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Please go to Ms Ho Ching' s FB to see her comment yesterday on the test kit.
"
Hello, everyone!
There are tests, and there are tests.
While test kits for antibodies may be faster than the swab and PCR approach, they are not meant to test for covid virus itself.
All such antibody test kits should NOT be marketed as covid rapid test kits. That is very misleading.
The presence of an antibody only tells us whether we have had been infected. It is a lag indicator of infection.
And depending on which type of antibody, it tells of the different phases of recovery or infection fighting.
And some antibodies may appear a week after infection, while others appear later.
Or it may also take longer than 2 weeks to mount a response with enough antibodies to be detected.
This can vary from patient to patient.
This is like fever - old folks may mount only a very mild fever to an infection, when a younger person may mount a fever more strongly and clearly.
So antibody test kits may be marketed as antibody test kits, with info on accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. They should not be marketed as rapid covid-19 test kits.
Speed with low accuracy or poor specificity is worse than useless.
What is specificity?
It means the test picks up the antibody to covid-19 specifically, and not the antibody to other human common cold coronaviruses, to dengue, or to other viruses or bacteria.
Otherwise, we may mistake a dengue antibody for a covid antibody for instance. Am exaggerating to make a point, of course, bcos no serious test kit company worth their salt will make such a basic mistake.
What is sensitivity?
This is the ability of the test to pick up low amounts of antibodies or viruses.
For instance, the typical swab and PCR method can take a short or a long time to do - a short time means we multiply the virus bits a few cycles in a RT-PCR and thus have X amount of virus bits that we may not detect, and so this may be useless as a mainstream test kit a long time means we go through many more cycles to generate many more bits of the virus, and thus we can pick up the virus easier, but if we do this for too long, we lower our throughput capacity.
So a test may pick up say 100 viral bits vs another which needs 1000 viral bits, while a 3rd needs just 20 viral bits.
And each will require different time to do so, measured in hours under the RT-PCR approach.
So this is a case of speed vs sensitivity.
This kind of trade off often happens for biological type testing.
There are alternative technologies which may be faster, but none are available in commercial quantiites yet - they are still being developed, or are being validated.
Finally, the accuracy.
This means when we have a reading of Y, we know that the real number could range from Y-Z to Y+Z.
To complicate matters, sometimes we have Y-Z1 to Y+Z2. Hee! But let&rsquo s keep to a single Z for simplicity.
If Z is a small percentage of Y, we know we can rely on the Y to make a decision.
But if Z is bigger than Y, then we pretty much can ignore Y of a certain value.
Take the ATP machine - we use this as a first line check of the amount of living microbial organisms say on a door knob.
Suppose the accuracy Z is 250, and the machine gives a Y reading of 22. That doesn&rsquo t mean that we are really at 22. It means the true number can be anywhere from 0 to 250.
So we should then use the 250 mark as the pass/fail, rather than try to aim to be 0 or 50, etc.
The machine just doesn&rsquo t give us that kind of accuracy to make these low numbers meaningful.
So media reports on all test kits should ask for their test data and share those test data as a way to educate our people fully, and not get carried away by the focus on speed as if that is the be all and end all of test kits. Or ask for their user base.
P.s.
I don&rsquo t have the info on the Biolidics off the top of my head, and have no specific information on their test kit performance.
But it would be good if Biolidics or any other test kit producers share these information with the media.
It is also useful for mainstream media to go get medical or research specialists to help them interpret test kit specs, or go get a tutorial quickly.
Under today&rsquo s emergency situation, many health authorities may give provisional status without requiring the full jing-bang of validation and trials that they would normally require. So waving the names of this or that authority is not the way to go.
And my apologies to both Biolidics and Straits Times for using their story to hang this PSA peg to alert folks on how we should look at news on this or that superduper 2 minute or 10 minute test kit.
Thank you, all, for this opportunity to share some thots and observations.
P.p.s.
A recent NYT article just reported that of the 14 antibody tests, only 3 gave consistently reliable results.
The rest didn&rsquo t perform as advertised.
Layman translation - the rest were junk.
Even the best 3 had flaws.
Only one didn&rsquo t have false positives.
Why does false positives happen?
One reason has to do with specificity as discussed earlier.
If a test cannot be very very specific to covid-19, and recognises something else as covid-19 antibody, we will end up as a false positive. That is a very clear no-no.
Others may have very high false positives - which means they are junk tests.
More on other points in the NYT article later."
"
Hello, everyone!
There are tests, and there are tests.
While test kits for antibodies may be faster than the swab and PCR approach, they are not meant to test for covid virus itself.
All such antibody test kits should NOT be marketed as covid rapid test kits. That is very misleading.
The presence of an antibody only tells us whether we have had been infected. It is a lag indicator of infection.
And depending on which type of antibody, it tells of the different phases of recovery or infection fighting.
And some antibodies may appear a week after infection, while others appear later.
Or it may also take longer than 2 weeks to mount a response with enough antibodies to be detected.
This can vary from patient to patient.
