Antibody testing

[AlexSFCA]

What do you guys think about Antibody testing for COVID-19? It’s now widely available to anyone - Quest Diagnostics using Abbott test which is FDA approved with over 99% accuracy. Doctors are telling me that at this point antibodies do not mean immunity - they claim there is no evidence. But why wouldn’t there be some immunity or could it at least mean that if I have antibody and get infected again - it shouldn’t be worse than the first time?
The virus doesn’t seem to be mutating (yet)? Science on original SARS and MERS suggests antibodies do mean immunity and so is common cold strains (other coronaviruses). The test is $119, I am more than willing to test myself.

[hlthe2b]

1. If you have $$ to throw away and are curious... It has no REAL information in terms of immunity

And yes, even if you are positive for antibody, we have NO real information on what level of antibody MIGHT be sufficiently protective to prevent IMMEDIATE reinfection, much less the duration of the protection.

Even more to the point, these tests are qualitative only: i.e., do you have any measurable antibody or not. Nothing quantitative about the level of antibody. So, even if we KNEW the quantity of antibody that would provide protection and how long (duration) of that protection, these tests would not let you judge whether or not you were immune.

Until those studies are completed months from now, all antibody MAY tell you is that you had a prior infection. NOTHING else.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Many antibody tests are not reliable at all. High falses pos/neg. . . . nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. The virus IS mutating. Some strains have 20 mutations. More than 4623 strains

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?dmax=2020-04-20&dmin=2019-12-26&m=div&p=full

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?d=tree,map&dmax=2020-04-20&dmin=2019-12-26&p=full