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What cost? Who pays? Who benefits?

To the editor:
Further to my letter to the Editor in the 30 April Record News and specific to your “Idle Chatter” (What’s the Science?”) column in the 23 April paper:
All policy/management decisions begin with the assumption that the compiled data is both accurate and complete and as summary data is used to justify those policy/management decisions.
In the Corona virus Special Reports, “tested positive” and “numbers of deaths” are presumed accurate but beg the questions of what tests were made, how many tests were made, and/or what the test results actually proved. Media hype aside, the current influenza strains appear to have a much higher mortality rate than COVID-19, but in the absence of whole population testing the data is skewed.
Without knowing whether the current Corona virus test uses blood, mouth or nose swab, or something else (and trying not to argue more than I know), in my opinion the question of whether or not the current testing also recognizes bloodstream antibodies or even whether a test exists to do that is a necessary answer on the road to economic recovery.
In the short term, personal protection measures may slow infection spread, but in the long term, the “holy grail” is whether or not you have become immune.
Presuming that bloodstream antibodies preclude reinfection, testing for that would make an individual verified as “immune” a valuable commodity in the workplace AND constitute a justifiable personal exemption from government imposed behavioral strictures.
A long time ago I contended that What cost? Who pays? Who benefits? Was adequate to justify decisions by management but in the Corona virus “fight” the testing necessary to certify the workers as healthy (today) OR immune (forever) stumbles on the issue of Who pays? for the testing despite clear benefit to the corporation/management group involved.
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Does anyone know whether the Corona virus passes into the blood supply like HIV?
Kevin Kilgore
Diagonal

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