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Breakthrough COVID-19 antibody test with nearly 100% accuracy can help reopen economy
The UW Medicine Virology Lab is one of the first in the country to get a new Abbott test that checks your blood for a special COVID-19 antibody.
“This is an important, new type of testing that we haven’t had access to before,” said Keith Jerome, the director of the UW Medicine.
The lab said since Abbott developed the new antibody test, UW researchers have been working 24/7 to verify the test’s effectiveness. Scientists said Friday they found the test can determine if someone had COVID with nearly 100% accuracy.
“It showed a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 99.6%,” said Alex Greniger, assistant director of the UW Virology Lab. “Diagnostically, this is one of the best tests we can offer,” he said.
They say that means it’s a test that can help reopen the economy and get people back to work.
“This is another turning point in the fight against this virus,” Jerome said.
The test specifically looks for what’s called an IgG antibody – something your immune system makes after you get sick from COVID-19.
Abbott explains the IgG antibody “is a protein that the body produces in the late stages of infection and may remain for up to months and possibly years after a person has recovered.”
Unlike the nasal swab to check for the actual virus, this test requires a blood draw.
That vial of blood would get sent to UW labs and you’ll know if you’ve already been infected and have protection from the virus.
Right now, the UW Virology Lab can run 4,000 of the Abbott antibody tests a day. More equipment already on the way, which will quickly ramp up that capacity.
“Within just a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to do 12,000 to 14,000 a day. And this starts to get the point where we can make a difference in the population of our area, get people back to work,” Jerome said.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/breakthrough-covid-antibody-test-with-nearly-100-accuracy-can-help-reopen-economy/
https://twitter.com/JackMaxey1/status/1251596394768601091
Bill Gates Is Targeted by Social-Media Mobs
Bill Gates last week posted a three-second video on Instagram of himself hanging a sign in a window reading “Thank you health care workers.” Over the following days, the post was pelted with hundreds of thousands of comments painting Mr. Gates as partisan, accusing him of crimes against humanity and linking him to various conspiracy theories involving vaccines, the World Health Organization and implanted microchips.
As one of the richest men on earth and a vocal public-health advocate, Mr. Gates has long been a target for online trolls. But in recent weeks, the social-media attacks against the Microsoft Corp. co-founder have intensified and come from a broad range of combatants including antivaccine groups and conspiracy theorists who link the novel coronavirus with fast wireless technology known as 5G, a theory that has been debunked.
The attacks accelerated this week after Mr. Gates criticized the U.S. decision to halt funding to the WHO, a decision the Trump administration said was due to the organization’s handling of the pandemic. His family philanthropy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is the second-largest financial backer of the WHO after the U.S.
In the 24 hours after Mr. Gates’s comments, his Twitter account was mentioned at least 270,000 times—more than 30 times more than average—mainly by angry supporters of President Trump, according to Clemson University researchers. Mr. Gates’s Instagram post from April 5 drew an additional 45,000 comments in that same 24-hour period. The post now has more than 225,000 comments.
Social-media platforms remain fertile ground for virus-related conspiracies and online harassment, despite repeated pledges by the companies to crack down on such activity. The episode underscores the tense, politicized nature of debates around the new coronavirus, which experts at times have struggled to explain. Millions of Americans have lost jobs in the pandemic, making government handling of the crisis intensely personal.
“I’ve never seen a time where more mis- and disinformation has flowed than this coronavirus period,” said Sam Woolley, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied disinformation for nearly a decade.
Some antivaccine activists and conspiracy-minded posters encouraged their followers across social media to attack Mr. Gates on Instagram, a form of harassment called “brigading” in which people coordinate attacks and hijack conversations online, according to a review of accounts. This week, one Instagram account told its 52,000 followers that “it wouldn’t be a bad thing for all of us to go visit Bill Gates Instagram and let him know what you think.”
Researchers say many of the conspiracy claims are amplified by what appear to be automated accounts, or bots, which platforms have promised to minimize.
“Whenever science intervenes to stop a disease, there’s often an adjacent outbreak of misinformation,” said Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “These falsehoods can spread faster than the disease itself—and cause real harm,” he said.
“Covid-19 is infectious and deadly enough. We don’t need misinformation to make it even deadlier,” he added. “Right now, one of the best things we can do to stop the spread of this disease is spread the facts.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-gates-is-targeted-by-social-media-mobs-11587133938
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