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Stanford Student Claims to Run Bootleg Covid-19 Testing Lab
- Proven 7y agoInfo and viruses want to be free!
- nrp 7y agoIf anyone else wants to start a bootleg test lab, there's a disposition auction next week for a defunct biotech startup with most of what you'll need: https://svdisposition.com/auction-detail?id=281 https://svdisposition.com/auction-detail?id=281
- inieves 7y agoi'm interested. nrp can i reach out to you via email? what is your email?
- nrp 7y agoTo be clear, I'm not affiliated in any way with them. I just like to keep track of asset disposition auctions to pick up equipment.
- ramraj07 7y agoHow do you keep track? Are there a standard list of sites you monitor? Curious what your thoughts are on the value - what markdown from market price can one typically expect?
- exikyut 7y agoI'm not sure what sort of answer is possible/in good faith/responsible, but this information immediately prompts some probably-predictable questions: - What bits of equipment would I need? (Generally speaking, not specific to what's in this auction lot) - What reagents are needed? Where can I get them (both as a general rule, and also specifically given likely huge shortages)? - How do I actually test for this? - What do I watch out for to try and mitigate false positives and negatives? I ask as someone - completely naive - in the sense of "oh this sounds interesting and easy to do!" :) - objectively absolutely underqualified to even think about doing this - incapable of affording any of the equipment so by all means feed me answers describing how impossibly hard and stupid this is to do, and pretend I'm not serious. Also, as an aside, it'll be fun to watch the bid price on this. I wonder how statistically above average it'll be. Heh.
- cmauniada 7y agoI can't answer any of your questions except the last observation, there will be an uptick in the sale prices for sure.
- gravelc 7y agoI'd advise against this unless you really know what you're doing. Equipment is just one thing. You need a very well controlled environment that absolutely prevents cross-contamination and environmental contamination. My lab is a very clean molecular biology lab and it isn't good enough for that. You need processes in place that ensure that these types of contamination are prevented, and constantly checked for. You need a very robust pipeline from sample collection to result dissemination that ensure no mix ups. All these things are possible, but PCR is ultrasensitive and processes are hard; you could have a huge amount of false results if not very very careful.
- danieltillett 7y agoIt really isn’t that difficult to avoid cross-contamination. As someone who has done literally 10s of thousand of PCR reactions (probably 100s of thousands) you just need to do your extraction and set-up seperate from where you run the reactions. The real problem seems to be the kit-cowboys who have no idea how to do anything unless it comes out of a kit.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- knzhou 7y agoI'm a Stanford newbie. This is completely believable, but of the stories The Fountain Hopper breaks, what's the accuracy rate?
- 609venezia 7y agoEdit: it seems the idea is to possibly catch asymptomatic people so they can self isolate (if they otherwise wouldn't) or tell their contacts to keep an eye out I'm skeptical of the value add when weighed against the risk of introducing unregulated / unverified medical tests with unknown false positive/negative rates during a crisis situation, but obviously folks disagree, and I'm sure I could be missing something.
- suyash 7y agoEither this is a genius hack (saving lives) or a genius scam!
- 609venezia 7y agoHow does it save lives? If someone took this test and popped positive, would it increase the likelihood of receiving effective treatment or of reducing transmission? I'm trying to figure out the value.
- adrianN 7y agoYou'd hope that someone with a positive test is more careful about isolating themselves and perhaps tells their contacts to do the same.
- c22 7y agoIt might reduce transmission if the patient chooses to self-isolate and otherwise would not have.
- harrisonjackson 7y agoIf the tests could be done on someone who is asymptomatic, then it could be hugely beneficial. For anyone already feeling sick... stay home and self-quarantine. If we could _just_ test everybody regardless of symptoms then we could quickly isolate people spreading it in ignorance. That is the main benefit I could reason out. Probably early detection and better planning as someone with it progresses, too.
- 7y ago
- rolltiide 7y ago> according to GroupMe messages obtained by FoHo I remember coming to the bay area and it wasn't long before someone that felt they had a cultural affinity with me invited me to a GroupMe group. Man that was years ago. Surprised to see people still use GroupMe, still seems to be for cliques exclusively.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- JCharante 7y agoGroupMe is still extensively used at universities. I only know a few undergrads who prefer to use it, but most seem to use it as a compromise. I personally hate its UI.
