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GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
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@GidMK

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Health NerdVerified account

@GidMK

Epidemiologist. Writer (Guardian, Observer etc). "Well known research trouble-maker". PhDing at @UoW Host of @senscipod Email gidmk.healthnerd@gmail.com he/him

Sydney, New South Wales
theguardian.com/profile/gideon…
Joined November 2015

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    1. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      The ELISA used by the authors has a stated specificity of 99.3% and the authors tested 519 "true negative" blood samples collected from 2016 to 2019 from healthy adults and suspected hanta virus patients and observed 3 false positives (0.6%) matching this specificity. 3/10

      1 reply 13 retweets 170 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      The authors tested 1912 blood samples collected between Dec 13 and Dec 16 2019 and observed 39 positives (2.0%). A Fisher's Exact Test comparing 3/519 to 39/1912 is narrowly significant with p = 0.02. 4/10

      1 reply 12 retweets 137 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      However, there is ample reason to expect that individuals recently recovered from seasonal coronavirus infection will have more cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 than random healthy adults. In fact this can be seen in this paper by Freeman et al (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7239067/ …). 5/10

      7 replies 24 retweets 231 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      Here, ELISA titers are higher in individuals who were recently infected with seasonal coronavirus compared to random healthy adults. This is particularly the case in related betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1. 6/10pic.twitter.com/ljh7UC8qPZ

      1 reply 13 retweets 140 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      Additionally, we know that seasonal coronaviruses circulate at higher frequencies in the winter. We can see this in @seattleflustudy data where there is significant seasonal coronavirus circulation in Dec 2019. 7/10pic.twitter.com/VrvdtRKllp

      5 replies 16 retweets 146 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      It seems highly likely to me that the 39 "positives" from Dec 13 to Dec 16 reported by Basavaraju et al are due to cross-reactivity from recent seasonal coronavirus infection. It would just take a slight decrease of assay specificity to ~98% to explain this outcome. 8/10

      8 replies 56 retweets 275 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      The authors highlight the study's limitation due to "potential cross reactivity with human common coronavirus infection" in the paper's discussion, but it unfortunately didn't make it into the @WSJ story (https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-likely-in-u-s-in-mid-december-2019-cdc-scientists-report-11606782449 …). 9/10

      5 replies 55 retweets 333 likes
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    8. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 30 Nov 2020

      The other angle to consider is that if we're supposed to believe that 2.0% of random blood donors in Dec 2019 are COVID+ this would translate to millions of infections in the population at large, in which case we would have noticed due to people dying in large numbers. 10/10

      36 replies 78 retweets 625 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 1 Dec 2020

      Trevor Bedford Retweeted Trevor Bedford

      Follow up #1: Also, a reminder that we at the @seattleflustudy PCR tested 3600 samples from individuals with acute respiratory illness collected in January 2020 from Seattle and found zero positives for COVID-19. This is a much more specific assay.https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1249414295042965504 …

      Trevor Bedford added,

      Trevor BedfordVerified account @trvrb
      We tested 3600 samples collected in Jan 2020 for COVID-19 status and found zero positives. We tested 3308 samples collected in Feb 2020 and found a first positive on Feb 21 with a total of 10 samples testing positive in Feb. 5/18 pic.twitter.com/Jcx0qzdfx8
      Show this thread
      8 replies 65 retweets 341 likes
      Show this thread
    10. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 1 Dec 2020

      Follow up #2: This doesn't mean that COVID-19 was completely absent from the US in January 2020, just that prevalence at that time was exceptionally low. Finding 0/3600 COVID+ acute respiratory specimens doesn't square with theoretical 2% ELISA positivity in Dec.

      22 replies 41 retweets 284 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 1 Dec 2020
      Replying to @trvrb

      Could we test this theory by re running the study on blood samples from, say, January 2018?

      11:52 AM - 1 Dec 2020
      • 13 Likes
      • Robert Warren Craig Kaplan Dr Maria Pyra, PhD Gracie Lou Who Dr. Amy Hartman 👩‍🔬🏊🏻 Balgor Trevor Bedford FVM
      1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Trevor Bedford‏Verified account @trvrb 1 Dec 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          Yeah. I'd expect 1-2% ELISA positives from blood samples from Dec 2018 and ~0.5% ELISA positives from blood samples from June 2019.

          5 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 1 Dec 2020
          Replying to @trvrb

          Now to figure out how to get some old blood 🤔

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        4. Show replies

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