Nicholas Kristof: "If confirmed, this could be a breakthrough" blood test for COVID-19

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

Nicholas Kristof ✔@NickKristof

If confirmed, this could be a breakthrough: It would be a blood test to determine who has had #COVID19 and thus probably has immunity. This would let us know the scale of asymptomatic infection and let us assign those with probable immunity to frontline duty. Bravo, researchers!

medRxiv @medrxivpreprint

A serological assay to detect SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion in humans https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.03.17.20037713v1 … #medRxiv

1:27 PM - Mar 18, 2020

🤞🤞🤞🤞

[Hoyt]

1. Good. At this point, determining those who might have immunity may be more important than

identifying those with active virus. Right now, we should be assuming everyone has it (since we can't test them daily or so).

[Thekaspervote]

8. YES! The larger the number with herd immunity the better

[Duppers]

2. Hopes up, please let it be so.

Fingers crossed here too. 🤞

[uponit7771]

3. K&R

[Glimmer of Hope]

4. Researchers amaze me. I don't know how they do it.

[SergeStorms]

10. They don't waste their time...

groveling on their knees to some invisible angry-daddy to spare them from whatever current crisis they're having. I've worked in research labs most of my life. You can't be afraid of failure. 99.9% of what I did in my work-life failed. There were different teams attacking a problem from different directions, and we all worked together toward a single goal. After a shitload (a genuine scientific term!) of misses, we finally made some headway, and that's when the real work began.

It's like a laboratory game of 'Battleship'. You keep narrowing down the area where that Battleship could be, by missing.........often. But when you finally do find out where that Battleship is, and you finally sink it's ass....... Then it's party time. For a little while. Then it's back to work, finding out where that next 'Battleship' is hiding.

[intrepidity]

17. And it chaps my ass to no end to hear Asswipe say "we"

when he speaks of the scientific community.

The fucker who has cut millions from the NIH.

[ffr]

5. Science to the rescue, saving both those who understand it and those who try to destroy it.

[lagomorph777]

6. Science is smart. Can it come up with a way to destroy anti-science people selectively?

Or should we just let them destroy themselves?

[zentrum]

7. Bravo! Fingers crossed.

[area51]

9. We could all use some good news. n/t

[JT45242]

11. Herd immunity with reinfection issues question

Since several reports have people getting reinfected with Covid-19, is there such a thing as immunity? Can herd immunity occur if you can get it again?

I am not a virologist, but I know that they now say that just because you got chicken pox as a kid does not mean that you are immune to shingles even though they come from the same virus.

Admittedly more data is better than less data, but not sure how this plays out. Anyone with better knowledge of viral infections have an answer to this?

[pnwmom]

13. I think the question might be whether they were actually re-infected, or if they hadn't fully

recovered when they were first deemed recovered.

I notice in WA, with all the cases we've had, they still only list one recovered case, so I'm guessing they're being conservative about that judgment now.

[JudyM]

18. What pnwmom said.

They’ve found active virus hiding in the lower GI/excrement of folks who had supposedly recovered. Meaning that they tested negative with an upper GI swab. This is also important because it can be spread by what’s called the oral-fecal route. Think folks not vigorously washing their hands after a bathroom visit, then whatever they touch, possibly for the next several hours, can spread it to someone else.

[paleotn]

12. That's huge!

[Lonestarblue]

14. That would be fantastic.

Though I seem to remember reading something a month or so ago that having the disease did not mean future immunity and that someone in China had been reinfected.

[matt819]

15. Yes, and if pigs could fly. . .

Speculation is kind of pointless. If it works, that's great. Then all they have to do is test it, confirm the tests, get everyone on board with it, and then get the information to every hospital on the planet. No sweat.

Otherwise, re all of the above - never mind.

[intrepidity]

16. Frankly, I'm shocked its taken this long

No doubt this is true, but why has it taken this long? With the number of labs worldwide focused on this, and with all of the prior SARS tools developed, this should have been already rolled out in clinical settings.

I just hope from here on, it goes lightening fast -- this test will help tremendously.