New York is starting to trial them for treatment of the virus.

If this works, it’s good news on at least two fronts: It will help save lives, and it would indicate that getting infected and recovering does confer immunity.

[Monday-morning update]

Germany is going to issue certificates of immunity. We should be doing this as well, once we get the antibody testing going; it will allow people to go back to work. Knowing who has antibodies will be even more important than knowing who is infected.

[Bumped]

It’s not for detecting antibodies, but Abbot now has a device that can detect positive for the virus within five minutes, and all clear in fifteen. Would have been nice to have it a couple months ago, but better late than never.

[Update late morning]

None of this is new, but it’s nice to see it laid out in one place.

We really need an antibody test ASAP, because that would allow those immunized (assuming that it confers immunity) to go back to work. As noted above, it may be that in order to work in or eat at a restaurant, at least for a while, one will have to present their papers.

[Update a couple minutes later]

WW III is a war against infectious diseases.

We’ve been at war with them since the beginning of civilization, but we’re developing much better weapons now.

[Update just before noon]

We have a difficult five weeks ahead of us. Also:

To Paraphrase Rumsfeld, You Go into a Crisis with the President You Have

“I realize complaining about President Trump’s Twitter feed is like complaining about the existence of rain in Seattle. But in recent days, as the country has faced a worsening viral epidemic that has claimed an increasing number of lives and brought commerce to a halt, the president has found time to repeatedly tweet about how great the television ratings of his briefings are, made up a new nickname for the governor of Michigan, retweeted Gateway Pundit’s claim that ‘Fox News fired Trish Regan for telling the truth about President Trump,’ — this was over her ‘Coronavirus Impeachment Scam’ segment — boasted about how high his poll numbers are and how the Washington Post is understating his public support, declared that the U.S. government would not pay for the security protection of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and also retweeted a two-year-old tweet from Florida governor Ron DeSantis about Andrew McCabe. He tweeted that he was thinking about instituting a quarantine of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, which is probably the perfect way to get people to leave a particular area in expectation of a quarantine. A few hours later Trump announced, via Twitter, that a travel advisory was sufficient.

Perhaps most egregiously, President Trump tweeted that he had ‘much respect’ for Chinese president Xi, who is probably more responsible for this worldwide pandemic than any other human being on earth.

This president cares about what he chooses to care about, and he prioritizes what he prioritizes, even amidst a global pandemic that is killing several hundred Americans per day and stands as the greatest challenge to this country in at least a generation. We will have to get through this with a president who simply cannot stop obsessing over television ratings, what’s being said about him on television, Fox News personnel moves, whether governors are giving him sufficient praise, minor decisions involving the royal family, and how nice the leader of China is.”

[Early-afternoon update]

Yes, we should random test the general population ASAP.