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I can't say why or why not Trump or whoever hasn't made a bigger deal of this. Only Trump can.

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I can.

Because if he's wrong, there would be hell to pay. Without actual/factual data, I would not make this claim either. It could cause people to be careless, only to contract it...again, and further tax our already stressed healthcare system.

If you have contracted it and cleared it, you still will show a negative. You can NOT assume negatives don't have the antibodies. It's not an antibody test, that is what would show 50+% have contracted CV19, not a virus test on < 5% of public.

AgGrad99 said:

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I can't say why or why not Trump or whoever hasn't made a bigger deal of this. Only Trump can.

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I can.

Because if he's wrong, there would be hell to pay. Without actual/factual data, I would not make this claim either. It could cause people to be careless, only to contract it...again, and further tax our already stressed healthcare system.

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I think this is also why everyone is going with 18 month to a vaccine. The technology may prove out to be faster, but who is going to commit to a timeline.

For example, making flu vaccine is primarily done by growing virus in chicken eggs. Current vaccine tests include an mRNA vaccine... we can grow mRNA in yeast a heck of a lot faster than chicken egg virus. Also Baylor College of Medicine had a candidate protein vaccine for SARS (but there wasn't funding to complete the clinical trials once everyone forgot about SARS) that grew proteins in yeast as well.

If one of these approaches proves successful, we can throw a lot of bioproduction capacity at it very quickly and really shorten the time to make doses. But no one is going to throw out a timeline based on that because if we don't meet it, everyone will panic.

thirdcoast said:

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If you have contracted it and cleared it, you still will show a negative. You can NOT assume negatives don't have the antibodies. It's not an antibody test, that is what would show 50+% have contracted CV19, not a virus test on < 5% of public.

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Yes, but all evidence suggests it takes a month to clear the virus. The timing doesn't line up unless everything we know about the virus is wrong.

Genetic testing indicates a single jump from animal to human in Nov. could have been one bat to multiple humans, I suppose, but even the Chinese are thinking maybe there were cases in mid Nov and the market was a spreading point rather than the source.

5-7 days between contacting it and spreading it. There just isn't the timeframe to support 50% of the population in the US getting it before the end of Feb (so it would be cleared by now). Also, the epidemics with the medical cases peaking now or in a month isn't consistent with a virus that has already spread through half the population and been cleared. We would have seen a spike in the medical cases in Feb or early March, not in a few weeks from now.

Also, if you cleared it already, you wouldn't be having symptoms. So the theory would be someone had it, was asymptomatic, cleared it, then contacted some other virus to get the symptoms. That would suggest we have the wrong virus, yet we see the % positive cases grow in hotspots, just like we see as we go from early flu season to peak flu season.

Necrosis said:

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ED doctor here. This is a NOVEL VIRUS. It's literally in the name. No one has immunity to this virus by definition. It's a relative to Coronavirus in the since that it shares the same name. But it might as well be a different race. Your body has no antibodies to defend against it until you are exposed which is part of why it creates such an immunity ****storm that ultimately can lead to death. There are no easy answers here. We have to be strong and disciplined to snuff this fire out. I'd urge you to stop looking for excusing and treat this grass fire with the respect it deserves.

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so, uh, doc.... my... uh... friend... has a problem with... you know nevermind NO PROBLEM!! HEH HEH

You might note how complex hepatitis B antibody testing algorithms are, for acute vs. chronic.

The short answer to any/all non-laboratorian/physicians reading this is that antibody testing is not simple. The immune system is wonderfully complicated.

bloom said:

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We need the antibody test to determine who has been infected and recovered. I feel like this number is pretty significant. Think of all of the (especially under 40) people who have been sent home with a "you don't have the flu so it is just a virus" diagnosis since January.

The UK is all over this. I wish we were for the sake of our economy

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/uk-coronavirus-mass-home-testing-to-be-made-available-within-days

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Just because we know it isn't the guy doesn't mean it isn't cv. This gets brought up time and time again, but it's still an argument from ignorance. Getting a negative flu test simply means you could have any one of a myriad of viruses or other infections. You can't infer what it is from what it is not without knowing the full set of all possibilities and eliminating all of them.

