Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day since coronavirus
Speaker 1: was declared a global pandemic. Our main story what can
Speaker 1: an antibody test actually tell you? But first, here's what
Speaker 1: happened in virus news today. New York City is on
Speaker 1: track to enter the second phase of reopening on Monday.
Speaker 1: That's the phase that allows restaurants to offer outdoor dining
Speaker 1: and could be a major step for the economy. Statewide.
Speaker 1: Less than one percent of New Yorker's tested positive for
Speaker 1: the novel coronavirus yesterday, the lowest percentage since the start
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Governor Cuomo said there were seventeen deaths
Speaker 1: on June sixteenth, which was also a new low. New
Speaker 1: York's progress comes as at least twenty other states see spikes.
Speaker 1: Texas reported a record number of hospitalizations and new cases
Speaker 1: in Florida rose to the highest level since the pandemic began.
Speaker 1: Sweden's Grand COVID experiment isn't having the effect the country's
Speaker 1: top epidemiologists had hoped for. The country's strategy was to
Speaker 1: leave schools, shops, and restaurants open throughout the pandemic. The
Speaker 1: theory was that the country would quickly reach a high
Speaker 1: level of immunity to the virus, where enough people have
Speaker 1: contracted the virus to protect most of the population. Contagion
Speaker 1: rates in Sweden are much higher than anywhere else in
Speaker 1: the Nordic region. It's COVID nineteen mortality rate is among
Speaker 1: the worst in the world. Scientists have been eager to
Speaker 1: learn whether the flip side of widespread contagion is a
Speaker 1: higher level of immunity, but only about fourteen percent of
Speaker 1: people tested in Stockholm had COVID nineteen antibodies. That compares
Speaker 1: with the study published this month about Bergamo, once the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen epicenter in Italy, which showed that fifty seven
Speaker 1: percent of that city's residents had developed antibodies. Finally, governments
Speaker 1: and industry groups from the US to Chile are insisting
Speaker 1: that food poses little risk of spreading the coronavirus. Some
Speaker 1: consumers were skittish after an outbreak in Beijing was blamed
Speaker 1: on imported fish. Chile the top seller of salmon after
Speaker 1: Norway sought to persuade China that its fish was safe
Speaker 1: to import after orders had been canceled. The Norwegian Food
Speaker 1: Safety authority also said there were no known cases of
Speaker 1: infection via contaminated food, and although there is no evidence
Speaker 1: that COVID nineteen can be transmitted through food, experts say
Speaker 1: more research is needed. And now for today's main story.
Speaker 1: It's now relatively easy to get tested to see if
Speaker 1: you carry the antibodies for COVID nineteen. Urgent care centers
Speaker 1: and many doctors offices are offering the tests widely, but
Speaker 1: the signs are still out on whether or not people
Speaker 1: who have COVID nineteen become immune to it. Not to
Speaker 1: mention the possibility that we've reported on before that the
Speaker 1: test you take may not be accurate, so reporter christ
Speaker 1: and V. Brown has tried to answer the question is
Speaker 1: it worth taking the test at all? In March, as
Speaker 1: the world was preparing to go into lockdown, Eve was
Speaker 1: having one last hurrah with grad school classmates in London
Speaker 1: before flying home to San Francisco. Eva's asked us to
Speaker 1: not use her last name to protect her privacy. Vibe
Speaker 1: there in the beginning of March, which I assume it
Speaker 1: was similar, and a lot of America was like coronavirus
Speaker 1: is coming party as hard as we can now before
Speaker 1: this big bad thing comes. They had canceled a ski
Speaker 1: trip to Austria because of the virus, so they made
Speaker 1: the best of it. Beacurely. The last thing I did
Speaker 1: there was I spent like five or six hours in
Speaker 1: a pub with people um and it was like it
Speaker 1: was a fairly crowded pub where I was very good
Speaker 1: about washing my hands, but like otherwise we weren't like
Speaker 1: they were definitely shared drinks, shared utensils, like we just
Speaker 1: had no idea. The thing is, the virus wasn't coming,
Speaker 1: it was already there. A few weeks later, after a
Speaker 1: stopover to see some friends in Dubai, Eve was home
Speaker 1: in San Francisco eating a blue cheese and truffle oil omelet.
Speaker 1: Despite that strong flavor profile, she couldn't taste anything. I
Speaker 1: initially thought it was the truffle oil because I thought
Speaker 1: I bought a twenty all our bottle of truckle oil
Speaker 1: instead of a thirty dollar bottle. And so it's like
Speaker 1: this is what I get for being cheap, Like it
Speaker 1: must be bad trouble oil. Losing your sense of taste
Speaker 1: or smell is a symptom of the virus. So you've
Speaker 1: got tested. It turned out she had COVID nineteen, and
Speaker 1: so did basically everyone from the pub that night. So
Speaker 1: imagine her surprise when a few weeks later, two separate
Speaker 1: antibody tests came up negative. Eve had definitely had COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: Multiple tests had confirmed the diagnosis, as did the fact
Speaker 1: that so many people she had shared food and drinks
Speaker 1: with contracted the virus too, But at least, according to
Speaker 1: these tests, her immune system had not created antibodies to
Speaker 1: fend it off. Then a third test said she did
Speaker 1: have antibodies to the virus. This obviously was really confused.
Speaker 1: Sing There's no point in doing an antibody test because
Speaker 1: if you get an answer that you want, you're gonna
Speaker 1: believe it, and if you get an answer that you
Speaker 1: don't want, you're going to decide that the test was flood.
