Apparent absence of covid transmission at hair salon with face covering policy

Re:Apparent absence of covid transmission at hair salon with... by CydeWeys on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @09:59AM (#23845296)

You want all the kinds of tests. I'm pretty sure I had coronavirus in mid-March (I live in NYC), but seeing as how there were no tests available at all unless you were hospitalized at a minimum, I just suffered through it in home isolation. By the time antibody tests were widely available nearly two months later, my result came back negative. A swab test at the peak of my symptoms would have been more conclusive (had it been available). A lot of people who had it earlier on are already testing negative for antibodies. And now it's at the point where I'll never know for sure. I really wish the testing (all kinds) had been available in mid-March, so I'd know for sure. Now that the testing is much more available, you'd be crazy not to take advantage of it.

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Re:Apparent absence of covid transmission at hair salon with... by keldaris on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @10:19AM (#23845540)

What would knowing for sure change for you? As you correctly noted, antibody levels seem to decline fairly quickly, so it's not like you can rely on immunity. It's true that there's a long and growing list of complications associated with C19, but I don't know of a single one where the diagnostic or therapeutic options change in any way based on whether you had C19 or not. In theory, if we actually had a thorough understanding of the mechanisms (and probabilities) of various complications after C19 it would affect the process of diagnosing them, but we're a very long way from that.

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Re:Apparent absence of covid transmission at hair salon with... by CydeWeys on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @10:21AM (#23845569)

It bothers me greatly to not know things for sure. I can't even tell this story without having to put a giant caveat on it.

This really wouldn't bother you??? You really wouldn't mind not knowing?

One giant reason that knowing for sure would be helpful is knowing that you're less likely to get reinfected, and likely less likely to have serious effects if you do end up reinfected, if you previously had it (even if blood antibodies have faded, your T memory cells may still help you out). This might change your behavior going forward.

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Re:Apparent absence of covid transmission at hair salon with... by keldaris on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @10:39AM (#23845801)

Technically, I'm in a slightly similar position to yours as I had an uncommonly annoying respiratory infection during the last week of February (I am not in a disease epicenter, however, so my Bayesian prior is much weaker). I don't believe having a positive (or negative) test would meaningfully change my behavior or medical decisions and I don't feel any significant psychological discomfort about it. That said, I respect that you feel differently, that's fair enough.

However, on the last point, I'm afraid that thinking might potentially prove quite dangerous. As far as I can tell (from closely following the medical literature, though I am not an immunologist and don't claim any authority on the subject) we really have no idea as to how quickly immunity decays, every single cellular immunity (T cell) study I've seen is extremely limited methodologically and we have no clinical evidence whatsoever to suggest that reinfections would have a milder course. If that turns out to not be the case, people who behave incautiously based on their test results might significantly endanger themselves.

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