- mjfl 7y agoThe test is trivial. It's just RT-PCR. - Spit in a 2 mL tube - Purify the RNA from the saliva in that tube using qiagen's Viral RNA mini kit (https://www.qiagen.com/us/products/diagnostics-and-clinical-research/clinical-sample-processing/qiaamp-dsp-viral-rna-mini-kit/ https://www.qiagen.com/us/products/diagnostics-and-clinical-...) - Get PCR primers against NCoV N by ordering IDT's CDC qPCR probe assay (https://www.idtdna.com/pages/landing/coronavirus-research-reagents https://www.idtdna.com/pages/landing/coronavirus-research-re...) - Run one step RT-PCR using your choice of one-step reagent (CDC recommends https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/A15300#/A15300 https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/A15300#/A...) - Either do the reaction in a qPCR machine or run the PCR result on an agarose gel with positive control, if you see a band matching coronavirus positive control then the sample is positive, if not negative. Also helpful to have a human sample negative control to be sure as well. There is no step here that requires critical thinking, it's just following instructions on the kits. Also, this is not like a "bootleg" version of doing it, this is actually the official way the CDC does the test. Edit: Please see official CDC instructions for how to run the test here: https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download Edit 2: In terms of test shortages, it seems to be due to shortages in RNA extraction kits and swabs, only the former of which is really necessary, since the official guidance for sample collection has switched from upper respitory swabs to collecting sputum (phlegm) from the lower respitory tract (by just spitting it out): https://www.ft.com/content/86efe246-692e-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3 https://www.ft.com/content/86efe246-692e-11ea-800d-da70cff6e...
- Johnny555 7y agoWhat's the point of getting a "bootleg" unofficial test -- why would you trust the results (positive or negative)?
- omarchowdhury 7y agoYou trust the Stanford whiz kid with access to the lab.
- colordrops 7y agoIf it's so easy, then is it so hard to ramp up testing?
- bobowzki 7y agoIf it's so easy to build a website. Why doesn't everyone scale to the size of Google?
- joe_the_user 7y agoIndeed given many lives lie in the balance, shouldn't there be something like a bootcamp get smart people up to speed on this quickly?
- omar_a1 7y agoI doubt it's the lab techs that are in short supply. It's probably the consumables and reagents that go into the test that are out of stock. Lab procedures scale pretty well (to an extent - not the scale of the pandemic). Lab work is often feast or famine in terms of sample volume. During normal times, spikes usually just means the folks running the assays will be particularly busy. With all that said, there's still a lot of specialized skills required to competently run these tests. You'd still need significant training if starting from nothing. But there are enough un/underemployed lab techs out there that finding more techs won't be the bottleneck.
- mayneack 7y agoMy guess: non trivial to do it safely and non trivial to get accuracy rates you'd get from a professional lab. Doing all those things by hand also takes some time. Thinking back to my days in a lab at MIT, sample to PCR probably took a full day (rough approximation). Big labs can probably increase the parallelism a lot.
- mcovalt 7y agoI’d be curious to the answer to that too. I can think of quite a few reasons, but I’m sure there are nuances that are completely unknown to me. I’m more interested in the parent question at the moment. I know almost nothing about the subject matter. What are the blockers for deploying a simple virus test at the scale we need?
- LolWolf 7y agoIt's incredible seeing this on hn. For context, while the FoHo is sometimes good for very, very breaking and recent stories, it's a little hard to overdo the niche it fits in Stanford culture: it's pretty much the main and only tabloid for fast-paced news and (sometimes) absurd 'takes' on things happening around campus. While I don't doubt the story, I would always take it with a grain of salt. I don't personally know the person they claim is running these "under the table" tests, but the tests are very simple, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was actually true. (Most first or second year biology/bioengineering students can easily run RT-PCR without an issue, especially if they already have the primers available.) EDIT: I was just contacted by one of my friends who knows of a few students and their labs doing this. Apparently there is more than one.
- subroutine 7y agoIf I heard someone in my lab was running PCR on saliva samples potentially infected with 2019-nCoV, I'd lose my shit.
- lonelappde 7y agoAt the moment, you shouldn't be going to a lower than a biosafety level 4 lab at all.
- fspeech 7y agoYou don't need live viruses for testing. You only need some viral RNA material so you can inactivate the virus by heating the samples to a certain temperature for example. Hazardous work for sure.
- mayneack 7y agoAt the moment, most tests are certainly being done in less than BSL4, there aren't that many of them. https://www.liquisearch.com/biosafety_level/list_of_bsl-4_facilities https://www.liquisearch.com/biosafety_level/list_of_bsl-4_fa...
- Reelin 7y ago
- bwilliams18 7y agoElizabeth Holmes 2.0?
- opk 7y agoGiven the number of rich celebrities that apparently manage to get a test just because they're rich, I wonder if there is more illicit testing going on. Meanwhile a colleague of a doctor I know remains untested due to lack of tests despite symptoms entirely consistent with covid. Lack of tests are likely behind the comparatively high UK death rate. Seems like there's a good opportunity for a nefarious get rich quick scheme here: setup a website, have hypochondriac rich people send in a swab, charge them lots, wait a couple of days and inform them of a random outcome with a warning about false positives. If this is going on, they should at least give people a positive so they quarantine them self.
- daedalus_f 7y agoI doubt the lack of test availability is directly increasing mortality. The UK like many other countries the UK is advising self isolation for those with symptoms, and I imagine those who ignore this would not isolate even if they did test positive. There’s no specific treatment. Those admitted requiring ventilatory support have that decision made on other grounds, and a CT can show a consistent viral pneumonia and help rule out other causes, which is good enough diagnostically when the pre-test probability is likely to be so high. I believe when PCR testing was not readily available in China they were using ct based diagnostic criteria. Unless there’s something I’m missing, the main benefits of a readily available test would be getting potentially symptomatic but actually negative key workers back from self isolation and perhaps catching the asymptotic if it could be rolled out widely enough.
