Positive covid antibody test

[Northeast1988]

i don’t even believe they’re that accurate

 

[Blairr]

Thank you! Didn’t even think of that lol. Just googled it again and B U P A are offering one. I just hope they’re accurate x

Yeah! I guess they’re kind of pointless in a way since it doesn’t really change things but it is nice to know!

 

[xoxo GG]

I got randomly selected and was sent the antibody test through the post. However it was negative. But I was expecting it to be. I'm not a front line worker or anything.

However my brother in law has done the test and his was positive for antibodies but his husband (my brother) was negative. He is pretty sure he's had it and he's a nurse on the front line. Well they both are. So either the test wasn't accurate. As I'm not sure how two people living together and both being nurses, one got it and one didn't??

Not everybody develops antibodies. They say around 10-12% of people do actually develop some form. It’s consistent with the picture that came out of my trust as well

 

[Kim Mild]

People who think they had it in November or December - I’m pretty sure you can’t have had it then. There was a nasty flu virus doing the rounds but Covid was not in the U.K. then. If you look at the death statistics chart for the U.K. for 2019 and 2020 (all deaths, not just Covid deaths), it clearly shows that deaths were following the normal curve right up until
March when they rapidly went sky high. In fact, they were slightly below the curve which shows that there were less deaths than average. If Covid had been here before the end of January other than the odd isolated case, there would have been a massive spike of deaths showing in January of February but there isn’t even a tiny rise before March.

I think we forget how bad flu can be. I was horribly ill with a high temperature, shortness of breath, awful cough and feeling dreadful - classic Covid symptoms...but it was in 2018 so Covid didn’t even exist then.

It's highly unlikely they'll ever know
either way unless swabs were taken and can be tested for covid-19 retrospectively, like they did in France and found covid 19 in a sample from December.
Not everyone with covid19 of flu die ,so that's why there is no increase in death rate. A funeral director told me in February they'd had a lot of deaths from pneumonia .
I remember having flu (was it swine flu then?) early 2010 and it was awful but different symptoms to what I had in January. It wasn't the fever and fatigue that made me suspect Covid-19, it was the unusual symptoms like weird dry sensation in my throat, bloody scabs in my nose and complete lack of runny nose.
Surely any seasonal flu virus would still be lingering in the community in match ,this year it disappeared and was all put down to Covid-19 by then.

Not everybody develops antibodies. They say around 10-12% of people do actually develop some form. It’s consistent with the picture that came out of my trust as well

I read that ,the longer ago your exposure, the less likely the test could pick up antibodies.

 

[Blairr]

Sorry if this isn’t the best place for this but does anyone know how to go about getting an antibody test done? SuperDrug have revoked theirs and I would like to know if I have had it or not (had lots of symptoms the week of lockdown). I know there is currently no factual evidence to support having it once means you can’t catch it again but it would help with my anxiety around go outside etc.

I think private clinics offer it but most of us are tested in our workplace.

 

[Scubasf]

It's highly unlikely they'll ever know
either way unless swabs were taken and can be tested for covid-19 retrospectively, like they did in France and found covid 19 in a sample from December.
Not everyone with covid19 of flu die ,so that's why there is no increase in death rate. A funeral director told me in February they'd had a lot of deaths from pneumonia .
I remember having flu (was it swine flu then?) early 2010 and it was awful but different symptoms to what I had in January. It wasn't the fever and fatigue that made me suspect Covid-19, it was the unusual symptoms like weird dry sensation in my throat, bloody scabs in my nose and complete lack of runny nose.
Surely any seasonal flu virus would still be lingering in the community in match ,this year it disappeared and was all put down to Covid-19 by then.


I read that ,the longer ago your exposure, the less likely the test could pick up antibodies.

You can’t argue with the facts in this graph which was created on 24th April. The coloured line is all U.K. deaths in 2020 - not just Covid deaths - deaths by any cause. You can clearly see that we entered 2020 with the usual relatively small peak of deaths that occurs in January (due to flu, pneumonia and other viruses that are around at that time of year) - nothing unusual about that. Then the death rate dropped below average because the flu season was slightly milder than usual. The deaths then rapidly spike out of nowhere in mid March. The people who died in mid March from Covid would have got sick towards the end of January at the absolute earliest - mid February is more likely. If Covid had been in our community before then, the death spike would have happened earlier or at least been a more gradual rise. Think about people’s behaviour around Christmas - there is a lot of visiting relatives and there are parties too - it would have spread like wildfire, especially amongst the elderly during Christmas visits. This would have shown in the death rate as although most people don’t die from it, a lot of people do, especially elderly people.

that’s not to say that there couldn’t have been the odd isolated case - there is potential for that, but pretty much everyone who was ill in November andDecember and most of January will have had flu or similar.