COVID-19

[shpalman]

BREAKING NEWS: People can get infected from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers but we don't know how much

"Ought to figure it out and do something about it"

Brought to you by our "weird, this seems to have a timestamp from now and not from a year ago" desk.

[Woodchopper]

A majority of uninfected adults show pre-existing antibody reactivity against SARS-CoV-2

Pre-existing cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 may occur in absence of prior viral exposure. However, this has been difficult to quantify at the population level due to a lack of reliably defined seroreactivity thresholds. Using an orthogonal antibody testing approach, we estimated that ~0.6% of non-triaged adults from the greater Vancouver area, Canada between May 17th and June 19th 2020 showed clear evidence of a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, after adjusting for false-positive and false-negative test results. Using a highly sensitive multiplex assay and positive/negative thresholds established in infants in whom maternal antibodies have waned, we determine that more than 90% of uninfected adults showed antibody reactivity against the spike, receptor-binding domain (RBD), N-terminal domains (NTD) or the nucleocapsid (N) protein from SARS-CoV-2. This sero-reactivity was evenly distributed across age and sex, correlated with circulating coronaviruses reactivity, and was partially outcompeted by soluble circulating coronaviruses’ spike. Using a custom SARS-CoV-2 peptide mapping array, we found that this antibody reactivity broadly mapped to spike, and to conserved non-structural viral proteins. We conclude that most adults display pre-existing antibody cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2, which further supports investigation of how this may impact the clinical severity of COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 vaccine responses.

https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/146316

[bob sterman]

I wonder how James Annan will adjust the model he fits to ONS data in light of this (now deleted tweet from the company collecting data on behalf of the ONS)...

EyjZgVgXMAYc9-t.png (396.17 KiB) Viewed 92 times

[tenchboy]

Aaaaaaand we are back to normal; pandemic obviously over; virus obviously gone home.
Why?
Cos I just had a royal mail recorded signed for delivery and t postie said sign this as he thrust an old fashioned neighbourhood flu spreader at me upon which to wipe my finger where everyone else had just wiped theirs.
I said no. Nicely of course.
That's why.