Posted on 04/19/2020 9:29:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Major League Baseball will have about 10,000 employees partake in a vast and unique study on the viability of COVID-19 antibody testing, multiple league sources confirmed to CBS Sports. The study, which will not affect any timeline for a potential start of the 2020 MLB regular season, will include participants from 27 of the league's 30 teams and help determine whether test subjects have been infected with COVID-19 even if they never presented symptoms.
The tests, which were distributed at each participating team's ballpark, were available on a voluntary basis. The team's medical personnel had to know an individual was coming, and those who participated had to fill out a questionnaire, according to those familiar with the process.
The goal of the study is to determine the extent of the coronavirus pandemic in large metropolitan areas. It's a joint effort on the part of Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, of Stanford, discussed the tests with CBS Sports on Tuesday evening. He explained that the test results are typically available within 15 minutes after a blood sample is given through a pin prick. This test, which is similar in appearance to a pregnancy test, differs from the standard coronavirus test, as it doesn't indicate whether the virus is active -- just the presence of antibodies formed against COVID-19.
The antibody test, should it prove successful and viable, could be administered at home and yield results in a matter of minutes, unlike the current COVID-19 test that must be performed by healthcare professionals. The data from the study should help policymakers decide when it will be prudent to lift the various stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders that are in effect across the vast majority of the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbssports.com ...
From the Stanford Website:
https://healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jay_bhattacharya
Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD
Senior Fellow by Courtesy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Medicine
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Professor by Courtesy of Economics
Director of the Program on Medical Outcomes
Director of the Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging
Core faculty member at the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research
Research Interests
Constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status; effects of government policies designed to benefit vulnerable populations
BIOGRAPHY
Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine and a CHP/PCOR core faculty member. His research focuses on the constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations. He has published empirical economics and health services research on the elderly, adolescents, HIV/AIDS and managed care. Most recently, he has researched the regulation of the viatical-settlements market (a secondary life-insurance market that often targets HIV patients) and summer/winter differences in nutritional outcomes for low-income American families. He is also working on a project examining the labor-market conditions that help determine why some U.S. employers do not provide health insurance.
He worked for three years as an economist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., where he also taught health economics as a visiting assistant professor at the University of California-Los Angeles. He received a BA in economics, an MD and a PhD from Stanford University.
Baseball has been considering playing the season at spring training sites, and sequestering everyone in hotels when the players are not at the ballparks playing. And I think they would be constantly testing everyone to ensure they are free of the virus, if they do play the season this way.
This could be what saves the country from the pandemic hysteria. Hopefully the results are given soon .
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was one of the participants in the recent Santa Clara study that was quite interesting.
Preprint of the paper.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1
Conclusions The population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases. Population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections.
Good interview with him:
The Fight against COVID-19: An Update from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7v2F3usNVA
I believe as these antibody studies ramp up, they are going to show that large numbers of people have this antibody for COVID-19. This will show many things, some of which are:
*This bug has been around since last fall
*The people who have the antibody are now immuned to it
*The 2-3% death rate breathlessly reported by the Fake News is going to actually be much lower when those with antibody are now added to the mix
*We are on track for acquiring “Herd Immunity” in the population, another key to nullifying the exagerated death rate for this bug
Methinks the Fake News is not going to like the news on how many people actually end up have this antibody. It kind of kills their doom and gloom narrative!
There is a problem here because you don’t know when the person who tests positive for KungFlu was infected. They could be an active carrier. We know it takes up to 14 days to become symptomatic but you are a carrier long before that. Any testing positive for the antibodies then needs to be tested for the disease. A high percentage of people with the antibodies could just be presaging a massive outbreak in coming weeks. At the very least they need to be tested for the disease so they can be quarantined if they are actively infected. We also need to know the accuracy of these antibody tests. Are there false positives? False negatives? How many etc.
Interesting in that the distribution of those 30 markets should give us a good idea of just where this virus was circulating in the Fall.
Why are we not doing this with police and fire departments across the country, military reservists, national guard and military bases. I’m guessing that would increase the numbers tested by 3-4M. Eventually you’ll get a solid idea of the infection rate, total cases and by extension mortality rate. We don’t need to test everyone, just enough to determine a workable data set.
Antibody testing! NOT testing for the virus itself.
Gonna, gonna, gonna...
WHEN?
I suspect the libs will do everything in their power to squash the results becoming public knowledge.
They will cite HIPPA rules.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.