Our latest Investing Matters Podcast episode with QuotedData's Edward Marten has just been released. Listen here.
You say we’re all here to make money but actually I’m here to see Tils vanquish Covid. And cancer. And maybe MS too, if there’s time
Can you feel it?
In your experience is it good or bad that the yanks are calling the shots? Just curious
Feel for the poor yanks that bought at $12. Going to open at less than half that. Ouch
Congrats, you’re already up 10%. It’s motored back I blue! Wowzas
States are up 90%. What the holy bejeezers is going on?
170. All I’m saying.
Haha haha 170 top up!
Yes! Goddamit! Actually managed to buy on a dip! For once in my goddamn life! Makes up for the other 99% of trades perfectly timed with spikes!
Going to have a beer to celebrate
Nahh
Picked some up at 170
20% down
I got 145. Yoink!
In my hospital people were queuing down entire corridors, for ages to have a blood test to find out. They had to draft in more phlebotomists and they still ended up turning people away for several days because the demand outstripped the capacity to process and analyse the samples. Everyone, and I mean everyone, not only wanted to know but were prepared to have venepuncture to find out. I would expect that sentiment to be felt across the population at large
Thanks Ghia, I agree most of us were like ‘meh’ when we got our results. Doesn’t impact us day to day. But thinking about it now I realise It’s not relevant unless you’re planning on doing something risky (eg having surgery, going to Barcelona) or visiting a really high risk relative which I just couldn’t do at present given my daily contact with Covid pts.
There are huge implications though when you start comparing rates across different specialties, services etc.
The importance of having Ab or not is a valid question. As I’ve posted before, for most of us healthcare workers on the shop floor it’s interesting but fairly irrelevant. It doesn’t impact how you work or what PPE you wear etc.
However, having now seen the results from my Trust of the prevalence of Ab in staff working in different wards it’s clear that we MUST have a handle on the prevalence of Ab in different cohorts of staff. For example, in critical Care the prevalence was significantly below the ward average, despite having far more patients with more severe disease. From this you can draw conclusions and extrapolate effective practice, an obvious one being PPE works (we used the highest level of FFP mask whereas other areas did not). This same practice can be used within any sector. Look at what taxi firm/school A does compared to B where their Ab levels are significantly less etc.
Secondly, trying to protect elective surgical cases from exposure is hard, and we know perioperative mortality is high if you get covid after your op. From what we know so far, I personally would feel reassured having a major op if I knew I was Ab positive. Similarly I would be happier going on holiday, or even seeing my high risk relatives knowing I was Ab positive.
So, IMHO there are multiple reasons why individuals, institutions, governments and of course scientists are all going to need/want to know their Ab status, not just to protect themselves and others, but also to identify areas of good and bad practice and to develop guidance accordingly.
Workflow within my Trust is currently severely hampered by this asymptomatic carriage concern. The current solution is to swab every admission and to try and isolate before elective surgery. The problem is the swab result ‘expires’ after 72h and so we end up treating nearly everyone as ‘amber’ or covid-possible. This is making us extremely inefficient. To resolve this we need two things 1) a rapid antibody test and 2) evidence that antibody presence means no viral load, and therefore no chance of transmission to us healthcare workers.
This would provide a much bigger ‘safe’ window for your elective op to proceed and could allow some sort of return to normality for theatres.
Regarding the PCR stuff
35 individuals had tested positive on PCR in the 14 days before the study. Of them 46% had antibodies on the POC test whereas 66% had Ab on the immunoassay.
213 had a positive test >14 days before the study, of which 89% had Ab on POC, 90% on immunoassay
Make of that what you will
This Spanish study is really interesting. Not least because of the following:
The proportion of individuals with a positive test who were asymptomatic was 32·7% (30·2–35·4) and 28·5% (25·6–31·6), respectively, with a specificity–sensitivity range of 21·9% (19·1–24·9; both tests positive) to 35·8% (33·1–38·5; either test positive). Based on the overall seroprevalence range of 3·7% to 6·2% and the above proportions of seropositive individuals who were asymptomatic, it was estimated that between 376?000 and 1?042?000 asymptomatic individuals went undetected in the non-institutionalised Spanish population.
Expect that 30% of infections being asymptomatic to be replicated across the world
None of the people I know who are antibody positive have suddenly stopped wearing PPE. They are just as cautious as the rest of us
Snowking any reason you want to know which hospital I work for? Weird
You ever caught a cold? Twice? People who have been vaccinated against flu can still (and often do) get flu but the more immediate immune response provided by the vaccine can help reduce the severity of the illness. Sadly having antibodies does not guarantee immunity, irrespective of how daft one is. Read some science if you don’t believe me
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X18309976?via%3Dihub