Tell them they're just as bad as the Alien meme guy. "We don't know what it was, so it must be aliens coronavirus."

thirdcoast said:

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Necrosis said:

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ED doctor here. This is a NOVEL VIRUS. It's literally in the name. No one has immunity to this virus by definition. It's a relative to Coronavirus in the since that it shares the same name. But it might as well be a different race. Your body has no antibodies to defend against it until you are exposed which is part of why it creates such an immunity ****storm that ultimately can lead to death. There are no easy answers here. We have to be strong and disciplined to snuff this fire out. I'd urge you to stop looking for excusing and treat this grass fire with the respect it deserves.

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Obviously no one has immunity prior to contracting and beating it, I don't think anyone is claiming that immunity existed otherwise.

What exactly is an "immunity shytstorm"? I thought it was basically onset of pneumonia that is leading to death in small minority in of cases in compromised immune systems. Are you basically making the same point I am, that absense of durable immunity is the core problem, and once durable immunity is prevalent, this virus becomes much less of a threat?

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What he's referring to is the cytokine storm, where your immune system goes overboard, and causes multi-organ failure and death, despite ventilatory support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome

ABATTBQ11 said:

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bloom said:

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We need the antibody test to determine who has been infected and recovered. I feel like this number is pretty significant. Think of all of the (especially under 40) people who have been sent home with a "you don't have the flu so it is just a virus" diagnosis since January.

The UK is all over this. I wish we were for the sake of our economy

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/uk-coronavirus-mass-home-testing-to-be-made-available-within-days

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Just because we know it isn't the guy doesn't mean it isn't cv. This gets brought up time and time again, but it's still an argument from ignorance. Getting a negative flu test simply means you could have any one of a myriad of viruses or other infections. You can't infer what it is from what it is not without knowing the full set of all possibilities and eliminating all of them.

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The typical rapid flu test, typically conducted in clinic when patient presents with flue symptoms, has a pretty substantial false negative rate. In some cases, it can be as high as 90% of positive cases will present as negative test result when compared to a qPCR test. More typically it is 30-50%.

Additional, a respiratory infection panel can test for about 2 dozen viral strains (various influenzas, human Coronas, SARS, MERS, and many more) as well as a about dozen bacterial strains and even a fungus.

There is a lot of space there for flu like symptoms that is influenza negative on the rapid test and not COVID-19.

However, as is typical, as we get further into an infection season, the proportion of positive results will increase. For flu, if you look at the flu survey results, we from about 10% positive to about 30% positive at the peak flu season. We are seeing the same thing in NY with COVID19. Initially low % positive (~10%) to a high % positive as the number of COVID19 cases become far more prevalent than the other causes of respiratory disease.

I find it interesting that many med pros here see Dr. Fauci statements around immunity in OP as a guess, false hope, or dangerous messaging. I suppose he is worshipped when preaching about a shutdown to protect hospital capacity, and irresponsible when he talks about betting his entire experience that short term re-infection is "inconceivable", and years long immunity is "certain" in successful Cv19 recoveries.

Regardless, lots of good context and opinions,l on topic. I do think months down the road this durable immunity aspect will play a bigger role in combating this virus than people think today, as the current focus is on healthcare capacity etc.

Not sure what the "increasing evidence" is, but IF true, it may support the idea that more than 50% population already has antibody durable immunity. Asymptomatics aren't getting tested, but imagine if all of them were recorded as positive and what 50x more survivors would do to mortality rate and healthcare capacity projections.

Necrosis said:

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ED doctor here. This is a NOVEL VIRUS. It's literally in the name. No one has immunity to this virus by definition. It's a relative to Coronavirus in the since that it shares the same name. But it might as well be a different race. Your body has no antibodies to defend against it until you are exposed which is part of why it creates such an immunity ****storm that ultimately can lead to death. There are no easy answers here. We have to be strong and disciplined to snuff this fire out. I'd urge you to stop looking for excusing and treat this grass fire with the respect it deserves.

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Maybe I missed it, but who said otherwise in this thread?

