theverge--2020-05-07--The disappointing truth about antibody testing

Did you get seriously sick this year ?
Have you , like many others , been wondering if it was COVID-19 ?
“ I get emails every day , ” says George Rutherford , a University of California San Francisco epidemiologist .
They say things like , “ I think I might have had it .
I really want to know , ” he says .
Maybe you ’ ve been tempted by the wave of antibody tests that recently hit the market — but don ’ t think that just because you can buy a test , it will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tests available , but it ’ s not entirely clear which ones are best .
Tests can go wrong in several places : by choosing the wrong proteins to look for , by using the wrong chemicals in the test itself , or by making the test badly .
For instance , the UK paid $ 20 million for antibody tests that didn ’ t work .
“ It ’ s kind of like the wild West.
” The US Food and Drug Administration allowed test makers to market their antibody tests , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ review by the agency .
The Association of Public Health Laboratories ( APHL ) has raised concerns about this : “ We now have at least 90 tests on the market , and we don ’ t know about the accuracy of the results , ” Kelly Wroblewski , APHL ’ s director of infectious disease programs , told USA Today .
“ It ’ s kind of like the wild West , ” says Janko Nikolich-Zugich , the head of the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson ’ s department of immunobiology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Arizona wound up making its own antibody test was because it wasn ’ t clear how reliable other ones might be , he says .
“ It ’ s very attractive to think about , ‘ I ’ m going to go to a drive-through and get a finger prick and I ’ ll get an answer , ’ ” says Patricia Slev , the section chief for immunology at ARUP Laboratories , a national reference lab .
But most of these rapid tests don ’ t have independent validation that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Consumers who want to make sure they ’ re getting good antibody tests should look for ones that have outside testing to confirm the test is accurate .
That relaxed policy has since been revised .
On May 4th , the FDA said that if test makers didn ’ t submit data showing their accuracy within 10 days , the agency would yank the tests from the market .
“ We unfortunately see unscrupulous actors marketing fraudulent test kits and using the pandemic as an opportunity to take advantage of Americans ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Several labs , including Slev ’ s ARUP , are now doing independent validation of antibody tests .
Already , there are some early results : a manuscript that hasn ’ t yet been peer-reviewed or published from a group of scientists led by the University of California San Francisco and the University of California , Berkeley .
Only three of the 14 tests the group evaluated were reliable .
Four of the tests had false positive rates that ranged from 11 to 16 percent .
“ Those numbers are just unacceptable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the University of Pennsylvania , told The New York Times .
“ If your kit has 14 percent false positive , it ’ s useless.
” “ I am waiting for the ultimate good test , ” says Robert Gallo , the co-founder and director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University School of Medicine and the co-founder of the Global Virus Network .
Gallo helped develop the antibody test for HIV .
And if you ’ ve been pinning your hopes for getting back to normal on antibody testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safe to work or travel if they ’ ve already been sick , I have bad news : The World Health Organization ( WHO ) has warned against “ immunity passports.
” Even if the tests were 100 percent accurate , we still don ’ t know whether antibodies to the new coronavirus will protect people from being reinfected .
If they do confer protection , we don ’ t know whether it ’ s full or partial or how long it ’ ll last .
Even skipping the process questions — What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whom ?
— this seems like a bad idea .
Chile is preparing to put out “ release certificates ” for people who ’ ve recovered from COVID-19 , despite the WHO ’ s warning .
Other countries , such as the UK , have also expressed an interest — as has Los Angeles ’ mayor .
Some experts have expressed concerns that people will rush to get “ immunity passports ” without understanding the limitations of antibody testing .
“ What I worry about is that employers will misuse this , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that accurate antibody testing could let us know who ’ s protected from COVID-19 , but that hasn ’ t been proven yet , Rutherford says .
To understand why these tests may not be the solution everyone ’ s hoping for , I spoke to some experts about how antibodies work , why false positives are important , and what real uses for antibody testing might be .
What is an antibody test ?
An antibody test is a way of seeing if a person ’ s immune system has responded to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s a way of seeing who ’ s had the new coronavirus , which is different from the tests used to diagnose the illness .
Though antibody tests can be used to diagnose diseases , in the case of COVID-19 , they ’ re not very helpful for diagnoses .
That ’ s because people don ’ t make antibodies to fight off the virus until at least a week — or even two weeks — after showing symptoms .
Tests used for diagnosis look for virus fragments and can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of how your body responds to threats : viruses , bacteria , and other things the body decides are harmful .
Imagine someone coughs on you and infects you with the new coronavirus .
The virus can ’ t reproduce on its own , so it invades your cells to make copies of itself .
Eventually , your immune system cottons on .
Here ’ s what happens : ⤷ Some specialized immune cells shred the virus and present its fragments to a kind of white blood cell called a B cell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ B cell , it clones itself and transforms into an antibody factory .
