This study and its conclusions have seen close to universal dismissal. It can't even demonstrate that it is actually detecting SARS-CoV-2 immunity (it was claiming results before anyone had even demonstrated effective tests for relevant antibodies), and not any of the many variations of coronavirus that spread during the colder months (yet which offer no immunity to SARS-CoV-2).
The claims about shopping are...unsupported and go contrary to an enormous volume of evidence (namely the high R0).
It isn't a good example of anything except that junk science has a moment to shine in a crisis.
EDIT: LOL, -2. This is the moment I delete my account and find slightly less stupid venues to participate in. Cheers.
Streeck studied medicine at the Charite University, Berlin and obtained his PhD from the University of Bonn, which he performed part-time at the Partners AIDS Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
After his graduation Streeck started to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. In 2009 he was promoted to Instructor in Medicine and in 2011 to Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. In September 2012 he was recruited to the United States Military HIV Research Program, Bethesda, where he became the Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section as well as Assistant Professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and adjunct faculty of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.[3] In 2015 he became the Chair for Medical Biology at the University Duisburg-Essen and founded the Institute for HIV Research in the same year,[4][5][6][7] though he still maintains the status of "visiting scientist" with the US Military HIV Research Program.
In 2018 Streeck was appointed to the advisory board of the German AIDS Foundation (Deutsche AIDS Stiftung).[8] In April 2020, he was appointed by Minister-President Armin Laschet of North Rhine-Westphalia to a 12-member expert group to advise on economic and social consequences of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Germany.[9]
Coronavirus research
In early April 2020, Streeck and his team reported that they had "carried out an intensive search of the home of a family infected with the coronavirus but found no trace of it on surfaces."[18]
“We did not find any live virus on any surface. Not on cellphones, not on taps, not on doorknobs.”
There are some red flags about this study though. German press is reporting that a PR firm founded by the notorious yellow-paper journalist Kai Diekmann is involved in publicizing the results. Diekmann was recently involved in a scandal where researchers in Heidelberg wrongly claimed to have developed a blood test for breast cancer. Streeck appears to be a personal friend of one of the other founders of the company. In any case, using a PR agency is pretty much unheard of for a German research institute.
I'm reminded of that time a Nobel prize winner used the "authority" he generated from winning the Noble prize to convince everyone that Vitamin C was a magical cure-all for all disease.
Being an amazing HIV researcher does not mean Streeck has an appropriate background in coronaviruses to be an authority in that field, especially given that his team has (a) found outlier results at odds with every other study thus far published and (b) is making a broad policy pronouncement based on studying a single family's household without considering confounding factors, like say the family cleaning the house before the researchers visited.
This is comforting, but I'd rather still be cautious. I wear gloves when I go shopping. I wash my hands frequently anyway, and now I wash them even more. Worst case, I've wasted some time.
Junk science can come from people not known for junk science. And in the end we rack it up to a technical fault (e.g. a test for coronavirus antibodies that cannot distinguish between many of the several other coronavirus infections that spread during the winter), the way participants were enrolled, etc. That's why there is a peer review process.
And this study bizarrely was released with a press conference and a press conference, yet perilously little actual methodology or useful information for the scientific community to critique. Oh and with a professional PR firm. And it uses this to promote significant changes in public policy! (e.g. relax the restrictions because our two page summary gives some conclusions that are entirely contrary to the entire world of experts)
It's all extraordinarily weird.
And again, it has only made waves online. Among the medical professionals, virologists, etc...crickets.
Just to be clear, HN would normally laugh nonsense like this off the site -- a PR "study" that has zero peer review, that goes against all conventional wisdom, that is not acknowledged or credited by any other expert in the field. Has this site gone absolutely stupid?
> The claims about shopping are...unsupported and go contrary to an enormous volume of evidence (namely the high R0).
Honestly? An R0 of 2-3 is frankly not that high.
If grocery shopping were a huge risk, and people spread the disease before being symptomatic, you’d expect a single sick individual to infect way more than just 2-3 people on average.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is the causative agent of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease pandemic. Initial estimates of the early dynamics of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, suggested a doubling time of the number of infected persons of 6–7 days and a basic reproductive number (R0) of 2.2–2.7. We collected extensive individual case reports across China and estimated key epidemiologic parameters, including the incubation period. We then designed 2 mathematical modeling approaches to infer the outbreak dynamics in Wuhan by using high-resolution domestic travel and infection data. Results show that the doubling time early in the epidemic in Wuhan was 2.3–3.3 days. Assuming a serial interval of 6–9 days, we calculated a median R0 value of 5.7 (95% CI 3.8–8.9)
Calling it Junk science is a bit harsh. I would say that the sponsoring entity (one of the German states) did force an intermediate result. This might turn out to be a bad idea, but is needed to steer the political decision process (the German states and federal government want to convene to make decisions about the lock down on April 14th).
The study has been widely critiqued, but dismissal is too harsh. I don't think anybody really has said that the main finding is wrong. It just might not be as strong. Instead of 15% immune in the area, it might be just 12% or 10%. Fatality rate might be 0.5% rather than 0.37%.
The study goal itself is correct and it is a shame that not every epidemiologist is doing exactly the same study right now all over the world. That the German CDC did not think to run such a study themselves since Covid-19 turned bad is a scandal.
This study and its conclusions have seen close to universal dismissal. It can't even demonstrate that it is actually detecting SARS-CoV-2 immunity (it was claiming results before anyone had even demonstrated effective tests for relevant antibodies), and not any of the many variations of coronavirus that spread during the colder months (yet which offer no immunity to SARS-CoV-2).
The claims about shopping are...unsupported and go contrary to an enormous volume of evidence (namely the high R0).
It isn't a good example of anything except that junk science has a moment to shine in a crisis.
EDIT: LOL, -2. This is the moment I delete my account and find slightly less stupid venues to participate in. Cheers.