We need antibody testing that can tell us who has been infected with COVID-19.
Due to America’s COVID-19 testing failure, no one knows how many of us have been infected with coronavirus. In my post on herd immunity, I described one reason why this is important. In that post, I wrote that the devastation that COVID-19 has wrecked upon NYC. At that time, only 1.4% of the population of NYC was confirmed infected.
Antibody tests now reveal that about 20% of NYC residents may have been infected with COVID-19*. That’s pretty astounding and shows just how inadequate our testing has been.
There are caveats to the sampling methods used in these studies that may have led to an overestimation of infection, which Governor Cuomo, to his credit, spoke about. There are also questions about the accuracy of the tests (this article has some great graphics and info). Cities around the world are rolling out antibody tests, though not quickly enough to meet demand.
Let’s say you manage to get one of these antibody tests, and it turns out you have antibodies against COVID-19. Does this mean that you’re immune to future infections? Unfortunately, we don’t know yet, and this is why the WHO recommends against using immunity passports.
Why, then, do I think antibody testing** is so important, even though I agree that issuing immunity passports is a premature idea?
Because we need to know our enemy.
We don’t know the fatality rate of COVID-19, we don’t know how many asymptomatic cases there are, and, most importantly, we don’t understand whether we can become immune to it after infection, or how long that immunity lasts. Antibody tests can give us the answers to these questions, which are critical to regaining a functional society.
*This is still nowhere near enough to confer herd immunity to COVID-19. NYC would have to go through the hell of the last two months 3 to 4 fold over again, at least, before the city’s population would reach that point.
The Megascope 
Great blog 👍👍, wondering if you know you’ve had cv19 and test negative for antibody what does that mean?
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Thanks for the question! There a couple of possible reasons I can think of that someone who had COVID-19 would test negative on the antibody panel. It could be a technical issue with the test itself– these antibody tests are still very new and going through real-world validation right now, and they are not all 100% accurate. Apart from any testing issues, there are two possible biological reasons someone would test negative. If blood is collected too soon after being infected with COVID-19, antibodies to the virus may not yet be present in detectable levels. Alternatively, if the person being tested had a quite mild case or, for some other reason, the virus did not elicit a systemic immune response, antibodies might not be present in high enough titers to be detected by the test being used.
Sadly, none of these tests are foolproof yet, but I hope we’ll get closer over the next weeks and months.
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Here’s to hoping antibody testing and contact tracing become more accurate and common place sooner than later. It’s a shame it’s taken us so long here. Do you have ideas on barriers that could be removed or actions taken at the state or federal level to accelerate the process of making better testing and tracing readily available?
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Some states, led by their governors, are doing the best they can. This includes Cuomo in NY and Murphy in NJ– although NJ and NY were slammed, their aggressive actions might prevent a second wave in some of the country’s most densely populated areas. Inslee in Washington responded early and aggressively and probably prevented thousands of deaths. Good efforts have also been shown by some Republican-led states: Alaska has hired the largest number of contact tracers per capita, followed by North Dakota. North Dakota is also piloting a contract tracing phone app, which has admittedly been a bit rocky so far, but it’s a great start.
What’s been missing is a cohesive federal response, or even suggested guidelines. States were not prepared to handle a global pandemic; this response should have been more unified from the start. Instead, it’s somehow turning into a partisan issue. Crazy. The virus doesn’t care if you’re blue or red, it just wants warm human bodies to replicate in. Yet instead of uniting to fight this together, the leaders in Washington are attempting to use it to further divide us and to breed xenophobia.
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