This is like fever - old folks may mount only a very mild fever to an infection, when a younger person may mount a fever more strongly and clearly.
So antibody test kits may be marketed as antibody test kits, with info on accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. They should not be marketed as rapid covid-19 test kits.
Speed with low accuracy or poor specificity is worse than useless.
What is specificity?
It means the test picks up the antibody to covid-19 specifically, and not the antibody to other human common cold coronaviruses, to dengue, or to other viruses or bacteria.
Otherwise, we may mistake a dengue antibody for a covid antibody for instance. Am exaggerating to make a point, of course, bcos no serious test kit company worth their salt will make such a basic mistake.
What is sensitivity?
This is the ability of the test to pick up low amounts of antibodies or viruses.
For instance, the typical swab and PCR method can take a short or a long time to do - a short time means we multiply the virus bits a few cycles in a RT-PCR and thus have X amount of virus bits that we may not detect, and so this may be useless as a mainstream test kit a long time means we go through many more cycles to generate many more bits of the virus, and thus we can pick up the virus easier, but if we do this for too long, we lower our throughput capacity.
So a test may pick up say 100 viral bits vs another which needs 1000 viral bits, while a 3rd needs just 20 viral bits.
And each will require different time to do so, measured in hours under the RT-PCR approach.
So this is a case of speed vs sensitivity.
This kind of trade off often happens for biological type testing.
There are alternative technologies which may be faster, but none are available in commercial quantiites yet - they are still being developed, or are being validated.
Finally, the accuracy.
This means when we have a reading of Y, we know that the real number could range from Y-Z to Y+Z.
To complicate matters, sometimes we have Y-Z1 to Y+Z2. Hee! But let&rsquo s keep to a single Z for simplicity.
If Z is a small percentage of Y, we know we can rely on the Y to make a decision.
But if Z is bigger than Y, then we pretty much can ignore Y of a certain value.
Take the ATP machine - we use this as a first line check of the amount of living microbial organisms say on a door knob.
Suppose the accuracy Z is 250, and the machine gives a Y reading of 22. That doesn&rsquo t mean that we are really at 22. It means the true number can be anywhere from 0 to 250.
So we should then use the 250 mark as the pass/fail, rather than try to aim to be 0 or 50, etc.
The machine just doesn&rsquo t give us that kind of accuracy to make these low numbers meaningful.
So media reports on all test kits should ask for their test data and share those test data as a way to educate our people fully, and not get carried away by the focus on speed as if that is the be all and end all of test kits. Or ask for their user base.
P.s.
I don&rsquo t have the info on the Biolidics off the top of my head, and have no specific information on their test kit performance.
But it would be good if Biolidics or any other test kit producers share these information with the media.
It is also useful for mainstream media to go get medical or research specialists to help them interpret test kit specs, or go get a tutorial quickly.
Under today&rsquo s emergency situation, many health authorities may give provisional status without requiring the full jing-bang of validation and trials that they would normally require. So waving the names of this or that authority is not the way to go.
And my apologies to both Biolidics and Straits Times for using their story to hang this PSA peg to alert folks on how we should look at news on this or that superduper 2 minute or 10 minute test kit.
Thank you, all, for this opportunity to share some thots and observations.
P.p.s.
A recent NYT article just reported that of the 14 antibody tests, only 3 gave consistently reliable results.
The rest didn&rsquo t perform as advertised.
Layman translation - the rest were junk.
Even the best 3 had flaws.
Only one didn&rsquo t have false positives.
Why does false positives happen?
One reason has to do with specificity as discussed earlier.
If a test cannot be very very specific to covid-19, and recognises something else as covid-19 antibody, we will end up as a false positive. That is a very clear no-no.
Others may have very high false positives - which means they are junk tests.
More on other points in the NYT article later."
hahahah
Stockerman ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:25) Posted:
|
Actually, it?s a very good post. When you read it, it?s clearly this company is overhyped. It should go back to the $0.20 pre covid level. I expect it to actually make a loss on this investment. Why? The last part of the post tells it all.
According to Federal Law, if a test has not been authorized by the appropriate agency, in this case given proper approval by FDA to be in the EUA list (currently only 4, out of 90, antibody testing developers have been granted authorization), it must be conducted in high-complexity labs.
This certainly will make it more difficult to use the test kit in the US and Europe where laws like this make it very difficult for the test kit to be used.
According to Federal Law, if a test has not been authorized by the appropriate agency, in this case given proper approval by FDA to be in the EUA list (currently only 4, out of 90, antibody testing developers have been granted authorization), it must be conducted in high-complexity labs.
This certainly will make it more difficult to use the test kit in the US and Europe where laws like this make it very difficult for the test kit to be used.
earthdragon ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:24) Posted:
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that' s the typical stance of this BULLSHITTER SIP SIP KOPI_FLAVOURED URINE JESMAR. btw, we all know his regular taglines when he appear later again here or in other threads. Lolllllllllllllll
Stockerman ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:25) Posted:
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Later , this shameless lowlife will ask all to wait for 3:30 tiger show again..
