One third of participants in Massachusetts study tested positive for antibodies linked to coronavirus

FOX News ^ | 4/18/2020 | Peter Aitken

[Pearls Before Swine]

Around a third of participants in a Massachusetts study tested positive for antibodies linked with coronavirus, according to researchers.

The Mass. General study took samples from 200 residents on the street in Chelsea, MA.

Sixty-four of the participants tested positive – a “sobering” result, according to Thomas Ambrosino, Chelsea’s city manager.

Ambrosino called Chelsea the epicenter of the crisis in Massachusetts. Chelsea has the state’s highest rate of confirmed cases, with at least 712 confirmed cases and 39 deaths – an infection rate of around 2 percent. ....

Doctors used a device made by BioMedomics to analyze the samples. The test hasn’t been approved by the FDA, but Mass. General approved the device for use.

....

While the participants appeared healthy, about half told the doctors that they experienced at least one symptom of COVID-19 in the past four weeks.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Mods: Looked for this on today's Forum, but didn't find it.

I think this is a very important item, as it one of the early antibody tests of a man-on-the-street population cross-section for COVID antibodies.

I don't know anything about the specificity or accuracy of the test, but I note that: - It was conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) - It was truly anonymous, which makes it more likely that people would agree to a drop of blood finger-pric test - It yielded a surprisingly high number (30%) of people who had been challenged by the virus

Chelsea is a small city near Boston, which has had an unusually high number of diagnosed COVID cases--about 750 out of a population of 40,000, which would mean that 1 out of 50, roughly 2% of the population, had symptoms significant enough to seek out testing. But here, a man on the street test shows that 30% have actually been challenged by the virus. The difference is a factor of 15. Recently, there was a report from a Stanford group estimating that the factor could be as high as 50 to 85.

The mayor is an idiot... concluding that the high prevalence of infection means that greater control of the population is in order. In fact, the high prevalence means that there are many more mild or unnonticed cases than previously thought. I find that encouraging. As do most of the commenters to the article.

[heartwood]

Chelsea is a very heavily Hispanic city, probably younger than average, probably different ideas about social distancing.

[BenLurkin]

“The Mass. General study took samples from 200 residents on the street...”

Well there’s a scientific sampling if ever there was one.

[Pearls Before Swine]

True.

But 30% is almost half way to local herd immunity.

And also, the common Fauci figure of mild to severe cases is a ratio of 4. Here, we’re over 15. (Some of the reported cases were likely mild to moderate, which would increase the ratio).

As someone who has a couple of risk factors (age, hypertension), I find that reassuring, although the sample size is small, and not cross-sectioned for age.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Well there’s a scientific sampling if ever there was one.

It's small, but it is probably less systemically biased than many of the tests that have been reported. These are asymptomatic volunteers.

[USCG SimTech]

In Northeast CT back in early January what locals and local health care called Flu type B tore through the region. I had a 99 fever and body aches for 3 days but not too bad. Nearly everyone got it. In fact I don’t know anyone that didn’t get it in some degree.

You’ll notice NE CT has near zero infections or deaths from COVID-19.

[null and void]

30% with antibodies. What percentage is regarded as "herd immunity"?

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

The false positive rate was 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's or one old fart’s life, it's worth it.

[BenLurkin]

200 people off the street. And just the ones that agreed to be tested.

Call me crazy, but that seems absurdly unscientific.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

This thing has been around for a long time. They just happened to pick it to launch their pandemic hysteria attack against Trump and pretended it was “novel.”

[lonestar67]

The Blue Privilege aspects of this are fascinating:

1. Massachussetts allows a non FDA approved test to be used. Red states would not be allowed to do this. The Elite would go nuts.

2. They are allowed to do anonymous testing on people and not let them know that they are positive. This would be deemed inhumane in a Red State.

[Bonemaker]

“One third of participants in Massachusetts study tested positive for antibodies linked to coronavirus”

Probably two thirds of them would test positive for ignorance.

[gitmo]

A lot of potential Typhoid Marys walking around out there.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Well there’s a scientific sampling if ever there was one."

Random sampling is perfectly valid science. The trick is to be sure that it really IS random. And the tested population size has to be large enough to yield valid statistics.

[Pearls Before Swine]

The number is too small. But it’s a first stab. And the number of positives seems surprisingly high to me.

Hopefully, we will figure out how to get a broad study of the population that we can all agree is really representative, and we will get it done soon.

[bramps]

We built thousands and thousands of hospital beds that we don’t need. We built thousands and thousands of ventilators that we don’t need.

But we aren’t now pushing all these companies to build testing equipment and preparing personnel to do testing all over the country in mind blowing numbers.

All we are told is that we can’t do it.

I want President Trump to win in November but he is very lucky that I am not evil and running the Democratic party because I would pummel this issue as it could end this virus tomorrow. It’s very strange to me why these steps are not taking place.

[Fido969]

Maybe they sampled one guy 50 times because he just kept walking past.

[ifinnegan]

Sobering.

There’s just more and more data being gathered showing the same thing.

Sobering in that it’s time to sober up as a nation and focus on hot spots like Boston, and importantly try to protect the most vulnerable, the elderly in homes.

It’s widespread, not as deadly as thought, time to open up.

These data are incredibly good news.

[Kirkwood]

It didn’t report then as being infectious. They were exposed sometime in the past and are now immune.

[tatown]

It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to know...

[FreedomPoster]

From Wikipedia, on demographics:

The racial makeup of the city was 47.8% White,[20] 8.5% Black or African American, 3.1% Asian, 1.1% Native American, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 33.6% from other races, and 5.9% were multiracial. In addition, 62.1% of residents identified as Hispanic or Latino (of any race), which includes 18.2% Salvadoran, 12.7% Puerto Rican, 8.4% Honduran, 7.3% Guatemalan, 2.8% Mexican, 2.2% Dominican, 0.5% Cuban, 0.5% Costa Rican, 0.4% Nicaraguan, 0.4% Panamanian, 1.4% other Central American countries, 2.5% other South American countries, 5.3% other Hispanic/Latino.[21]

The population was spread out with 27.3 under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 34.6% from 25 to 44, 16.3% from 45 to 64, and 11.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years.