Quote:
Originally Posted by heero_yuy
I suspect that there is a large groundswell of undetected infection going on with people not realising they've had it. How else are we to explain the rise of infection in care homes?
Once we have a reliable anti-body test then we'll be in a better position to know whether contact tracing will be an effective measure.
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Agreed. People keep on telling us that everything can be controlled once we have testing, but this is simply not true.
People produce varying amounts of anti-bodies, broadly dependent upon how severe the infection was that they contracted. Some people, particularly the majority who have had it but don't realise it, seem to be naturally immune and do not produce antibodies. And yet the proposal is to test people to check for antibodies to see how far the virus has spread. Clearly, this method of testing will not tell us what we need to find out.
Similarly, in terms of testing to see whether or not a person has the virus, this also has an unacceptable failure rate and what is more, it only tells you (unreliably) that you were free of infection on the date the test was taken.
So how anyone can seriously believe that as soon as everyone has a test we can control this contagion, I really don't know!