Posted on 05/28/2020 4:19:54 AM PDT by RaceBannon
TOPLINE In updated guidance posted on its website over the weekend, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged an inability to accurately determine if individuals had been infected with Covid-19 via antibody tests; if the test is used in a population where prevalence is low, it's possible that "less than half of those testing positive will truly have antibodies."
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Sounds like a convenient way to move the goalposts yet again
Here’s a question: We have accurate antibody testing for other viruses, like Mumps, Measles...
What makes the antibody testing for WuFlu different?
What they are saying is that in populations with low infection rates a large percentage of positive tests will be false positives.
Of course that is true. If a population has a true infection rate of 0%, then the false positives will constitute 100% of the reported positives.
If a population has a 1% true infection rate and the test has a 1% false positive, then the testing will report about 2% positives and the false positives will constitute about 1/2 of the reported positives.
Since the population has been deliberately isolated I would expect the antibodies present to be on the low side. The idea is for low risk persons to be exposed, go through a less severe case, and recover. That is how antibodies spread in a population. Not by isolation.
“Still” The word you are looking for is “still”, not “again.”
yep
If all these tests have the same success rate that the seasonal flu vaccines have, we’re in a heap of trouble.
They really beat around the bush regarding the accuracy of their tests in that link and don’t offer a direct answer.
Their antibody test is the most accurate on the market though if you look at the actual data comparing it to other available tests.
Internet Says Possibly ‘Less Than Half’ Of CDC Announcements Are Correct
Riiiiight! Coming from the CDC, you can take it to the... dumpster!
Did it exist for other corona SARS viruses? It’s a new virus, but not all that new.
“Herd immunity“ is just another name for “natural immunity“ - and “natural immunity“ is just a term for any immunity that is stimulated by natural exposure the population, rather than by artificial exposure in a lab (vaccine).
The important thing to remember is that “natural immunity” is the only kind of immunity we have. There is no man-made alternative to the human body’s ability to develop antibodies.
Man-made vaccines developed in the lab still rely on the same principle of stimulating the human body’s natural immunity through exposure - the difference is that the exposure process takes place in a lab with test subjects rather than naturally through the “herd”.
Each of us is a complex walking laboratory, perfected over ten million years of evolution (natural selection).
So, before we discount “natural herd immunity” as some crackpot anti-science alternative medicine idea, we should remember that man-made vaccine technology relies 100% on the body’s immunity system to work. 100%!
Let that sink in: It is our bodies that ultimately save us, even with a vaccine. In fact, a vaccine’s effectiveness is measured by how it compares to natural immunity.
To be fair, there are certain advantages to man being able to control the process of exposure via vaccine technology. It allows for monitoring progress under controlled conditions. It allows us to track who is immunized and who is not.
For liberty-loving Americans there are some disturbing aspects of vaccine vs. natural (herd) approach to immunity as well. Obviously, vaccine technology is far more conducive to central planning and socialist agendas than is natural immunity. You can’t control people even letting them do whatever they want. Already, leftists are talking about requiring under-the-skin chips to track who has been immunized. Seriously?
And let’s not forget the profit motive. Big Pharma owns much of the DC bureaucracy and Ivy League academia - they can patent vaccines but they can’t make a dime on herd immunity.
As we decide which scientists to listen to, we should always follow the money.
The politicians, medical "experts" and the media have created such a mass hysteria over this corona virus that everyone is focused on it 100% of the time instead on other things that make up our lives.
If you're not sick, then why worry about it? And if you are sick, take care of yourself and recover. For those that can't do these things, apparently their time on this earth is up.
These viruses come and go every few years and life moves on. Or at least it used to. Now people want the government to take care of it. I'm sorry to tell them this but the government has trouble doing even the most basic things well, so don't hold your breath that they'll get this one right.
Life is a risky venture but everybody nowadays wants the government to make it risk-free. Ain't going to happen.
There is no big mystery to this — it is a consequence of Bayes rule — high school probabilty, that many of us have forgotten. In simple terms, even if the test has high precision and recall (a very good test from an individual perspective), we may still end up with a situation where a lot of people falsely believe they have immunity (aka antibodies). To see why this is true, it is useful to understand the effect of prevalence. If the prevalence i.e., percentage of infected people is low, then the vast majority of those tested will not have the antibodies to begin with. Even with a test that has high precision (say 98%) you will still identify 2% of those who don’t have the antibodies as having anti-bodies (false positive). If the prevalence is small to begin with the number of false positives can be on par or higher than the actual number of infected even with a very good test. So, the test can give a false sense of security.
“Herd” immunity is the immunity a population has that has either innate or acquired immunity. Acquired immunity comes from antibodies, which could be from vaccines or having had the illness already.
If the accuracy rate is 95-99% and the actual incidence rate is 1-5%, it’s going to falsely identify cases at about the same rate it “accurately” identifies cases.
What second test did they do that showed the first test to be a false positive?
In other words, how do they know the first test was inaccurate?
We are only discussing acquired immunity here.
And the only way to acquire immunity is through exposure.
That exposure can take place naturally, or artificially via a vaccine.
My point, which you either missed or ignored, was that regardless of whether exposure is allowed to spread naturally through “the herd”, or whether it is administered artificially via a vaccine, it is ultimately our body’s immune response to exposure that does the work to make us immune.
The biggest differences between the two approaches:
1) Acquired “herd immunity” through natural exposure has a ten million year record of proven success, whereas vaccination does not.
2) Big Pharma can patent and profit from a vaccine, and Big Government can make it mandatory. Whereas natural herd exposure can’t be controlled or patented - so it is of no use to fascists.
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