- opk 7y agoThat's not what I meant. It is affecting the published rates, i.e. the statistics. Sorry, poor wording on my part.
- daedalus_f 7y agoAhh, didn’t think about it from that angle, apologies.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
- filleokus 7y agoAlmost completely OT but: I’m almost certain I’ve had Corona, but it’s almost impossible to get the medical system to test for that where I live (for good reasons). Will it be possible to get a test kit like this https://www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious-disease/covid-19-rt/ https://www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious-disease/covi... as private individual (in the EU)? Will that test show if I have been infected previously? The graph on this PDF suggest it https://www.biomedomics.com/?fldl=3001 https://www.biomedomics.com/?fldl=3001
- lostlogin 7y agoOut of curiosity, what changes if you have had it, recovered and been symptom free for 2 weeks? Is there something different in what you’re supposed to do.
- jaynetics 7y agoYou're likely immune, at least for a while. You could live more normally, or join studies, or volunteer and help people out, etc.
- filleokus 7y agoNo, not really any enormous changes. But here in Sweden we don’t have proper lockdowns (yet), and my office isn’t completely shut dow, we are just strongly recommended to work from home. If I can confirm that I’ve had it I would start going back to the office (better ergonomics) and start going out on lunches/dates, go to the gym, shop for clothes, meet older relatives etc with (almost) no fear of spreading it to other people.
- ctchocula 7y agoKeep in mind that even if you have had it, people are infectious on average for 20 days from before symptoms appear [1], so it might be good to self-quarantine for a while. [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076022/coronavirus-infects-faster-and-lasts-longer-sars-raising-new https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076022/coro...
- tmsh 7y agoPlease tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?
- atemerev 7y agoI am buying a used RT-PCR machine for that, will get it home in the next few days. I have an account at Sigma-Aldrich as a hobbyist researcher, so I can order primers and other reagents.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- buboard 7y agoPerhaps we need an open source effort for this? The main obstacle is sample collection and safety handling. given however the demand for testing, maybe a group of scientists could come up with specifications for ad hoc sample testing centers and perhaps recommend best practices and off the shelf products to minimize the risk. There are tons of graduate students who could volunteer and lots of unused pcr machines. It would be far better to organize these bootleggers as an open community sharing their standards rather than each person doing their own setup.
- habosa 7y agoHmmm I swear I heard a story about a Stanford student doing bogus blood tests before ... can't remember where though.
- crispyambulance 7y agoI think the deeper point of this story is NOT "oh look a kid can do it in their dorm=room". The point is that this test is totally doable. Nation-state resources in the USA and Europe missed their opportunity to provide testing to their people, while South Korea was able to rise to the occasion by making the right decisions at the right time. This demonstrates a profound lack of leadership in the USA and Europe. It's not just President Cheeto-Satan (though his dithering idiocy is certainly part of it https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Mueller/comments/fl9gng/oc_a_plot_of_covid19_cases_with_quotes_from_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Mueller/comments/fl9gng/oc_a_pl...). We knew better, we could have done better.
- koheripbal 7y agoThis is the why people who have experience bureaucracy have learned to hate it. It makes even the simplest thing impossible. The more useless people you add to anything, the harder it becomes.
- Loughla 7y agoMy experience is that bureaucracy stems from something - it has a cause, regardless of the outcome. My personal experience is that 99% of it is avoiding litigation. Not sure what that adds to the conversation, just my experience with forms and layers of people paid to do nothing but sign them.
- joncrane 7y agoSome of it, sure. But it leads to people gaming the system. In bureaucracies, many positions/people only have the power to slow down or stop the process. People need to feel important and powerful, and they cannot contribute to moving a process forward because they are, for example, a cybersecurity analyst or a lawyer. So they say "well this process doesn't check box #134 on the list, we need to circle back and solution this" and they hang up and go back to reading reddit until the next meeting on their calendar. It's awful to be a "doer" in a bureaucracy.
- iflint 7y ago
- fortran77 7y agoCan we trust "Stanford Students" with medical tests? The school has a history of encouraging bad behavior in this area, as well as a history of letting people bribe athletic coaches to gain entrance. I would not trust this organization. They're tainted.
- swamp40 7y agoPeople seem to be caught up in a frenzy of the importance of PCR testing. In reality, even if no one got tested, Doctors would still be doing pretty much the same things they are doing now. The same numbers of people would live or die. Hypoxemia and pneumonia are easy to diagnose. The treatment is standard. Any medicines are likely to work the same without regard to the exact RNA makeup of the virus. Quarantine is still a good idea. Remember, if it mutates all these tests are going to be useless anyway. So a negative result has to be treated as dangerous anyway.
- peter303 7y agoKudos! Several dozen US labs in the US claimed similar capability in January. But ponderous accuracy certification from the FDA kept them unofficial until March. Also this probably doesnt scale well to the thousands per day states need now.