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Obviously no one has immunity prior to contracting and beating it, I don't think anyone is claiming that immunity existed otherwise.

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That's not obvious to me at all. There is a certain segment of people who have never had a flu shot and have never gotten the flu. Maybe they never even get colds. I'm wondering if we could find such people for serum draws to see what makes them have natural immunity, with the larger goal of developing blanket inoculations or vaccines for coronaviruses.

I guess this is the trillion dollar question. No answer yet.

We were able to find vaccinations for many killer diseases

Not so for many others.

Certainly normal flus and colds have generated no success.

Not feeling really good about prospects for this one.

Necrosis said:

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ED doctor here. This is a NOVEL VIRUS. It's literally in the name. No one has immunity to this virus by definition. It's a relative to Coronavirus in the since that it shares the same name. But it might as well be a different race. Your body has no antibodies to defend against it until you are exposed which is part of why it creates such an immunity ****storm that ultimately can lead to death. There are no easy answers here. We have to be strong and disciplined to snuff this fire out. I'd urge you to stop looking for excusing and treat this grass fire with the respect it deserves.

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Actually, the virus name is officially SARS-CoV2 because of it's similarity to SARS-CoV. We also know that antibodies to SARS are effective against SARS-CoV2. However, SARS was early 2000s and not much in America, so very few people if any in the US would have immunity.

94chem said:

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Obviously no one has immunity prior to contracting and beating it, I don't think anyone is claiming that immunity existed otherwise.

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That's not obvious to me at all. There is a certain segment of people who have never had a flu shot and have never gotten the flu. Maybe they never even get colds. I'm wondering if we could find such people for serum draws to see what makes them have natural immunity, with the larger goal of developing blanket inoculations or vaccines for coronaviruses.

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I am with you 94Chem. The cruise ship, everyone must have had some exposure but only 20% tested positive l. Early exposure in hospitals and doctors offices must have exposed many that never got it. So I think some % of the population is essentially inherently immune to it - if exposed, their immune system shuts in down before it can replicate enough to be contagious to others. If I had to guess, I would put that % as 20-40%. Once 20-30% of the rest of the population has contracted the virus and recovered, then we will have enough immunity to avoid major outbreaks. Successful treatment protocols can also further reduce fatal cases.

BiochemAg97 said:

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Necrosis said:

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ED doctor here. This is a NOVEL VIRUS. It's literally in the name. No one has immunity to this virus by definition. It's a relative to Coronavirus in the since that it shares the same name. But it might as well be a different race. Your body has no antibodies to defend against it until you are exposed which is part of why it creates such an immunity ****storm that ultimately can lead to death. There are no easy answers here. We have to be strong and disciplined to snuff this fire out. I'd urge you to stop looking for excusing and treat this grass fire with the respect it deserves.

---

Actually, the virus name is officially SARS-CoV2 because of it's similarity to SARS-CoV. We also know that antibodies to SARS are effective against SARS-CoV2. However, SARS was early 2000s and not much in America, so very few people if any in the US would have immunity.

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K

JamesE4 said:

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94chem said:

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Quote:

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Obviously no one has immunity prior to contracting and beating it, I don't think anyone is claiming that immunity existed otherwise.

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That's not obvious to me at all. There is a certain segment of people who have never had a flu shot and have never gotten the flu. Maybe they never even get colds. I'm wondering if we could find such people for serum draws to see what makes them have natural immunity, with the larger goal of developing blanket inoculations or vaccines for coronaviruses.

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I am with you 94Chem. The cruise ship, everyone must have had some exposure but only 20% tested positive l. Early exposure in hospitals and doctors offices must have exposed many that never got it. So I think some % of the population is essentially inherently immune to it - if exposed, their immune system shuts in down before it can replicate enough to be contagious to others. If I had to guess, I would put that % as 20-40%. Once 20-30% of the rest of the population has contracted the virus and recovered, then we will have enough immunity to avoid major outbreaks. Successful treatment protocols can also further reduce fatal cases.

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They are starting a widespread titer study in Florida to try and answer this question.

Bump....looks like this topic is now front and center in news.

