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"One could even use the marker to make a prediction about the course of a Covid-19 disease before the person is even infected," Yekelchyk says. Do you have som

"One could even use the marker to make a prediction about the course of a Covid-19 disease before the person is even infected," Yekelchyk says. Do you have some information that the researchers who performed this study don't?

obiwan14 5y ago
Either that or he didn't read the article.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
This is like observing structural damage to a bridge after an explosion. If there's a lot of structural damage, the bridge is likely to collapse later on. If there happens to be structural damage before the explosion, sure, you can probably make similar inferences about danger after the explosion. But the absence of structural damage before the explosion is not great evidence that it'll look like that afterwards. This is a biomarker of damaged lungs. Covid can be the thing that causes the damage on a clean slate. edit: so to clarify, you can't test this to confidently state that someone will be fine with covid prior to infection. you might be able to identify some people that will definitely struggle but its likely that this information wouldn't be too surprising to them.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  But you're saying they can't use this marker to make a pre-infection prediction, and they're saying it's possible.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    I'm saying the absence of it is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of poor outcomes. The presence of it may be useful. My point is that this is not some general trait that some people have some people don't. This is a cell marker that tells the larger system that the cell should be killed. The cells only start to express this when they're doing poorly. Many people start to do poorly only after they get the disease. I would also reckon that known comorbidities are likely to be a more reliable, significantly easier to measure predictive feature for estimating risk before they get covid.

obiwan14 5y ago

Either that or he didn't read the article.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

This is like observing structural damage to a bridge after an explosion. If there's a lot of structural damage, the bridge is likely to collapse later on. If there happens to be structural damage before the explosion, sure, you can probably make similar inferences about danger after the explosion. But the absence of structural damage before the explosion is not great evidence that it'll look like that afterwards. This is a biomarker of damaged lungs. Covid can be the thing that causes the damage on a clean slate. edit: so to clarify, you can't test this to confidently state that someone will be fine with covid prior to infection. you might be able to identify some people that will definitely struggle but its likely that this information wouldn't be too surprising to them.

jaywalk 5y ago
But you're saying they can't use this marker to make a pre-infection prediction, and they're saying it's possible.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I'm saying the absence of it is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of poor outcomes. The presence of it may be useful. My point is that this is not some general trait that some people have some people don't. This is a cell marker that tells the larger system that the cell should be killed. The cells only start to express this when they're doing poorly. Many people start to do poorly only after they get the disease. I would also reckon that known comorbidities are likely to be a more reliable, significantly easier to measure predictive feature for estimating risk before they get covid.