It seems like every day, or week, I get on here to talk it’s about Ms. Rona. Well this week will be no different. But maybe this post won’t be as sad as we will be talking about new antibiotic testing for Ms. Corona. So maybe by the end of this discussion we will have a little more hope for the situation we are so unfortunately placed in. But before we talk about antibodies in relation to the coronavirus I need to go over some stuff before so we’re all on the same page. It has to do with the different types of antibodies in your body.
The antibodies inside you
So there are 5 different antibodies inside of you that your body produces in response to different foreign invaders. You have the IgM, IgG, IgA, IgD and IgE. The IgM is made first. If there is a foreign invader or “antigen” within you IgM is made first to be your primary responder. When you have an only IgM antibody titers, or aka antibody test, the test is testing for only the amount of IgM present within your blood. Since, IgM is the first antibody made it doesn’t have time to be specific to every antigen within the body. When you are IgM positive it means that the test recognizes IgM within your blood and that there is a present infection. After your body releases IgM, it starts producing and releasing IgG. IgG is an antibody that is more specific to what invader is invading. So when you get a test for both and you’re positive you have your general and specific fighters meaning that you have an infection going on and your body is fighting and remembering as it has specific antibodies against the attacker now. According to an article from USA today that is explaining what antibody test are for the Coronavirus, IgG show up when the body is clearing up the infection. So for someone who have primarily IgG antibodies it doesn’t necessarily mean you are actively fighting the invader. It means that you have been in contact with the infection, like if it is a latent version or if you have had it previously. Meaning, that you couldn’t necessarily infect others directly or as easily at that moment if you primarily only had IgG antibodies.
Immunity Certificates?
I know that was a lot of information thrown at you and I felt the same way learning about it but just remember you got IgM, the general and the IgG the specific ones. Articles such as the one from Newsweek, talked about the developing tests coming that would be able to test if someone has had the virus. These tests are the antibody tests that we just talked about. The only problem is though is that they don’t truly known a lot about antibodies from COVID. They don’t know how long antibodies produce stick around. They also brought up the idea of having like “immunity certificates” that show that you have had the virus and are somewhat immune to it now and that you would be able to return. I think this is an interesting but also very hard idea to do. Think about the people who get this disease but yet they don’t need to go to the hospital or they don’t even have symptoms so they don’t know they have it. How would they know if they should get this certificate? Would we really have to test every single person in the working force before we allow them to return?
Today’s Testing
So we’ve went over antibodies, we went over the test they are creating to see if you had it. Now we will briefly talk about the tests to see if you have it. Talking to my mother, who is a nurse and has to perform these tests, they sound terrifying. They take this really long cotton swab, go in your nose and all the way to the back of your throat and then swab. Which to me sounds horrifying, painful, awful. According to NewScientist, today they then take that swab and look for genetic sequences that are specific for coronavirus. If the swab has this genetic sequence then they believe the virus is present. Which honestly sounds pretty simple. But they did say that China reported that their tests came back with a lot of false negatives and false positives. Meaning that they weren’t completely accurate but I’m not going to lie I have my suspicions about these because China lied about a lot information about this virus in the beginning. Now I don’t know if that’s true or not but you never really know what’s wrong and what’s right in today’s society. Or at least it seems.
Mo's Microbes 