U.S. begins blood tests for coronavirus immunity

This survey is badly needed in order to completely understand the real situation of the pandemic, but it depends very heavily on having a good test with very high specificity, the test Positive Percent Agreement is below 94%, and the Negative Percent Agreement is of 96%, for each individual tested this is not that good (6% of positive people will get negative results and 4% of negative people will get a positive result), but as a tool to get the general idea of the situation I think this is good enough.

We should have had these tests available, in the millions, months ago. Another example of incompetence and narcissum at the highest level.

We should have had these tests available, in the millions, months ago

There is no realistic way for this to be possible, the test require a long process of selection and testing of antigens that then can be adapted into large scale production. Even without any FDA red tape this is something that takes months to do.

Having it now is actually much faster than what is expected, there is absolutely no incompetence or narcissism involved in making something reliable so quickly.

Yesterday's news today. Bring those tests here.

"There is no way for this to be possible...."

And yet, other countries have been testing in the tens of thousands as of months ago. Ergo, what has already been done, is possible.

@1glenn

The tests talked about in this article are antigen "immunity" tests that confirm if someone has previously been infected. The "tens of thousands as of months ago" you are talking about are diagnostic tests (like PCR) that show if someone is currently infected. Very different tests, with different purposes.