Hi anita,

I watch the news and the coronavirus “curves” that we’re all trying to flatten but I think none of us really knows what’s happening and that we won’t until the general public takes the COVID-19 antibody tests. The antibody test will tell us if the virus has ever entered our bodies, as opposed to the COVID-19 standard test which measures if the actual virus is present in our bodies at any particular moment in time. The antibody test makes more sense to me because it will reveal if the virus has already entered the bodies of many more people than we think, thus lowering the mortality rate of this virus.

It’s believed that the first cases of COVID-19 were seen on Nov. 17, 2019 in Wuhan, China yet daily flights continued from China to the US from Nov 17, 2019 through Jan 31, 2020 (that’s 2.5 months) before the travel ban began (I’m not placing blame on anyone; just stating facts). That’s a lot of flights and a lot of people traveling from China to the US! It’s believed that the first COVID-19 case in the US occurred when a Washington state man in his 30’s returned home on Jan 15, 2020 from Wuhan and sought medical treatment when he started to experience pneumonia-type symptoms. But knowing what we know about how highly contagious this virus is, isn’t it likely that others who were infected but perhaps had milder symptoms were on some of those many flights to the US from China before the travel ban began? In other words, isn’t it likely that many more Americans were already infected but didn’t know it before the sick WA state man arrived? It may be that this WA man was the first person in the US who experienced serious COVID-19 symptoms, not the first person in the US with COVID-19.

This is important because it tells us 1) how dangerous this virus is and 2) who should be back at work helping to stimulate the economy. People may say “People are dying! Of course it’s dangerous!”, but I’d like to know how the virus relates to common influenza which kills tens of thousands in the US each year. In mid-January I myself experienced a dry cough and mild shortness of breath that I attributed to just some random virus that I picked up during the cold/flu season, which indeed it may have been, but I wonder if a COVID-19 antibody test would show otherwise. My symptoms started exactly two months after the first COVID-19 cases were discovered in Wuhan and daily flights were continuing out of China to the US. If I have the antibodies (and I have fully recovered btw) then shouldn’t I be back at work helping the economy? And shouldn’t everyone else who has the antibodies be doing the same, and eating out at restaurants, and out purchasing from retailers that are closed because of this crisis?

I’m aware that there’s concern about re-infection, that some people may be getting the virus again after they’ve “healed” from it, but I think we need to take that off the table for now because what I’ve read is that these folks may have never truly healed the first time after all, and that more testing is needed to know for sure.

B