Innocent ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:05) Posted:
|
Agreed.
This report make it very clear about the current situation in Biolitics.
https://newacademyoffinance.com/biolidics-overhyped-multi-bagger/?utm_source=rss& utm_medium=rss& utm_campaign=biolidics-overhyped-multi-bagger
While HSA has given provisional authorization for Biolidics to export the product and market the product in Singapore, a quick check shows that MOH&rsquo s guidance on the use of Serology Rapid Tests Kits for Covid-19 Infection, dated 3 April 2020 stated that &ldquo Based on the currently available evidence, including local validation data, there is NO ROLE for COVID-19 serology rapid test kits in the clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 infections. Medical practitioners should not be using such serology rapid test in the evaluation of persons with symptoms of acute respiratory infection&rdquo .
Bottom-line: Singapore is not using this test-kit for diagnosis at present even though the product has gotten a provisional authorization to be marketed in Singapore.
This report make it very clear about the current situation in Biolitics.
https://newacademyoffinance.com/biolidics-overhyped-multi-bagger/?utm_source=rss& utm_medium=rss& utm_campaign=biolidics-overhyped-multi-bagger
While HSA has given provisional authorization for Biolidics to export the product and market the product in Singapore, a quick check shows that MOH&rsquo s guidance on the use of Serology Rapid Tests Kits for Covid-19 Infection, dated 3 April 2020 stated that &ldquo Based on the currently available evidence, including local validation data, there is NO ROLE for COVID-19 serology rapid test kits in the clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 infections. Medical practitioners should not be using such serology rapid test in the evaluation of persons with symptoms of acute respiratory infection&rdquo .
Bottom-line: Singapore is not using this test-kit for diagnosis at present even though the product has gotten a provisional authorization to be marketed in Singapore.
john_ric ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:15) Posted:
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Hi , to all the too many messages on Biolidics, I will post one general opinion on this. I think it?s quite clear the government is watching this company carefully do as not to let ordinary retail investors lose to much money during times like this. A lot of ugly information has been dug out of this company including working with a controversial distributor like Aytu whose market cap is a paltry $40m. Aytu itself is under investigation and I think Aytu will likely get into trouble base on the research i made as a lot of misrepresentation has been made on the previous test kit from China that it has been selling and Aytu has been struggling to survive for the last few years. And it?s very certain that biolidics is now under the watching eye of sgx has biolidics has made a very serious misleading statement, that it has ordered 2 mil test kit based on its own projection but has made it sound like it?s a confirmed order. When queried by sgx and by the PM wife?s blog post, they came clean and say it should be a projection and not to be taken as a confirmed order. It?s quite clear that the company is taking the shareholder for a ride and has only the intention of jacking up the share price with speculative statements. It should be upfront with investors in the first place. I would not be interested in this type of company who issues very misleading statement. And with trading curbs in place, I find it hard for this company share price to appreciate in time and i don?t think with Aytu under investigation, they can market Biolidics test kit successfully into the US market under the watchful eye of the US FDA. The 2 million test kit may be loss making and even though there?s a re contract for a further 1.25m test kit to be sold to Aytu, there is very chance to lose that contract as well as there are terms and conditions to the contract depending on the demand on the initial order of the test kit from Aytu. And even if enforced, they might have the cash to pay Biolidics. Please always balanced your view when it come to investing. You cut loss or exit when you realised the company isn?t as good as you think it is when they issue misleading statement which sgx has eventually forced them to clarify. That?s all. Take care guys and sorry for the late reply. Final conclusion is cut loss and move on as the Nav is around 4 cents and I cannot ruled out the probability of the price dropping below 20c.
Innocent ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 08:51) Posted:
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Chiong up now. Got chance
john_ric ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:15) Posted:
|
pump and dump. Dont know how many retailers trapped.
kateh die pain pain! lol
Not vested but look at Clearbridge, rebound from 182 to 195 in minutes. Might still be in play.
Think speculators waiting to hear positve news on confirmed order from AYTU or some other countries :)
If you hold a high price then keep some first as no point to sell now if we are all to gamble lol
If you hold a high price then keep some first as no point to sell now if we are all to gamble lol
dimebag ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:10) Posted:
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Stock rallies have limit and the same applies for crash. There'll be a point where it will stabilise and u turn eventually after all the selling is completed.
There are still people buying. I think there is further downside. Those still vested should really cut.
limkt009 ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:08) Posted:
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30-35c coming
😂 😂 😂
Innocent ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:05) Posted:
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same stories like creative lah, rex lah, beautyworld lah...all jack up to trap retailers then big dump then become ghost town....
PAGING AGGRESSIVELY for NUMBER ONE BULLSHITTER SIP SIP KOPI-FLAVOURED URINE JESMAR. BE COURAGEOUS,& GET OUT OF YOUR HIDING PLACE! Lollllllll
Innocent ( Date: 27-Apr-2020 09:02) Posted:
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Run liaoz look very bad