COVID-19 Thread

[homer]

Question: can you test someone and find out if they ever had the virus (this is assuming the person does not actually have COVID at the time of testing)?

 

Just wondering if anyone knew this answer.

 

Yes I think that's what the antibody testing is. My wife can get that through her work (she's at a research hospital and they want to do it as part of a study).

[Machu Peach]

Question: can you test someone and find out if they ever had the virus (this is assuming the person does not actually have COVID at the time of testing)?

 

Just wondering if anyone knew this answer.

 

Yes I think that's what the antibody testing is. My wife can get that through her work (she's at a research hospital and they want to do it as part of a study).

 

Yep, antibody testing will let you know if someone has had an infection, but does not give insight into if that person is currently infected. There's also a 7-14 day delay before the body starts making antibodies, so it will not detect a new infection.

[igor67]

I've seen a few places start to mention concerns over false positives and false negatives, which is going to be an issue if we move into a large scale phase. Especially with an antibody test there is a permanent tension between false positive and false negative. You can do somethings to improve both, but there is always a trade-off in error rates. For antibody testing I would assume they would prefer a higher false negative rate. Better for someone to think they can still catch it than the reverse. But when you are testing millions of people even small error rates really add up.

[reillymcshane]

Question: can you test someone and find out if they ever had the virus (this is assuming the person does not actually have COVID at the time of testing)?

 

Just wondering if anyone knew this answer.

 

Yes I think that's what the antibody testing is. My wife can get that through her work (she's at a research hospital and they want to do it as part of a study).

 

Yep, antibody testing will let you know if someone has had an infection, but does not give insight into if that person is currently infected. There's also a 7-14 day delay before the body starts making antibodies, so it will not detect a new infection.

Thanks for the reply.

[jerichoholicninja]

I've seen a few places start to mention concerns over false positives and false negatives, which is going to be an issue if we move into a large scale phase. Especially with an antibody test there is a permanent tension between false positive and false negative. You can do somethings to improve both, but there is always a trade-off in error rates. For antibody testing I would assume they would prefer a higher false negative rate. Better for someone to think they can still catch it than the reverse. But when you are testing millions of people even small error rates really add up.

 

I'm not sure what good figuring out who has had it and who hasn't is. It only makes a difference if surviving it gives you future immunity but everything I've read is that it's not looking like that's going to be the case.

[FVBrewerFan]

I've seen a few places start to mention concerns over false positives and false negatives, which is going to be an issue if we move into a large scale phase. Especially with an antibody test there is a permanent tension between false positive and false negative. You can do somethings to improve both, but there is always a trade-off in error rates. For antibody testing I would assume they would prefer a higher false negative rate. Better for someone to think they can still catch it than the reverse. But when you are testing millions of people even small error rates really add up.

 

I'm not sure what good figuring out who has had it and who hasn't is. It only makes a difference if surviving it gives you future immunity but everything I've read is that it's not looking like that's going to be the case.

 

 

Because their plasma may be able to be used to treat other patients. In fact, if they can nail that down it is arguably the best treatment short of a vaccine.

[igor67]

Where are you seeing reports that people won't have immunity? It's not impossible, but is incredibly rare. In Aids it happens because the virus specifically targets cells of the immune system that rely on antibodies to work. To my knowledge their is no evidence of the virus specifically going after white blood cells. People think it happens with colds, but there are so many different viruses responsible that immunity against that specific one doesn't help against completely different viruses. And flu, but there the issue is one of a very unusual genetic make-up that allows flu to evolve rapidly from year to year. I have not seen anything to suggest that covid fits into any of those categories though rapid enough mutation is a theoretical possibility.

[reillymcshane]

This morning, I asked wife how many COVID test her organization can run in a day - with the supplies they have. She said a couple of hundred.

 

She said they could run many, many thousands if they had the supplies to do so. But they just don't. They are trying to coordinate with state and federal officials for a steady flow. Nothing yet - but let's hope soon.

 

This is why politicians are saying the state 'can' run 50,000 tests (or whatever number they use) per day - but the reality is much lower - at least for some healthcare systems.

 

The good news is that supplies are reaching some places. The Mayo Clinic reportedly can do lots of testing - but as a federal research partner, they have access to a lot more resources.

[MrTPlush]

Anyone who in person voted during the election seems to automatically be counted as a election related positive case. Seems to be a pretty questionable way to base how they got it. That number currently stands at 19.

 

Wisconsin saw the biggest one day jump yet...mostly due to Brown County and the meat plant, which accounted for 88 of those cases. Most of the rural counties have slowed to a crawl when it comes to new positive cases.

[igor67]

The article I had seen indicated that only 8 of the 19 were strongly linked to voting, the others were identified as having had other potential risky contacts.

[BrewCrewForever]

I live in Ozaukee County and here I believe we have had only three new confirmed cases in the past week.

[jerichoholicninja]

Where are you seeing reports that people won't have immunity? It's not impossible, but is incredibly rare. In Aids it happens because the virus specifically targets cells of the immune system that rely on antibodies to work. To my knowledge their is no evidence of the virus specifically going after white blood cells. People think it happens with colds, but there are so many different viruses responsible that immunity against that specific one doesn't help against completely different viruses. And flu, but there the issue is one of a very unusual genetic make-up that allows flu to evolve rapidly from year to year. I have not seen anything to suggest that covid fits into any of those categories though rapid enough mutation is a theoretical possibility.

 

I've read so many articles about this thing that I can't remember where but next time I see one I'll make sure to link it here.