⤷ The antibodies the B cell creates are then released into the bloodstream .
⤷ The antibodies vary in quality : some may glom on to the virus and inactivate it .
⤷ Some may stick to the virus and signal other immune cells to come kill the virus .
⤷ Some will do nothing .
And sometimes , antibodies can make things worse .
How effective antibodies are will vary by person and disease .
In HIV , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of infection .
Because the virus attacks the immune system , the antibodies don ’ t do a great job of fighting off the virus , says Rutherford .
The majority of antibodies for most illnesses are neither good nor bad for you , says Gallo .
They ’ re just a marker that you ’ ve been exposed to an illness .
“ A good majority of them are irrelevant for protection of you , and irrelevant for how the disease is progressing , ” Gallo says .
It ’ s also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — for instance , by gumming up the spike the virus uses to insert itself into your cells ; these antibodies are called “ neutralizing antibodies ” and are the most important kind for protection .
They “ are what you need for vaccines to work , ” says Rutherford .
If we do produce neutralizing antibodies when we ’ re infected by the new coronavirus , it might be possible to pick one that works really well and make a version in labs that can be used to treat the illness .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ neutralizing antibodies , but it ’ s expensive and difficult to do at a mass scale .
“ It ’ s a very labor-intensive laboratory thing , ” Rutherford says .
The commercially available tests don ’ t do this .
Most of them just give people a “ yes ” or “ no ” on whether the antibodies exist .
Unfortunately , it ’ s not yet clear what antibodies do in COVID-19 Neutralizing antibodies aren ’ t the only way antibodies might help us , Gallo says .
Some antibodies serve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a different part of the virus and alerting the immune system ’ s killer cells .
But in some cases , such as dengue , antibodies can actually make a later infection worse .
Unfortunately , it ’ s not yet clear what antibodies do in COVID-19 .
For instance , the prevalence of antibodies doesn ’ t mean that the amount of virus in a person ’ s system declines , according to a study of German patients .
And the less virus in your body , the better .
If I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does that mean I won ’ t get sick again ?
We don ’ t know .
The virus is too new .
The question of reinfection is “ an unknown , ” according to Mike Ryan , executive director of WHO ’ s emergencies programs .
Some Chinese , South Korean , and Japanese patients who left the hospital after testing negative for the virus were later readmitted and tested positive for the virus again .
We don ’ t yet know why , but other coronaviruses usually can ’ t reinfect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s possible that this is the result of false negatives on their tests .
It ’ s also possible that people continue to excrete viral fragments that show up in testing after the disease has passed .
Rectal swabs and stool culture remain positive for about a month , “ and that has nothing to do with transmission , ” Rutherford says .
“ It ’ s just pieces of digested virus.
” An early draft of an article supports the idea that these patients weren ’ t reinfected .
Chinese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then let them recover .
Thirty days later , the scientists tried to infect the monkeys again .
The monkeys didn ’ t get sick a second time .
This article hasn ’ t been finalized , though ; it ’ s been posted to let other scientists critique it .
The final version may change .
There are some encouraging signs that antibodies may confer protection .
One is serum therapy where parts of the blood that include antibodies are spun out from survivors of COVID-19 infections and given to people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 10 patients , being given survivors ’ serum “ significantly improved ” those patients ’ symptoms .
That study is too small to be definitive , but it does suggest that larger trials of serum therapy might be a good idea .
Does it matter how many antibodies you have ?
Again , we don ’ t know .
It ’ s still too early to know what might serve as signposts for protection .
It ’ s also too early to know what level of antibodies might signal a person who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a good serum donor .
The total amount of antibodies to COVID-19 in patients ’ blood varies widely , according to an early report from Fudan University in Shanghai .
( The paper was also put online for the research community to comment on and is not yet finalized . )
Younger patients had fewer antibodies , and in 10 young patients who ’ d tested positive for the virus and then recovered , researchers didn ’ t detect any neutralizing antibodies at all .
About a third of patients showed low levels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s because other parts of the immune system attacked and defeated the coronavirus — but antibodies and the cells that produce them are the keys to remaining protected .
The low levels of antibodies here also may make it difficult to interpret population-level data ; if someone was infected but didn ’ t produce antibodies , will we get an accurate count of cases ?
In other coronaviruses — the ones that cause the common cold — the way people form antibodies seems to vary by age : people over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ antibodies that neutralize the virus as well as ones that signal to the immune system ’ s killer cells .
There ’ s another way antibody testing might be useful , but it ’ s pretty far off .
We know most vaccines work by generating an antibody response , says Nikolich-Zugich .
Antibody testing might help drugmakers figure out whether their vaccines against COVID-19 work .
In fact , we already do this with the flu vaccine .