Speaker 1: Antibody tests are everywhere right now. Doctor's offices are sending
Speaker 1: out text and email blasts urging patients to book an
Speaker 1: antibody test. Today. In some places, even botox clinics have
Speaker 1: opened their doors to offer the tests. But as Eve experienced,
Speaker 1: the tests can offer more confusion than answers. Antibody tests
Speaker 1: measure signals in a person's blood that indicate whether they
Speaker 1: have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. In the past,
Speaker 1: the tests have been plagued by questions about their accuracy,
Speaker 1: and even if a test is accurate, experts have no
Speaker 1: solid proof yet the antibodies mean a person is immune
Speaker 1: to the virus, or for how long that immunity might last.
Speaker 1: So the availability of these tests has really wound up
Speaker 1: creating more confusion than anything. I talked about this with
Speaker 1: Andrew Diamond, the chief medical officer of the primary care
Speaker 1: chain One Medical. He says the company struggled with whether
Speaker 1: they should even offer antibody test to patients. We did
Speaker 1: not take this light list, and we had a We
Speaker 1: had a team of people working on this literally around
Speaker 1: the clock for weeks to make sure that we did
Speaker 1: this the right way. Back in March, the FDA said
Speaker 1: that antibody tests didn't require any kind of regulatory sign off,
Speaker 1: and dozens and dozens of tests immediately flooded the market.
Speaker 1: One major concern was that if the tests weren't specific enough,
Speaker 1: they might tell people they had COVID nightteen when really
Speaker 1: they had encountered a related virus. In other words, people
Speaker 1: might think they were immune when they weren't, and that
Speaker 1: could be a big problem. Andrew said that One Medical
Speaker 1: had a whole team of people whose full time job
Speaker 1: was event these tests. We knew that everybody, ourselves included
Speaker 1: as clinicians and all of our members and public health officials, employers,
Speaker 1: everybody wanted to know from the very beginning of this pandemic.
Speaker 1: Are people immune once they've been sick? Are people immune
Speaker 1: who haven't even had symptoms? Is there more immunity out
Speaker 1: there than we realized? Do we are reclose to her immunity?
Speaker 1: I mean, the curiosity was borderline hysterical. One Medical ultimately
Speaker 1: did decide to offer a test. Once the company found
Speaker 1: one that seemed good enough. Then the issue was how
Speaker 1: do we explain to people what this actually does. Because
Speaker 1: just having a high specificity test that will dramatically reduce
Speaker 1: this risk of a false positive result, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: take that risk of false positive to zero. We started
Speaker 1: asking ourselves, how are we going to explain what that
Speaker 1: risk is and why it matters whether you get a
Speaker 1: false positive? And then, more importantly, how do you interpret
Speaker 1: a true positive result? So let's say the antibody test
Speaker 1: actually gives you the true positive that you really do
Speaker 1: have antibodies, and it's just it's a real result. Then
Speaker 1: what do you do. We don't know that they confer immunity.
Speaker 1: We haven't proven that just because you have antibodies you're immune,
Speaker 1: Andrew said. The Ultimately one medical hopes that the test
Speaker 1: might actually lead people to be more cautious, not less.
Speaker 1: If you were previously thinking, you know what, I already
Speaker 1: had COVID. I was super sick in February. I already
Speaker 1: had COVID. I don't need to worry about this. But
Speaker 1: then you get a negative result, that's going to change
Speaker 1: your behavior, guarantee it. And we've already seen that people say, oh, shoot,
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't have it. And that's actually a
Speaker 1: vastly more likely scenario, more likely outcome that from the
Speaker 1: antibody test, because most people end up with a negative test.
Speaker 1: The number of people who think they had it is
Speaker 1: far greater than the number of people who actually had it,
Speaker 1: so dorusful to do change their behavior. They say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I should take this more seriously. I was
Speaker 1: getting cavalier out there, but now I am going to
Speaker 1: wash my hands and wear this mask, et cetera. Last month,
Speaker 1: the FDA made changes to its policy and now requires
Speaker 1: that antibody test developers seek emergency authorization from the agency. Immediately,
Speaker 1: more than two dozen tests were pulled from the market.
Speaker 1: It's not the antibody tests don't have any use. The
Speaker 1: tests can be really useful for researchers and public health
Speaker 1: officials who are trying to answer questions like how many
Speaker 1: people with COVID nineteen or asymptomatic, or how deadly is
Speaker 1: the virus. But I talked with a lot of doctors,
Speaker 1: and none of them suggested that for the average individual
Speaker 1: the test might be useful for anything other than to
Speaker 1: satisfy a personal curiosity. This was echoed by Congressman Rajna
Speaker 1: Krishna Morty, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and
Speaker 1: Consumer Policy, and a hearing on antibody test recently. The
Speaker 1: truth is many people mistakenly view anybodies as a get
Speaker 1: out of jail free card to return to normal life,
Speaker 1: a dangerous misconception used as a selling point by bad actors.
Speaker 1: Eve says that knowing she had the virus and tested
Speaker 1: positive for antibodies has changed her behavior, even if science
Speaker 1: hasn't fully determined how much immunity antibodies confer. Coronavirus is
Speaker 1: the disease that no one wants to have, but everyone
Speaker 1: wants to have had. And yeah, because you want to
Speaker 1: you want to be past it. But it almost felt
Speaker 1: like I'd like gotten across this like really really really
Speaker 1: dangerous bridge, and I was on the safe side, just
Speaker 1: like waiting for the rest of the world to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get across. A few days after we talked,
Speaker 1: Eve hopped another plane back to London. There, she said,
Speaker 1: at least she would be able to hang out with
Speaker 1: her friends from the pub her own personal immunity heard.
Speaker 1: That was Kristin V. Brown And that's our show today.
Speaker 1: For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to
Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by Topher Foreheads, Jordan gas Pure, Magnus
Speaker 1: Henrikson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported
Speaker 1: by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo Sidran. Our
Speaker 1: editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shawn. Francesco Leavie is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening. H