the population in NYC are dead from covid. we dont see those numbers here -- if it was widespread in feb, what caused the discrepancy?

> people say that because .25% of the population in NYC are dead from covid

Source? I can only get a rate that high by taking the highest death count I can find (which involves extrapolations to attribute deaths to Covid-19) for New York State and dividing it by the population of New York City (which is clearly invalid).

Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#125

Post by ofcrpls »

guscost wrote: post #40
cerebral_oasis wrote: post #38

I took this antibody test through LabCorp on Friday and tested positive. I have been in strict (see: paranoid) isolation with one other person since March 7 and haven't felt sick or anything close to it since then. I did have what I thought was a strange flu/cold early February with a sore throat, post-nasal drip, wildly varying body temperature, and lower back pains. In hindsight those are COVID-19 symptoms. the per…

Just took the Quest version today. I traveled a lot in February but only felt mildly under-the-weather once, so it's a long shot. Even if I was exposed, we don't really know the seroconversion rates for mild/asymptomatic cases.

Just back from the Quest draw myself. After a week's worth of drive tests in February with a colleague who had just come back after a 6 week vacation in EU with his family, I caught the nastiest flu I've had. Self isolated till I got better and after 1 day back in the office, the company imposed compulsory WFH.

Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#127

Post by MarkusQ »

squnch wrote: post #121
samatman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the sibling answers are correct, but ignoring another possibility: that the timeline is simply wrong, and SARS2 was present in the US early enough that the "false positive" is in fact a true positive. Which can't lead to a "true 0%", since there's no such animal. But it could mean that all of the tests gave correct answers, in the trial.

They could be testing this on five year old samples.

From the article:

> Specificity samples were derived from de-identified excess serum specimens sent to our clinical virology laboratory in 2018 and 2019.

So...not five years ago, and it is even possible that a significant number were from late 2019.

Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#128

Post by saiya-jin »

risaacs99 wrote: post #119
elorant wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viruses tend to become less lethal as time passes, not more.

I keep reading people asserting this, and I assume it's because we believe that a virus that becomes less lethal would have an evolutionary advantage. But, wouldn't lengthening the incubation period also be a successful evolutionary strategy regardless of lethality? It seems to me that there are many possible strategies that a mutating virus might gain an advantage and we shouldn't just assume that the only one that…

'Tend to' doesn't mean some conscious, directed effort. On large enough scale, this is generally the more probable direction, and that's about it. Its truly random by nature.

It can very well go the other way as with 1918 'spanish' flu. Or it can change in ways that won't affect overall mortality much.

Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#129

Post by adrr »

danans wrote: post #53

It seems like a voluntary test for someone without symptoms is of limited value to the individual (beyond their individual curiosity) since we don't know enough either way about reinfection risk at this point, and the result is not terribly actionable - you can't just walk into stores without a mask because you have a positive antibody test - nobody is going to trust your lab result printout as a reason to avoid publ…

People hav held off seeing their parents. If I knew i had antibodies, I’d plan a trip later in the summer to live with them and do all the shopping to decrease the risk of them getting infected.

People with antibodies are the best people to provide services with the at risk population.

Re: New Abbott SARS-CoV-2 antibody test has 99.90% specificity and 100% sensitivity

#130

Post by londons_explore »

How can one measure such high sensitivity and specificity rates when no other test has such high rates?

Surely the only way to measure a test is to compare against ground truth data, which can only come from other test processes, and therefore can never reach 100%?

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