We know that a certain level of antibodies means a flu shot is effective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus , though , we ’ d have to have a reliable test that indicates a protective immune response and some sense of what that looks like .
Learning those things will take time , and we don ’ t know in advance how long it will be .
How long does protection by antibodies last ?
As a reminder : we don ’ t know yet whether COVID-19 antibodies confer protection .
If protection exists , we also don ’ t know how long it might last .
The virus is too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We know , in some diseases — such as HIV — the most-protective antibodies are also the ones that disappear the quickest , says Gallo .
Sometimes , the body forms antibodies to a disease that last a lifetime , like it does with measles .
But other times , the immune system seems to “ forget ” diseases .
Take SARS , another coronavirus disease : three years after infection , about a quarter of people didn ’ t have any detectable antibodies in their blood .
Six years after infection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any .
In a small study of patients who ’ d recovered from MERS — also caused by a coronavirus — people who got very sick had detectable antibodies to the disease two years later , but people with milder illnesses didn ’ t .
The limited antibody response may be because coronaviruses aren ’ t in the bloodstream , Rutherford says .
“ They ’ re not really exposed to the full force of the immune system .
It ’ s a slightly different kettle of fish.
” Instead , the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and some other organs .
The coronaviruses we know best — the ones that cause the common cold — can reinfect people after a certain period of time .
A study from the 1970s showed that six people who ’ d had colds after being exposed to one strain of coronavirus were immune when they were reexposed a year later .
But another 12 people in the same study who were exposed to a slightly different strain were only partially protected .
A tiny study from the 1990s suggests that coronavirus reinfections @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The coronaviruses that are closest to the one that causes COVID-19 only create immune protection for about a year , according to a modeling study .
That may be a clue to how the new coronavirus behaves .
But Slev cautioned against assuming too much about this coronavirus based on other coronaviruses .
“ There are assumptions [ you can make ] by looking at other coronaviruses , but really , you want to know the answer for this specific one , ” she says .
“ So really , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer is for this virus and we hope to have that answer soon .
But right now , we do not have that particular answer for COVID-19.
” Why are antibody tests useful ?
The first known death from COVID-19 in the US was on February 6th , in Santa Clara County , California , but the connection to the virus wasn ’ t made until April .
Overall deaths were up 20 percent in March in Santa Clara County from the previous year .
California coroners are now examining deaths from as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were more missed cases .
The evidence from California suggests COVID-19 was circulating in the US well before we realized it — and that some number of people may have been sick with the disease without knowing it .
We don ’ t know how widely it was spreading or for how long because we didn ’ t start testing for the virus early enough .
Testing people to see if they have antibodies to the virus may give health officials a better picture of how far the pandemic spread .
Right now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are allowed to because they feel sick .
But we know some infections from the novel coronavirus don ’ t come with symptoms — and those people are being missed by most of our testing efforts .
“ Nobody knows what the rate of infection is , ” Slev says .
“ An immunologic study could give us an idea on the true rates of infection in the community.
” Even after the testing criteria changed , though , there still weren ’ t enough tests available .
Widespread testing of the population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Tests have been reserved , instead , for some of the sickest patients .
We also know some infections by the new coronavirus are asymptomatic .
All that means our confirmed case counts are low , but we don ’ t know exactly how low .
Reliable antibody testing might give us a better picture of how much of the population has already been infected , which might give us a better sense of how quickly the virus spreads .
This kind of work can help epidemiologists figure out how much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how often asymptomatic cases occur , and exactly how deadly the disease is .
“ We have suspected that the number of undocumented cases is much , much higher than what has been documented by testing for the virus itself , ” says Nikolich-Zugich .
Antibodies to the virus don ’ t fade as quickly as the virus does in the body , and they might give us more accurate information on how widely the disease has spread .
Has this kind of antibody testing been done already ?
Yes , in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about how accurate the tests are .
In a Boston suburb , a sample of people tested on the street showed that about a third of the 64 people who were tested had been exposed to the virus .
In a hard-hit German town , about 15 percent of the 200 people tested had antibodies .
Those findings are unusual , though ; most tests show that less than 5 percent of the population has antibodies .
For instance , early estimates from Santa Clara County , California , suggest that about 1.5 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If that ’ s right , the infection rate is 50 to 85 times higher than the official count for coronavirus cases .
In Los Angeles County , there might be 28 to 55 times more people infected if those antibody tests are right .
In New York , the antibody testing suggests 10 times more people were infected than the testing numbers reflect .
These attempts to figure out how many people were sick used different methods and different tests .
“ Literally every single one could be a false positive.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Premier Biotech , which may have a false positive rate as high as 1.7 percent .
That ’ s a problem since Santa Clara ’ s study found antibodies in 1.5 percent of the people they surveyed .
“ Literally every single one could be a false positive , ” Marm Kilpatrick , an infectious disease expert at the University of California at Santa Cruz , told BuzzFeed News .