If antibody testing proves much of the population has immunity, then these OP comments by Fauci around certainty of immunity weeks ago should be scrutinized.

It's a shame that questions on immunity were never part of questions from our worthless press in the WH pressers.

gunan01 said:

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Not sure if you haven't been paying attention, but this has been a huge topic since the beginning. Just because Fauci doesn't get asked about this on a daily basis at the pressers doesn't mean anything.

The biggest problem we still have is the lack of widespread accurate antibody testing. Too many tests have false positives.

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Not sure how you define "huge". No steady threads on pg1 and most "experts" have downplayed the topic anytime it comes up bc it is "bad messaging" that creates a false sense of security that could undermine mitigation and be dangerous to the spread.

All I'm saying is that in weeks we could have young healthy folks trying to get infected to test positive on antibody test and prove themselves "safe". You don't have to look further than this thread to see doctors question how much of the population has already been exposed and immunized naturally. It could be over 50% of population is already de-risked now, NO ONE is talking about that outside of an Internet thread or obscure podcast. The WHO, CDC, Task Force, nightly news, etc all quiet on topic....post link from any source that talks about potential of the majority of population already de-risked.

thirdcoast said:

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gunan01 said:

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Not sure if you haven't been paying attention, but this has been a huge topic since the beginning. Just because Fauci doesn't get asked about this on a daily basis at the pressers doesn't mean anything.

The biggest problem we still have is the lack of widespread accurate antibody testing. Too many tests have false positives.

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Not sure how you define "huge". No steady threads on pg1 and most "experts" have downplayed the topic anytime it comes up bc it is "bad messaging" that creates a false sense of security that could undermine mitigation and be dangerous to the spread.

All I'm saying is that in weeks we could have young healthy folks trying to get infected to test positive on antibody test and prove themselves "safe". You don't have to look further than this thread to see doctors question how much of the population has already been exposed and immunized naturally. It could be over 50% of population is already de-risked now, NO ONE is talking about that outside of an Internet thread or obscure podcast. The WHO, CDC, Task Force, nightly news, etc all quiet on topic....post link from any source that talks about potential of the majority of population already de-risked.

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Good. The last thing we need is a false sense of security and for this to end up not being true.

thirdcoast said:

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gunan01 said:

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Not sure if you haven't been paying attention, but this has been a huge topic since the beginning. Just because Fauci doesn't get asked about this on a daily basis at the pressers doesn't mean anything.

The biggest problem we still have is the lack of widespread accurate antibody testing. Too many tests have false positives.

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Not sure how you define "huge". No steady threads on pg1 and most "experts" have downplayed the topic anytime it comes up bc it is "bad messaging" that creates a false sense of security that could undermine mitigation and be dangerous to the spread.

All I'm saying is that in weeks we could have young healthy folks trying to get infected to test positive on antibody test and prove themselves "safe". You don't have to look further than this thread to see doctors question how much of the population has already been exposed and immunized naturally. It could be over 50% of population is already de-risked now, NO ONE is talking about that outside of an Internet thread or obscure podcast. The WHO, CDC, Task Force, nightly news, etc all quiet on topic....post link from any source that talks about potential of the majority of population already de-risked.

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50% is wishful thinking at this point. Most of the results I have heard are closer to the 10-15% positives for the antibody test.

The one outlier was the phlebotomist talking to what was not much more than a tabloid who claimed 30-50%. There have also been a fair number of cases of people ordering antibody tests only to find they came from China and were terrible We have no idea if the phlebotomist was using good tests or a test with a high false positive. We also have no idea if the phlebotomist was testing general population or a bunch of people with a high probability of exposure (healthcare workers?).


The % positive for antibodies will increase over time but there isn't any real evidence to suggest anything like 50% already immune. The evidence we do have suggests closer to 10-15% at most. Also, antibody test numbers out of NY where they have a pretty widespread infection won't translate to Texas where our infection has been much less intense.

Fair points. Of course we don't have evidence, the antibody kits are just coming out. The active virus testing is almost irrelevant considering CV19 causes very mild or no symptoms in most (ie people off the books).