 

The last few days the articles I've read have been about how many different things the virus does and the symptoms it causes. So basically if you have any of fever, chills, headaches, a cough, digestive issues, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, blurred vision, forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, numbness or tingling in limbs, loss of sense of smell or taste, or feel perfectly fine you could have COVID. [sarcasm]We've really got this thing nailed down.[/sarcasm]

 

And my personal favorite, doctors are telling people that test positive who have mild or less symptoms to not go to the ER until they are having shortness of breath. However, new research is showing that once you've reached that point there's really nothing they can do and whether you recover or not is pretty much up to your body.

[wallus]

So is plasma going to be the golden ticket here? How many patients can be treated per recovered donor? I know it is still in trials but am curious if a person can just keep donating like they would at Biolife (2 times per week).

[igor67]

While I'm optimistic on plasma, until the studies finish its hard to say. I would like to think that since Mayo is running the study they have the right expertise to have designed something fairly conclusive (as opposed to some of these smaller pilot type studies) that could still be wrapped up relatively soon. I do not have any direct experience with clinical trials, so there maybe some bottlenecks I'm unfamiliar with.

[FVBrewerFan]

Is anyone aware of site that tracks Wisconsin's metrics daily? The only number easy to find every day is number of deaths. DHS website doesn't seem to publish a lot of the relevant data, at least I haven't been able to find. It would be very helpful to be able to easily see these metrics every day in one place:

 

Number of new hospitalizations

Current number of hospitalizations

New and cumulative cases

New and cumulative deaths

New and cumulative tests

Percentage of positive tests

 

All of the above should also be graphed so you can see the trend day to day. Just seems like they must be tracking these things, and it should be easy to publish?

[Blunt36]

JS Online has something here:

 

https://projects.jsonline.com/topics/coronavirus/tracking/covid-19-cases-testing-and-deaths-in-wisconsin.html

 

Doesn't include hospitalizations, but include cases, deaths, and tests.

[stoutdude04]

So I'm reading the hydrocychloriquine(sp?) studies have not gone well and in one of them it actually killed more than helped. Sucks that it didnt have a noticeable effect for people, but perhaps we can leave that alone for the people that it was intended. Hopefully the plasma angle works. I know nothing of donating plasma. Is it similar to giving blood?

[homer]

So I'm reading the hydrocychloriquine(sp?) studies have not gone well and in one of them it actually killed more than helped. Sucks that it didnt have a noticeable effect for people, but perhaps we can leave that alone for the people that it was intended. Hopefully the plasma angle works. I know nothing of donating plasma. Is it similar to giving blood?

 

I used to donate when I was in college. Basically it's the same as donating blood. They filter out the plasma and then return your blood to you the same way they took it. That's assuming they do it the same way for this.

[stoutdude04]

So I'm reading the hydrocychloriquine(sp?) studies have not gone well and in one of them it actually killed more than helped. Sucks that it didnt have a noticeable effect for people, but perhaps we can leave that alone for the people that it was intended. Hopefully the plasma angle works. I know nothing of donating plasma. Is it similar to giving blood?

 

I used to donate when I was in college. Basically it's the same as donating blood. They filter out the plasma and then return your blood to you the same way they took it. That's assuming they do it the same way for this.

 

Right on. Thanks for the info.

[sveumrules]

Is anyone aware of site that tracks Wisconsin's metrics daily? The only number easy to find every day is number of deaths. DHS website doesn't seem to publish a lot of the relevant data, at least I haven't been able to find. It would be very helpful to be able to easily see these metrics every day in one place:

 

Number of new hospitalizations

Current number of hospitalizations

New and cumulative cases

New and cumulative deaths

New and cumulative tests

Percentage of positive tests

 

All of the above should also be graphed so you can see the trend day to day. Just seems like they must be tracking these things, and it should be easy to publish?

 

There is a link to "download state data" on the WI DHS website, though I have no idea how detailed that data is...

 

https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/outbreaks/index.htm

 

Download link is underneath the summary table.

[igor67]

It looks pretty detailed, but in a format that requires some work to understand and more work after that to process it.

[thebruce44]

Where are you seeing reports that people won't have immunity? It's not impossible, but is incredibly rare. In Aids it happens because the virus specifically targets cells of the immune system that rely on antibodies to work. To my knowledge their is no evidence of the virus specifically going after white blood cells. People think it happens with colds, but there are so many different viruses responsible that immunity against that specific one doesn't help against completely different viruses. And flu, but there the issue is one of a very unusual genetic make-up that allows flu to evolve rapidly from year to year. I have not seen anything to suggest that covid fits into any of those categories though rapid enough mutation is a theoretical possibility.

 

I've read so many articles about this thing that I can't remember where but next time I see one I'll make sure to link it here.

 

The last few days the articles I've read have been about how many different things the virus does and the symptoms it causes. So basically if you have any of fever, chills, headaches, a cough, digestive issues, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, blurred vision, forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, numbness or tingling in limbs, loss of sense of smell or taste, or feel perfectly fine you could have COVID. [sarcasm]We've really got this thing nailed down.[/sarcasm]

 

Reminds me of this:

 

[reillymcshane]

Is anyone aware of site that tracks Wisconsin's metrics daily? The only number easy to find every day is number of deaths. DHS website doesn't seem to publish a lot of the relevant data, at least I haven't been able to find. It would be very helpful to be able to easily see these metrics every day in one place:

 

Number of new hospitalizations

Current number of hospitalizations

New and cumulative cases

New and cumulative deaths

New and cumulative tests

Percentage of positive tests

 

All of the above should also be graphed so you can see the trend day to day. Just seems like they must be tracking these things, and it should be easy to publish?

This site does some of those things - but not all:

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[nodakfan17]

Brown County will apparently report 101 new cases today. That should bring us over 500. What a black eye for this community. We had 3 a month ago. And all because we can’t go 2 weeks without a hamburger.

[MrTPlush]

[sarcasm]Can all you city slickers figure out how to not infect each other so this can all end?[/sarcasm]