“ No one thinks all of them were , but the problem is we can ’ t actually exclude the possibility.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York testing numbers , which also showed that about 20 percent of New York City ’ s residents had been exposed to COVID-19 .
Several experts had suggested that the confirmed case numbers were 2 to 20 times too low ; these results seem to confirm that .
The New York tests also used a different antibody test .
And while this test will also produce errors , it ’ s been done in a place with a much higher rate of infections , making the results less likely to be skewed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problem here , though : since people were tested in grocery store parking lots , any parts of the population that don ’ t go out — for instance , because they are unusually vulnerable to serious illness from COVID-19 — have been missed .
It ’ s still too early to tell how many people had COVID-19 and didn ’ t get counted in the official numbers .
You should expect to see a bunch more fights between scientists about which studies have good methodology and which ones don ’ t .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in science , actually . )
More reliable data will take time and will come from areas that have been hit harder by the disease .
There have been around 30 attempts at seeing how widespread the virus is , but despite the variations in methodology and fights about accuracy , they broadly show the same thing : most of the population is still vulnerable to COVID-19 .
What is a false positive , and why does it matter ?
A false positive is what it sounds like : a person who didn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose test results said they did .
In order to determine how likely a test is to produce a false positive , most laboratories use specimens collected from people who have a lot of virus , and people they know haven ’ t been exposed ( for instance , because the sample was taken before December 2019 ) .
Test manufacturers often report their “ analytic ” sensitivity from these samples , which may be more clear-cut than testing in the wild .
Independent third-party testing usually leads to a more reliable sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to accurately distinguish between people who had the virus that causes COVID-19 and people who ’ ve had other kinds of coronaviruses .
It ’ s possible that people who ’ ve recently had one of the four viruses that cause the common cold might test positive for COVID-19 when they ’ re actually negative , the WHO warns .
It ’ s also possible that people who had SARS or MERS will trigger a positive result .
In the case of antibody testing , false positives matter partly because they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how many people have been sick — which could make for bad public health policy .
But they especially matter if a person who ’ s gotten a false positive believes they ’ re immune and chooses to disregard social distancing .
That person is still at risk of getting sick , even if they don ’ t know it .
Imagine if we were using these tests to put people in groups based on their antibody status , says Rutherford .
For simplicity ’ s sake , imagine a test where 4 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a workforce of 100 people is in a hospital .
“ You have four people waltzing around saying , ‘ Oh , I ’ m positive , I can ’ t get it , I don ’ t need to wear a mask in the ICU , ’ ” Rutherford says .
“ Au contraire .
That ’ s bad , dangerous information.
” “ We can ’ t accept an extreme number of false positives , ” Gallo says .
He thinks a 5 percent false positive rate is “ on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better than nothing right now , yes , but you can get misleading results.
” It ’ s also possible to get a false negative result , which suggests that you haven ’ t had COVID-19 even though you were infected .
While this also might lead to bad public health decisions , it ’ s less likely to put a person at risk .
Is it possible to create an antibody test that looks for the right coronavirus ?
There are some strategies to make sure that the antibody tests look for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For instance , the spike protein that the new coronavirus uses to get into human cells “ is quite unique in this particular coronavirus relative to the others , ” he says .
Looking for antibodies to that protein could help discriminate between coronaviruses .
( But if other coronaviruses do trip up testing , that might not be a bad thing clinically , says Nikolich-Zugich .
It might mean that having a cold recently could protect you from COVID-19 ; after all , people who are vaccinated against smallpox are also protected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a similar virus .
In that sense , cross-reactivity would be “ a welcome occurrence.
” ) If there are all of these uncertainties around coronavirus and antibody testing , what is it good for ?
Well , the uncertainties aren ’ t permanent !
Again , we ’ re just starting to know this virus .
Several months from now , we ’ ll have more information , and years from now , even more .
This is also true of antibody tests , antibodies to coronavirus , and immunity .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ period of uncertainty , we ’ ll give scientists time to do their jobs .
That may mean telling us which tests are useful and which ones aren ’ t .
It might also mean that we keep track of how many people test positive for coronavirus antibodies at a mass scale , rather than as individuals .
The thing people are hoping for is called “ herd immunity.
” That means that enough people have formed an immune response that the virus doesn ’ t move through the population like a hot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ various estimates about how much of the population that would be — some as low as 60 percent and some as high as 90 percent — but no one ’ s really sure yet because we don ’ t know how long people remain protected after an infection or even if they are protected at all .
At this point , even our contested antibody testing shows the same thing : we ’ re not close to herd immunity — not by a long shot .
So that ’ s one immediate use @

Part of / A guide to the COVID-19 pandemic
Did you get seriously sick this year? Have you, like many others, been wondering if it was COVID-19? “I get emails every day,” says George Rutherford, a University of California San Francisco epidemiologist. They say things like, “I think I might have had it. I really want to know,” he says.
