Seems that we now have, or will soon have, two reliable antibody tests, one from Roche and one from Abbott. Both proper companies with a lot to lose if they sell faulty crap. They both seem very accurate in identifying positive results ie very few ‘false positives’, saying you have antibodies when you don’t. Slightly less accurate but still very good on false negatives (saying you don’t have antibodies when you do).
Well good. The interesting thing is what will we do with these tests? Who are they for? How will their use be targetted? Will individuals be allowed to buy them?
There is no evidence that having antibodies gives you protection against reinfection, but I’m pretty sure it would give me a sense of possibly false security if I had a positive test. It might change peoples’ behaviour, when the safest thing for us to do with people outside our household is to assume that both we and they have the virus, people might think ‘hey, I can’t get this or give it, so social distancing no longer applies’. How do you prove you have had a positive test? An easily forged certificate, or some kind of electronic badge (smartphone users only, obviously)?
We need a very clear strategy for these tests, and that needs to be shared very explicitly. These cannot be seen as a get out of jail free card for individuals, but must be part of a collective community based approach to managing social distancing restrictions. Fat ****ing chance with this mob in charge. They’ve only had three months to think it through, they must have started when they thought they were getting 3.5m in early April, the ones Johnson promised which didn’t work. Nah, they’ve put no thought into it at all, just like everything else.