
Antibody tests suggest that coronavirus infections vastly exceed official counts - sohkamyung
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0
======
busymom0
dang, there was a comment here by someone else which was linking to their
comment on another HN post and how it got downvoted (even though now they are
proven right). I was replying to that comment until HN told me that comment
has been flagged and now it's not even visible on this post. This is quite sad
from a community which is supposed to be of scientists (who are usually
supposed to be a bit skeptic).

This was my reply to that comment:

Similar to how Twitter, FB and IG banned several accounts (I won't name them
as I don't want to get in political wars on HN) which had been questioning the
origins of the virus since January. Some people who were saying back in
January that China was lying and this could end up becoming a pandemic were
called names and fringe conspiracy theorists and banned. Now even Taiwan is
showing emails from December that they had been warning about China's lies to
WHO but were ignored.

I really dislike how being skeptic now a days gets you labelled with bad names
and removed.

~~~
dang
This community is not "supposed to be of scientists" and it's certainly not a
scientific forum. It's an internet watercooler. People speculate.

If you mean
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22904356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22904356),
that comment was flagged by users; rightly so since it broke the site
guidelines. (You need to set 'showdead' to 'yes' in your profile to read dead
comments.)

------
pdonis
The title, while it is the actual title of the Nature article, is arguably
linkbait. What it should be is something more like: "Antibody tests in one
California county, if taken at face value and naively extrapolated to
everywhere else, imply that COVID-19 infections vastly exceed official
counts". Which is a lot weaker than the claim the actual title is making.

~~~
pdonis
Update: It looks like the title of the Nature article now has "suggest"
instead of "reveal". So the title of this thread should be changed to
correspond.

~~~
dang
Changed now. Thanks!

~~~
pdonis
Btw, I used the hn@ycombinator.com email to bring this to your attention, but
it would be nice if there were a way to do that from HN itself (maybe a simple
web form that sent an email to that address when submitted?).

~~~
dang
Good idea! I'll add it to our list.

------
skybrian
Already being discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22899272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22899272)

------
Gys
Research in the Netherlands shows 3% of blooddonors have anti-bodies [0] (or
[1] for translation).

The Netherlands has about 17 million people. Assuming the 3% translates to
only 1% of the population, that still would be 170.000

Officially they found 30.000 positively tested cases [2].

So even with this (I think) conservative estimate there are at the very least
5 times more infected people than tested cases. So proably most of the
infected people really do not seem to have any sympthoms.

[0] [https://www.nu.nl/coronavirus/6045092/rivm-
ongeveer-3-procen...](https://www.nu.nl/coronavirus/6045092/rivm-
ongeveer-3-procent-bloeddonoren-heeft-antistoffen-tegen-coronavirus.html)

[1]
[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nu.nl%2Fcoronavirus%2F6045092%2Frivm-
ongeveer-3-procent-bloeddonoren-heeft-antistoffen-tegen-coronavirus.html)

[2] [https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-
covid-19/actueel](https://www.rivm.nl/coronavirus-covid-19/actueel)

------
DenisM
> An analysis of the blood of some 3,300 people living in Santa Clara county
> found that, by early April, one in every 66 people had been infected with
> SARS-CoV-2

So it's 1.5% then, according to this study.

With effect size so small one has to look at the test's accuracy. This one
lists 20% false negative and 0% false positive, however the sample size for
the test's evaluation was in low dozens. According to the article evaluating a
test properly requires a sample size of hundreds.

So we don't know with any certainty how good this test is because it was not
sufficiently evaluated. If the false positive rate is over 1.5% the results
would become invalid. For a sense of scale consider that the Bodysphere
antibody test has 9% false positive rate, and some other tests are at 4.5%.

------
bufferoverflow
That article title is absolutely awful. They did a tiny test in some under-
tested area and extrapolated it to everywhere.

What we really need is random sampling tests from large areas, not tiny
counties. And you don't even need that many of them to have a statistically
significant result. I'd say 10-50 thousand random tests across the US will
give you a very accurate figure of how many people have had the virus.

I also highly doubt the claims that the mortality of this virus is low. It's
demonstrably not. We have hospitals that used to have a few deaths a week
(from all causes), and now have multiple deaths per day (mostly corona). With
only around 1% of the population infected.

~~~
goalieca
With only 1% of the population infected? Nope. It’s definitely a lot more than
that. You know where the claim that up to 80% of people can be asymptomatic
came from? It was when they tested all pregnant women for delivery at a
hospital in New York. I recall that they found 15% were infected.

------
robocat
Here’s another population test: Andover Subacute has beds for 700 patients.
“The 17 [deaths] were among 68 recent deaths linked to the long-term care
facility, Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center I and II, including two
nurses, officials said. Of those who died, 26 people had tested positive for
the virus. For the others, the cause of death is unknown.”.

2 nurses dead, what was the total staff numbers?

68 other deaths. What was normal rate?

Can you then project the death rates back to a country population (even given
the deaths were obviously elderly unwell people).