Maybe you’ve been tempted by the wave of antibody tests that recently hit the market — but don’t think that just because you can buy a test, it will be accurate.
There are lots of tests available, but it’s not entirely clear which ones are best. Tests can go wrong in several places: by choosing the wrong proteins to look for, by using the wrong chemicals in the test itself, or by making the test badly. For instance, the UK paid $20 million for antibody tests that didn’t work.
“It’s kind of like the wild West.”
The US Food and Drug Administration allowed test makers to market their antibody tests, even if they hadn’t undergone review by the agency. The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) has raised concerns about this: “We now have at least 90 tests on the market, and we don’t know about the accuracy of the results,” Kelly Wroblewski, APHL’s director of infectious disease programs, told USA Today.
“It’s kind of like the wild West,” says Janko Nikolich-Zugich, the head of the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson’s department of immunobiology. One of the reasons the University of Arizona wound up making its own antibody test was because it wasn’t clear how reliable other ones might be, he says.
“It’s very attractive to think about, ‘I’m going to go to a drive-through and get a finger prick and I’ll get an answer,’” says Patricia Slev, the section chief for immunology at ARUP Laboratories, a national reference lab. But most of these rapid tests don’t have independent validation that the test works the way the manufacturer says. Consumers who want to make sure they’re getting good antibody tests should look for ones that have outside testing to confirm the test is accurate.
That relaxed policy has since been revised. On May 4th, the FDA said that if test makers didn’t submit data showing their accuracy within 10 days, the agency would yank the tests from the market. “We unfortunately see unscrupulous actors marketing fraudulent test kits and using the pandemic as an opportunity to take advantage of Americans’ anxiety,” the FDA statement read.
“If your kit has 14 percent false positive, it’s useless.”
Several labs, including Slev’s ARUP, are now doing independent validation of antibody tests. Already, there are some early results: a manuscript that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed or published from a group of scientists led by the University of California San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. Only three of the 14 tests the group evaluated were reliable. Four of the tests had false positive rates that ranged from 11 to 16 percent. “Those numbers are just unacceptable,” Scott Hensley, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told The New York Times. “If your kit has 14 percent false positive, it’s useless.”
“I am waiting for the ultimate good test,” says Robert Gallo, the co-founder and director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University School of Medicine and the co-founder of the Global Virus Network. Gallo helped develop the antibody test for HIV.
And if you’ve been pinning your hopes for getting back to normal on antibody testing that would “certify” people as safe to work or travel if they’ve already been sick, I have bad news: The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against “immunity passports.” Even if the tests were 100 percent accurate, we still don’t know whether antibodies to the new coronavirus will protect people from being reinfected. If they do confer protection, we don’t know whether it’s full or partial or how long it’ll last. Even skipping the process questions — What authority would issue these, and to whom? — this seems like a bad idea.
Some experts have expressed concerns that people will rush to get “immunity passports” without understanding the limitations of antibody testing. “What I worry about is that employers will misuse this,” Rutherford says. It may be true that accurate antibody testing could let us know who’s protected from COVID-19, but that hasn’t been proven yet, Rutherford says.
To understand why these tests may not be the solution everyone’s hoping for, I spoke to some experts about how antibodies work, why false positives are important, and what real uses for antibody testing might be.
What is an antibody test?
An antibody test is a way of seeing if a person’s immune system has responded to something. In the case of COVID-19, it’s a way of seeing who’s had the new coronavirus, which is different from the tests used to diagnose the illness. Though antibody tests can be used to diagnose diseases, in the case of COVID-19, they’re not very helpful for diagnoses. That’s because people don’t make antibodies to fight off the virus until at least a week — or even two weeks — after showing symptoms. Tests used for diagnosis look for virus fragments and can spot infections much earlier.
How do antibodies work?
Antibodies are part of how your body responds to threats: viruses, bacteria, and other things the body decides are harmful. Imagine someone coughs on you and infects you with the new coronavirus. The virus can’t reproduce on its own, so it invades your cells to make copies of itself. Eventually, your immune system cottons on. Here’s what happens:
⤷ Some specialized immune cells shred the virus and present its fragments to a kind of white blood cell called a B cell.
⤷ When the fragments hit the B cell, it clones itself and transforms into an antibody factory.
⤷ The antibodies the B cell creates are then released into the bloodstream.
⤷ The antibodies vary in quality: some may glom on to the virus and inactivate it.
⤷ Some may stick to the virus and signal other immune cells to come kill the virus.
⤷ Some will do nothing. And sometimes, antibodies can make things worse. How effective antibodies are will vary by person and disease.
