Nicholas Christakis has a good Twitter thread about testing for the coronavirus here. Thanks to Steve for sending it to me. By the way, I've followed Christakis' work in the past. He's good in terms of the medical science.
However, in case people don't wish to read his thread, here are what I perceive to be the main takeaways in non-technical language:
1. Everyone has been talking about "testing". What this means is swabs. Like they'll swab the back of your throat and your nose with a Q-tip thingy, then send it off to a lab to process, and eventually send you back a result. Swabs reveal the presence of coronavirus.
2. However, if someone has had the coronavirus, but recovered, then a swab test won't reveal the presence of coronavirus inasmuch as their immune system would have more or less eliminated coronavirus.
3. Instead, we need a blood test (serology) in order to reveal someone who has had coronavirus but recovered. That's because blood tests will reveal antibodies our immune system has produced against the coronavirus. So blood tests are basically testing or looking for the presence of antibodies against the coronavirus.
(By the way, that's generally how vaccines work too. Vaccines provoke our immune system to create antibodies against a particular disease.)
4 We need to be doing both types of tests. Swab tests and blood tests.
5. If someone has recovered from the coronavirus (i.e. there are antibodies present in their blood), then they are effectively immune from the coronavirus.
6. Also, they aren't contagious.
7. They can go back to school or work, go shopping, run errands, whatever. As such, Christakis argues, it would be good for our economy and society if we can prioritize finding out who is immune to the coronavirus so we can send people back into the work force and so on.
8. What's more, as there are more immune people walking around, this will confer a degree of herd immunity on society at large. The immune will be like a buffer to keep others from getting infected with coronavirus.
(Again, this is the same with vaccination in general. For example, if some people aren't vaccinated against the measles, but if everyone else is vaccinated against the measles, then the greater "herd" will protect the "weaker" ones in the herd who aren't immune from the measles and prevent the "weaker" ones from getting the measles. That's because the measles can't spread through the entire population unchecked if enough people are vaccinated and immune to the measles. The measles can't cut through a community if it hits a wall of immune people.)
9. When we have tested a representative sample of people, we will be able to have more accurate statistics. Christakis states we might find the fatality rate is "much lower than we have been fearing".
Alan
ReplyDelete1. Paul Thomas is funny. I wouldn't call him a "leading" pediatrician. He's always been a bit kooky. Kind of a (Christian) hippie country doctor. But anyway he has an eccentric position on vaccinations. And he cherry picks a lot of his studies. Not that I entirely agree with David Gorski, but he brings up a number of issues with Thomas here.
2. You don't like being called an anti-vaccination proponent? Well, here are some oddities with that statement. You don't vaccinate with common vaccines (like the MMR). You argue that vaccines contain "toxins" in them. You argue that parents shouldn't allow their children to be injected with vaccines because vaccines contain "aborted fetal tissue" in them (here). You argue that there haven't ever been any studies on vaccine safety or efficacy that you can trust. You argue that the "medical establishment" or "Big Medical" as well as "Big Pharma" are in some sort of a conspiracy out to get the average American. You bring up problems with vaccines and vaccination almost every chance you get. So contrary to what you say, these sorts of things would seem to strongly suggest you aren't exactly supportive of vacccinations!