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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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good anecdote. I also had a "weird cold" in February with symptoms that are unusual for me but typical of COVID-19, and have been waiting to get the antibody test. I kind of expect it to turn out the same way. (Otherwise, I would really like to figure out what the "weird cold" that everyone had in February was. Because it sure was weird, and everyone I know had it.)

took this test this Friday (Quest Direct) in NYC and tested negative. In late Feb. I had a 'flu like symptoms' with fever and massive headache for few days. What worried me later is that I had the 'can't taste anything' symptom a week later. No coughing though. If you read online, you see people swear they had it at some point this winter. So, if you had a 'flu like' symptoms in Feb or early March, perhaps it was jus…

Keep in mind that many coronaviruses can cause loss of smell/taste.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

afaik there havent we havent observed major functional mutations in the virus

The Strain that was seen in ny was more deadly than the strain seen on the west coast. And I’m not sure how many others are out there.

they have a different lineage, but as I stated previously, no major functional mutations were observed.

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

#143
post #126
post #120

Great, now please make 100 billion and send a package to every household in the world.

I believe these require a blood draw.

People who have diabetes often do blood tests daily, at home, on their own, drawing a drop of blood from their finger with a lancet. If they can get it down to using a drop of blood, I think people could be convinced to test at least one member of the household daily. That should at least give us enough information to measure spread.

It would be new for most people but it's not unprecedented and I think people would figure it out quickly enough. Conspiracy theorists would ruin it for everyone of course.

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

#144

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?

While it's harsh to say: People die every day. The CDC officially states that, on average, ~880 people per 100,000 die every year in the United States (in 2017). Extrapolating that to NYC, this means that the city can expect to loose about 0.1% of its population every year (possibly even more; I imagine some forms of death are more prevalent in large cities. Possibly less; healthcare is better).

Yes, losing 2x+ the annual number in one quarter should be noticed. But, maybe the virus evolved additional transmissibility over time, or maybe it evolved to be a little more deadly.

It simply seems less likely that this virus was first noticed in November, by China, yet it didn't hit major urban areas in the rest of the world for another four months. We're too interconnected as a species; nearly half a million people came to the US from China alone, after COVID-19 was classified there [1]. It feels more likely that people have been getting it, and dying from it, well before March; these cases were just simply miscategorized as the flu.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...

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

#145

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…

Good anecdote. I also had a "weird cold" in February with symptoms that are unusual for me but typical of COVID-19, and have been waiting to get the antibody test. I kind of expect it to turn out the same way. (Otherwise, I would really like to figure out what the "weird cold" that everyone had in February was. Because it sure was weird, and everyone I know had it.)

Right there with you. I felt like I got hit by a truck, and wound up going to the hospital for IV + Tamiflu. Took three weeks to feel normal again, and usually I'm over a cold or actual flu within a week. I never skip getting my flu shot, either.

Two things come to mind: The first is that the day I went to the hospital, there were so many of us with similar symptoms that we overflowed down the hallway. Second, when the triage nurse was talking to me, she off-handedly commented that everyone was saying they'd gotten their flu shots, yet there we were. We both kind of shrugged and guessed it just wasn't a very effective year.

Now I very much wonder.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

From https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page I compute 0.23% of NYC's population has died of Covid-19, counting confirmed + probable deaths and dividing by 8.399 million people. That's 1 out of every 421 people.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good anecdote. I also had a "weird cold" in February with symptoms that are unusual for me but typical of COVID-19, and have been waiting to get the antibody test. I kind of expect it to turn out the same way. (Otherwise, I would really like to figure out what the "weird cold" that everyone had in February was. Because it sure was weird, and everyone I know had it.)

"Weird cold" in February checking in. I did not have any temperature variations or fevers, but I got struck with a fatigue like no other. For the first time since I was 3 years old, I took afternoon naps three days in a row because I was just completely wiped out. It's rare for me to take a nap at all (happens maybe once a year)! It took two weeks to get out of this fatigued state. My other symptoms were "chills-like…

"Weird cold" in February checking in. Fever, back pain, chills, post nasal drip. Felt bad for ~3 days and then felt better. Getting antibody tested tomorrow, will report back.

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

#148

> We tested 1,020 serum specimens collected prior to SARS-CoV-2 circulation in the United States and found one false positive This gives 95% confidence intervals of between 0.0% and 0.5% false positive rate.

Now is a perfect time for people to bone up on the rabbit hole that is binomial confidence intervals!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_proportion_confidence...

TLDR: whether you're a frequentist or Bayesian, the Jeffrey's interval is pretty good. Use Clopper-Pearson if you're a frequentist who is scared of undercovering.

I get 0.011% for the 2.5% quantile and 0.46% for the 97.5th quantile.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

hm, care to explain more? that's exactly how I think about it. Total deaths in NYC attributable to covid (~20k) over the total population (8.5M) = ~.25%. In my mind this is a very easy lower bound to estimate, what am I missing here? In anycase, even a rate of ~.1% would be absurd given ~20% of people are testing positive by antibody tests.

Actually, I was asking you to explain, or at least give your source.

I subsequently found what I believe you are working from here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page which does specify New York City (as opposed to New York State) so both the numerator and denominator refer to the same thing.

Interestingly, they appear to be using a larger denominator than your 8.5 million (NYC metro vs. NYC proper perhaps?) and get a rate of 0.175% = 175.66/100,000, eg in the "citywide total" line of https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/by...).

But this is at least closer to your figure than I was able to get previously.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government was serious about homeland security and restoring the economy they would be subsidizing testing full boat.

The government has made it clear that this is about politics and business, not safety or public health.

Not to put too fine a point on it, even if it is about politics and business it's practically crazy not to fully fund these kinds of activities. The ROI is staggering. It's pretty hard to imagine a price tag where it doesn't work out well for you.
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