I’m almost certain I’ve had Corona, but it’s almost impossible to get the medical system to test for that where I live (for good reasons).
Will it be possible to get a test kit like this https://www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious-disease/covi... as private individual (in the EU)? Will that test show if I have been infected previously? The graph on this PDF suggest it https://www.biomedomics.com/?fldl=3001
1) Unsure of the amount of blood required for this test. If it's just a pin prick you're fine, but if it requires a whole vial of blood, you will end up with some pretty nasty cuts trying to withdraw enough blood for the test.
2) Antibody tests such as these are inherently limited in their reliability. Not as reliable as the PCR tests, and that goes doubly so for these field litmus style tests. All it's really telling you is you how your body has reacted to potential exposures. A near-miss infection would show a false positive. It also takes time, so recent infections can give you a false negative.
3) If everyone on HN buys one of these because of this post, we will be depleting the available stock of these tests that could otherwise be used to save lives. Anything medical is going to be very scarce for the next several months, and we all need to do our part to help assuage the problem.
and if I found out through some kind of antibody test that I have NOT had it, and the thing is worse than the 'non-flu' I had some weeks ago, then dang, that thing is really bad and I'm going to try to stock up on other things that are not readily available.
If I can confirm that I’ve had it I would start going back to the office (better ergonomics) and start going out on lunches/dates, go to the gym, shop for clothes, meet older relatives etc with (almost) no fear of spreading it to other people.
[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076022/coro...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-reinfe...
https://theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/japanese-woman-tes...