In HIV, for instance, antibodies are just a marker of infection. Because the virus attacks the immune system, the antibodies don’t do a great job of fighting off the virus, says Rutherford. The majority of antibodies for most illnesses are neither good nor bad for you, says Gallo. They’re just a marker that you’ve been exposed to an illness. “A good majority of them are irrelevant for protection of you, and irrelevant for how the disease is progressing,” Gallo says.
It’s also possible that they can inactivate the virus — for instance, by gumming up the spike the virus uses to insert itself into your cells; these antibodies are called “neutralizing antibodies” and are the most important kind for protection. They “are what you need for vaccines to work,” says Rutherford. If we do produce neutralizing antibodies when we’re infected by the new coronavirus, it might be possible to pick one that works really well and make a version in labs that can be used to treat the illness.
It’s possible to test for neutralizing antibodies, but it’s expensive and difficult to do at a mass scale. “It’s a very labor-intensive laboratory thing,” Rutherford says. The commercially available tests don’t do this. Most of them just give people a “yes” or “no” on whether the antibodies exist.
Unfortunately, it’s not yet clear what antibodies do in COVID-19
Neutralizing antibodies aren’t the only way antibodies might help us, Gallo says. Some antibodies serve as signal flares by grabbing on to a different part of the virus and alerting the immune system’s killer cells. But in some cases, such as dengue, antibodies can actually make a later infection worse.
Unfortunately, it’s not yet clear what antibodies do in COVID-19. For instance, the prevalence of antibodies doesn’t mean that the amount of virus in a person’s system declines, according to a study of German patients. And the less virus in your body, the better.
If I have antibodies to the new coronavirus, does that mean I won’t get sick again?
We don’t know. The virus is too new. The question of reinfection is “an unknown,” according to Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies programs.
Some Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese patients who left the hospital after testing negative for the virus were later readmitted and tested positive for the virus again. We don’t yet know why, but other coronaviruses usually can’t reinfect people for months or even years. It’s possible that this is the result of false negatives on their tests. It’s also possible that people continue to excrete viral fragments that show up in testing after the disease has passed. Rectal swabs and stool culture remain positive for about a month, “and that has nothing to do with transmission,” Rutherford says. “It’s just pieces of digested virus.”
An early draft of an article supports the idea that these patients weren’t reinfected. Chinese scientists infected two rhesus monkeys with COVID-19, then let them recover. Thirty days later, the scientists tried to infect the monkeys again. The monkeys didn’t get sick a second time. This article hasn’t been finalized, though; it’s been posted to let other scientists critique it. The final version may change.
There are some encouraging signs that antibodies may confer protection. One is serum therapy where parts of the blood that include antibodies are spun out from survivors of COVID-19 infections and given to people who are sick. In a study of 10 patients, being given survivors’ serum “significantly improved” those patients’ symptoms. That study is too small to be definitive, but it does suggest that larger trials of serum therapy might be a good idea.
Does it matter how many antibodies you have?
Again, we don’t know. It’s still too early to know what might serve as signposts for protection. It’s also too early to know what level of antibodies might signal a person who’s recovered from COVID-19 would be a good serum donor.
The total amount of antibodies to COVID-19 in patients’ blood varies widely, according to an early report from Fudan University in Shanghai. (The paper was also put online for the research community to comment on and is not yet finalized.) Younger patients had fewer antibodies, and in 10 young patients who’d tested positive for the virus and then recovered, researchers didn’t detect any neutralizing antibodies at all. About a third of patients showed low levels of antibodies. It’s possible that’s because other parts of the immune system attacked and defeated the coronavirus — but antibodies and the cells that produce them are the keys to remaining protected. The low levels of antibodies here also may make it difficult to interpret population-level data; if someone was infected but didn’t produce antibodies, will we get an accurate count of cases?
In other coronaviruses — the ones that cause the common cold — the way people form antibodies seems to vary by age: people over the age of 60 are better at forming antibodies that neutralize the virus as well as ones that signal to the immune system’s killer cells.
There’s another way antibody testing might be useful, but it’s pretty far off. We know most vaccines work by generating an antibody response, says Nikolich-Zugich. Antibody testing might help drugmakers figure out whether their vaccines against COVID-19 work. In fact, we already do this with the flu vaccine. We know that a certain level of antibodies means a flu shot is effective. For this to be useful in coronavirus, though, we’d have to have a reliable test that indicates a protective immune response and some sense of what that looks like. Learning those things will take time, and we don’t know in advance how long it will be.
How long does protection by antibodies last?
As a reminder: we don’t know yet whether COVID-19 antibodies confer protection. If protection exists, we also don’t know how long it might last. The virus is too new for us to have long-term data. We know, in some diseases — such as HIV — the most-protective antibodies are also the ones that disappear the quickest, says Gallo.
