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If you want to come out of lock-down, you really need a different test... you need a serological antibody test to tell if you've been exposed to the novel coron
by mbreese 7y ago
If you want to come out of lock-down, you really need a different test... you need a serological antibody test to tell if you've been exposed to the novel coronavirus (and thus have immunity from re-infection [0]). The current test can only tell you if you have an active infection. But before we can really open things up again, we'll need to know who is still at risk, and that requires the antibody test. There has been good progress in getting these tests to work, but it's not quite ready for prime-time.
And it will still be quite a while before we have a vaccine which is the ultimate goal.
[0] (assuming you can't be re-infected)
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoI mean, you're not wrong, if we can test for anti-bodies we can get a better handle on this whole thing in 3 months, especially given the reportedly high occurrence of mild or asymptomatic individuals. That'll give a sense of where we are in total. But no way are we waiting for herd immunity before the restrictions start to loosen. We very much still need to be able to test for people that currently have it - we're kind of starting from zero every time people come out of lock-down, so we need to test for outbreaks before they happen.