We will have a better idea in weeks, and know for certain in months considering current production of antibody kits. Looks like we first may see antibody tests targeted in more isolated retirement communities, that may be 10% or less exposed.

I think when you get into later testing of the young active population you could very well see 50% plus. And if that's the case, getting the other 50% of healthy folks exposed would be the next best thing behind a vaccine.

Either way, no stat is more important that antibody prevalence. If the number is low, things swing back to mitigation until a vaccine. If very high, mitigation and vaccine become less important.

My bet is 10% in 60+, and 50% in <60 yr olds.

Don't forget, asymptomatics have not got tested for active virus, and many negative tests could still have antibodies. What happens when we start hearing stories of folks with antibodies who had, not mild, but ZERO symptoms? That story has yet to break.

For all those here who said immunity was frequently and widely discussed, see this 9 min clip on the subject of antibodies, and the topic of immunity is not mentioned a single time.

Fauci states that if you have antibodies it's almost certain that you have CV19 immunity, yet no mention whatsoever as official antibody results come out. Is Fauci wrong, or is this purposely being covered up?

1) at the time we didn't have a reliable test for antibodies. (It can be argued that we don't)
2)it still hasn't been proved that durable imunity is a thing(evidence out of SoKo is suggesting it might not be, at least for all infections)
3. Putting on my tin foil hat, If it were a gaurenteed thing, you wouldn't want to advertise the fact because it wouldn't take a large cohort of "bug chasers" to get intentionally infected and completely blow the containment models out of the water.

Think about how fast this spread... Then thing how fast it would spread with people chasing it. Then do the math on the number of dead bodies

Duncan Idaho said:

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1) at the time we didn't have a reliable test for antibodies. (It can be argued that we don't)
2)it still hasn't been proved that durable imunity is a thing(evidence out of SoKo is suggesting it might not be, at least for all infections)
3. Putting on my tin foil hat, If it were a gaurenteed thing, you wouldn't want to advertise the fact because it wouldn't take a large cohort of "bug chasers" to get intentionally infected and completely blow the containment models out of the water.

Think about how fast this spread... Then thing how fast it would spread with people chasing it. Then do the math on the number of dead bodies

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This is what I don't understand. How do we not know one way or another if immunity exists? The only explanation is that some who clear CV19 have long term immunity, while others who clear it can get re-infected in near term. There has been enough time, test capability, and subjects to prove this out, yet it's still a major hush hush question in general public. It also brings into question Fauci's expertise as he stated in OP he was certain there was some type of long term immunity, and he would bet his entire experience on it.

The 1st reply to OP has 40 stars basically saying Duh, of course there is immunity. Our worthless press has been so busy trying to get a quick one on Trump for weeks that they still haven't asked one of the most critical questions that can be addressed- is there immunity or not!?

thirdcoast said:

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Duncan Idaho said:

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1) at the time we didn't have a reliable test for antibodies. (It can be argued that we don't)
2)it still hasn't been proved that durable imunity is a thing(evidence out of SoKo is suggesting it might not be, at least for all infections)
3. Putting on my tin foil hat, If it were a gaurenteed thing, you wouldn't want to advertise the fact because it wouldn't take a large cohort of "bug chasers" to get intentionally infected and completely blow the containment models out of the water.

Think about how fast this spread... Then thing how fast it would spread with people chasing it. Then do the math on the number of dead bodies

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This is what I don't understand. How do we not know one way or another if immunity exists? The only explanation is that some who clear CV19 have long term immunity, while others who clear it can get re-infected in near term. There has been enough time, test capability, and subjects to prove this out, yet it's still a major hush hush question in general public. It also brings into question Fauci's expertise as he stated in OP he was certain there was some type of long term immunity, and he would bet his entire experience on it.

The 1st reply to OP has 40 stars basically saying Duh, of course there is immunity. Our worthless press has been so busy trying to get a quick one on Trump for weeks that they still haven't asked one of the most critical questions that can be addressed- is there immunity or not!?

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Is that your opinion? The virus hasn't been around long in America.

The fact that you think there has been enough test capability in any fashion tips your hand

Never mind that "durable imunity" isn't binary. In that if it exist at week 4, it exist at week 54