Sometimes, the body forms antibodies to a disease that last a lifetime, like it does with measles. But other times, the immune system seems to “forget” diseases. Take SARS, another coronavirus disease: three years after infection, about a quarter of people didn’t have any detectable antibodies in their blood. Six years after infection, most people didn’t have any. In a small study of patients who’d recovered from MERS — also caused by a coronavirus — people who got very sick had detectable antibodies to the disease two years later, but people with milder illnesses didn’t.
“It’s a slightly different kettle of fish.”
The limited antibody response may be because coronaviruses aren’t in the bloodstream, Rutherford says. “They’re not really exposed to the full force of the immune system. It’s a slightly different kettle of fish.” Instead, the virus attacks the lungs, liver, kidneys, and some other organs.
The coronaviruses we know best — the ones that cause the common cold — can reinfect people after a certain period of time. A study from the 1970s showed that six people who’d had colds after being exposed to one strain of coronavirus were immune when they were reexposed a year later. But another 12 people in the same study who were exposed to a slightly different strain were only partially protected. A tiny study from the 1990s suggests that coronavirus reinfections are milder than the original infection. The coronaviruses that are closest to the one that causes COVID-19 only create immune protection for about a year, according to a modeling study. That may be a clue to how the new coronavirus behaves.
But Slev cautioned against assuming too much about this coronavirus based on other coronaviruses. “There are assumptions [you can make] by looking at other coronaviruses, but really, you want to know the answer for this specific one,” she says. “So really, it’s important to wait to know what the answer is for this virus and we hope to have that answer soon. But right now, we do not have that particular answer for COVID-19.”
Why are antibody tests useful?
The first known death from COVID-19 in the US was on February 6th, in Santa Clara County, California, but the connection to the virus wasn’t made until April. Overall deaths were up 20 percent in March in Santa Clara County from the previous year. California coroners are now examining deaths from as early as December to see if there were more missed cases.
The evidence from California suggests COVID-19 was circulating in the US well before we realized it — and that some number of people may have been sick with the disease without knowing it. We don’t know how widely it was spreading or for how long because we didn’t start testing for the virus early enough. Testing people to see if they have antibodies to the virus may give health officials a better picture of how far the pandemic spread.
Right now, most people who receive diagnostic testing are allowed to because they feel sick. But we know some infections from the novel coronavirus don’t come with symptoms — and those people are being missed by most of our testing efforts. “Nobody knows what the rate of infection is,” Slev says. “An immunologic study could give us an idea on the true rates of infection in the community.”
Even after the testing criteria changed, though, there still weren’t enough tests available. Widespread testing of the population for the virus hasn’t occurred. Tests have been reserved, instead, for some of the sickest patients. We also know some infections by the new coronavirus are asymptomatic. All that means our confirmed case counts are low, but we don’t know exactly how low. Reliable antibody testing might give us a better picture of how much of the population has already been infected, which might give us a better sense of how quickly the virus spreads.
This kind of work can help epidemiologists figure out how much of the population remains vulnerable to COVID-19, how often asymptomatic cases occur, and exactly how deadly the disease is. “We have suspected that the number of undocumented cases is much, much higher than what has been documented by testing for the virus itself,” says Nikolich-Zugich. Antibodies to the virus don’t fade as quickly as the virus does in the body, and they might give us more accurate information on how widely the disease has spread.
Has this kind of antibody testing been done already?
Yes, in a few locations — though doctors have reservations about how accurate the tests are. In a Boston suburb, a sample of people tested on the street showed that about a third of the 64 people who were tested had been exposed to the virus. In a hard-hit German town, about 15 percent of the 200 people tested had antibodies. Those findings are unusual, though; most tests show that less than 5 percent of the population has antibodies.
For instance, early estimates from Santa Clara County, California, suggest that about 1.5 percent of the population had antibodies. If that’s right, the infection rate is 50 to 85 times higher than the official count for coronavirus cases. In Los Angeles County, there might be 28 to 55 times more people infected if those antibody tests are right. In New York, the antibody testing suggests 10 times more people were infected than the testing numbers reflect. These attempts to figure out how many people were sick used different methods and different tests.
“Literally every single one could be a false positive.”
Both the California studies relied on tests from Premier Biotech, which may have a false positive rate as high as 1.7 percent. That’s a problem since Santa Clara’s study found antibodies in 1.5 percent of the people they surveyed. “Literally every single one could be a false positive,” Marm Kilpatrick, an infectious disease expert at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told BuzzFeed News. “No one thinks all of them were, but the problem is we can’t actually exclude the possibility.”
It’s still too early to tell how many people had COVID-19 and didn’t get counted in the official numbers. You should expect to see a bunch more fights between scientists about which studies have good methodology and which ones don’t. (There is a lot of arguing in science, actually.) More reliable data will take time and will come from areas that have been hit harder by the disease.
There have been around 30 attempts at seeing how widespread the virus is, but despite the variations in methodology and fights about accuracy, they broadly show the same thing: most of the population is still vulnerable to COVID-19.
