I’m on cloud nine today…

I’m on cloud nine today.

As you know, I got the COVID bug about 5 months ago. Since then, I’ve tested negative for the virus twice and positive for antibodies twice.

On our way to the Miami airport to fly to Nicaragua for the Thanksgiving holiday, K and I took the antibody test again.

She tested positive, but I tested negative!

I was hugely disappointed because K had made it clear that if I did not have antibodies I could not train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. (If you have to pick an activity most likely to pass along a virus, it would be Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a form of wrestling generally done in a closed environment, with lots of sweating and close contact.)

I normally wrestle six days a week. And it is the single thing I most look forward to in the morning, because it feels – to me – like playing. So the thought of giving it up for the second time since getting the virus was downright depressing.

Plus, it meant that the immune effect of having the virus would have lasted, with me at least, for less than 5 months.

But in doing my research, I’d read (several times) that COVID-19 antibody tests have a fairly high percentage of false negative results. So I took another test last week, and this morning I got the results. I am positive!

I asked Amaru to scare up the latest on the reliability of these antibody tests. This is what he found:

“According to the CDC, there’s still a lot of uncertainty regarding these tests. They point out that ‘every test returns some false positive and false negative results.’ And while getting a positive result indicates that you’ve been exposed to the virus in the past, it’s unknown whether it also means a lack of contagiousness or lasting immunity. In addition, they say, a single antibody test is ‘not likely to be sufficiently accurate to make an informed decision regarding whether or not an individual has a prior infection or truly has presence of antibodies.’ They suggest that an additional test would increase overall accuracy.”