City councilor says she's proof why we need to cover faces and socially distance: She tests positive for coronavirus antibodies, never had symptoms

So you want a random study to not be random? Yeah sorry that's not how that works.

But hey "randomly" can be a tricky word sometimes.

that's not what privilege means

If so many people have already been exposed

You'd maybe have a point if you hadn't just made up that part.

Get the testing. Get accurate, widespread testing for the virus and for antibodies. Otherwise you, like everyone else, are making conjectures based on wishful thinking and bullshit.

For relatively healthy people under the age of 50. Yes we've all read about the horrible stories of young athletes succumbing to this thing, but the state stats indicate that if you are young and healthy Michelle's experience represents the typical or at least common form of exposure. And if she had it, her kids probably have and so has her husband and nobody is the wiser.

There is unquestionably a steep curve for this thing based on underlying health and age.

Let those under 50 go back to living a normal life. Let those who aren't afraid to go back to living a normal life do so. Protect the vulnerable by all means necessary. Lock down those at risk (and I might be in that category-my doctor can advise me if I can ever see him again). That leaves the fearful (read Adam's front page some time, that should scare most of you way more than the virus).

You are drawing a false conclusion. Yes it's likely that many people already caught the virus before we started social distancing. But social distancing DID slow the spread further. The problem is we don't know what percentage of the population had it at the time we locked things down. Without knowing that number (or even knowing it now), we don't really know whether hospitals would have been overwhelmed beyond capacity. And when you don't know, it's better to err on the side of caution. You can always reopen things. You can't bring back people from the dead.

I wouldn't rely on antibody tests too heavily at this point. Especially when their accuracy hasn't been verified.

And accuracy needs to be high. The prevalence of Covid-19 is estimated at around 5% in the US, and at this low a level the risk of false positives becomes a major problem. If a serological test has 90% specificity, its positive predictive value will be 32.1% – meaning nearly 70% of positive results will likely be false. At this same disease prevalence, a test with 95% specificity will lead to a 50% chance that a positive result is wrong. Only at 99% specificity does the false positive rate become anywhere near acceptable, and even here the chances are that 16% of positive results would be wrong.

Here's one from April 24 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2009758

See how this works?

It is all about spray of germs and probabilities. We don't have absolute proof, so lets risk the lives of a whole bunch of people because some anon has a hunch.

Sorry, but there is solid evidence of the potential for infection, and cities and towns and now the state has acted accordingly.

Then again, you are probably one of those people who thinks he has a system to beat the house at a casino.

COVER YOUR FILTHY PIE HOLE ALREADY. I'll cover my filthy pie hole, too.

In my opinion, this sort of random testing should be used to look at prevalence rates (there are formulas to correct for the expected number of false results with a give sensitivity/specificity) and agreement between test findings plus self-reports (i.e., how many of those who had positive antibody tests said they thought they'd had COVID-19) but should not give participants their test results unless they show they have an active case and need to be aware of it.

In our clinical trials, we require confirmation of tests used as study endpoints precisely because of the issue of false positives. Similarly, I would want any positive antibody test in someone who'd never tested positive for COVID-19 infection to be confirmed with a 2nd test before considering it as a trustworthy results.