Study looks at the course of recovery for Covid 19
This is an interesting study. This link is to the summary. There is a link there to the full study. 600 people with active disease of over 2 weeks completed a survey to find out just what people are experiencing with the illness. I find the following most interesting:
● Early testing is crucial, and questions remain around test accuracy: Despite all respondents showing COVID-19 symptoms, 47.8% were either denied testing or not tested for another reason. The main difference between respondents who tested positive and those who tested negative was how early in their illness they were tested (on average day 10 for those testing positive, and day 16 for those testing negative).
Furthermore, the only difference in symptoms between these groups is that those who tested positive reported loss of smell and loss of taste more often, even when controlling for testing time.
It suggests that the test being used is testing for what ever caused the loss of smell/taste. But, if that is not you, you test negative. It also appears that the longer you are into the disease, the less likely you will test positive.
Both of those combined suggest the need to test for a different marker of the virus as what is being tested for does not react the same in too many cases and may even pass away thus no longer being present.
Daniel:
South Korea tested twice to ensure against a false negative and positive.
A bit of leadership would be useful. I gather that tests for half a dozen different antigens are available but it’s not clear to me if a “test” includes the suite of antigens, a subset, or just one. Combined with the fact that testing kits are available from different sources, when an uninformed noob like me is offered a “test”, what am I make of the results? Any confidence in government’s ability/responsibility/interest in keeping you safe is probably pretty much gone by now. Old Yeller, Mitch and the corporate Democrat wing have put the final nail in that coffin.
If we had a government — sang to the tune of if I were a rich man.
Testing produces data representing facts, which does not at all comport with believing whatever Our Dear Vainglorious Bastard says.
One possible interpretation is that the virus is cleared in a week or two, but its effects, direct and in response, can linger for a long time. This happens with the flu a lot. The fever will have vanished, but one has a cough or stuffed head for weeks afterward. I never bought into the third part of “one week coming, one week with you, one week going”.
Another possibility is that the virus is wiped out in the blood stream but goes cryptic or dormant. Like malaria or AIDS, there is not one single infection but a series of them. Once the immune system has pushed the virus out of free circulation, it is still present and can pop up and cause symptoms until the immune system clobbers it back into hiding.
It could be a problem with the antibody tests. Most of them test for several antibodies by offering virus based artificial analogs tagged with a tracer. Since this survey is international, odds are different targets were presented. It would be interesting to see the national breakdown on this. I’m inclined to take the tests at face value for what they measure modulo their general poor quality having been developed for a new disease only recently.
Most lateral flow assays for COVID-19 have two parts. One tests for IgM, short lived, antibodies, which indicate a currently or recently active response. The other part tests for IgG antibodies which are longer lived and indicate that there had been a response at some point in the past. (There’s also a third part which just makes sure the test is working.) This study doesn’t break out IgG and IgM results, though I’d imagine a clinician would mainly be interested in IgM. If that is what people are reporting, then it fits with either interpretation.
It’s an interesting report, and very useful in its way, but it is hard to guess how many of the 600 actually had COVID-19 infections. Those symptoms overlap with so many other diseases that are not currently in the news. (e.g. I too often lose my sense of smell and taste when I have a bad cold or the flu, but I doubt that I had COVID-19 back in 2018.)
For more on how the tests work: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/02/antibody-tests-for-the-coronavirus