What is a false positive, and why does it matter?
A false positive is what it sounds like: a person who didn’t have a COVID-19 infection but whose test results said they did. In order to determine how likely a test is to produce a false positive, most laboratories use specimens collected from people who have a lot of virus, and people they know haven’t been exposed (for instance, because the sample was taken before December 2019). Test manufacturers often report their “analytic” sensitivity from these samples, which may be more clear-cut than testing in the wild. Independent third-party testing usually leads to a more reliable sense of error rates.
The tests also need to accurately distinguish between people who had the virus that causes COVID-19 and people who’ve had other kinds of coronaviruses. It’s possible that people who’ve recently had one of the four viruses that cause the common cold might test positive for COVID-19 when they’re actually negative, the WHO warns. It’s also possible that people who had SARS or MERS will trigger a positive result.
In the case of antibody testing, false positives matter partly because they’ll give us a wrong picture of how many people have been sick — which could make for bad public health policy. But they especially matter if a person who’s gotten a false positive believes they’re immune and chooses to disregard social distancing. That person is still at risk of getting sick, even if they don’t know it.
“Bad, dangerous information”
Imagine if we were using these tests to put people in groups based on their antibody status, says Rutherford. For simplicity’s sake, imagine a test where 4 percent of results are false positives, and a workforce of 100 people is in a hospital. “You have four people waltzing around saying, ‘Oh, I’m positive, I can’t get it, I don’t need to wear a mask in the ICU,’” Rutherford says. “Au contraire. That’s bad, dangerous information.”
“We can’t accept an extreme number of false positives,” Gallo says. He thinks a 5 percent false positive rate is “on the high side.” “Something is better than nothing right now, yes, but you can get misleading results.”
It’s also possible to get a false negative result, which suggests that you haven’t had COVID-19 even though you were infected. While this also might lead to bad public health decisions, it’s less likely to put a person at risk.
Is it possible to create an antibody test that looks for the right coronavirus?
There are some strategies to make sure that the antibody tests look for the right coronavirus, says Nikolich-Zugich. For instance, the spike protein that the new coronavirus uses to get into human cells “is quite unique in this particular coronavirus relative to the others,” he says. Looking for antibodies to that protein could help discriminate between coronaviruses. (But if other coronaviruses do trip up testing, that might not be a bad thing clinically, says Nikolich-Zugich. It might mean that having a cold recently could protect you from COVID-19; after all, people who are vaccinated against smallpox are also protected against monkey pox, which is caused by a similar virus. In that sense, cross-reactivity would be “a welcome occurrence.”)
If there are all of these uncertainties around coronavirus and antibody testing, what is it good for?
Well, the uncertainties aren’t permanent! Again, we’re just starting to know this virus. Several months from now, we’ll have more information, and years from now, even more.
This is also true of antibody tests, antibodies to coronavirus, and immunity. If we are willing to tolerate this period of uncertainty, we’ll give scientists time to do their jobs. That may mean telling us which tests are useful and which ones aren’t. It might also mean that we keep track of how many people test positive for coronavirus antibodies at a mass scale, rather than as individuals.
The thing people are hoping for is called “herd immunity.” That means that enough people have formed an immune response that the virus doesn’t move through the population like a hot knife through butter. There have been various estimates about how much of the population that would be — some as low as 60 percent and some as high as 90 percent — but no one’s really sure yet because we don’t know how long people remain protected after an infection or even if they are protected at all.


theverge--2020-05-07--How to watch Microsoft’s Xbox Series X game showcase

Microsoft is hosting an event today where it will show off the first gameplay footage from several games launching on @ @ @ @ @ console .
One of those games will be Assassin ’ s Creed Valhalla , which @ @ @ @ @ console ( with Smart Delivery support , no less , like Cyberpunk 2077 ) .
@ @ @ @ @ at bay , we already know that Microsoft is waiting until July to show off @ @ @ @ @ from its internal Xbox Game Studios .
Still , that leaves a lot of open @ @ @ @ @ franchises to make their next-gen debut .
How do I watch the Xbox Series X @ @ @ @ @ ll post the YouTube stream above once it 's live , but it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ of other places around the web .
Take your pick : What time does the @ @ @ @ @ start ?
If you want to watch along , the stream begins at 8AM PT @ @ @ @

Microsoft is hosting an event today where it will show off the first gameplay footage from several games launching on its upcoming Xbox Series X console. One of those games will be Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which was recently announced for the console (with Smart Delivery support, no less, like Cyberpunk 2077). And just to keep expectations at bay, we already know that Microsoft is waiting until July to show off Halo Infinite and other titles from its internal Xbox Game Studios. Still, that leaves a lot of open space for new and returning franchises to make their next-gen debut.


theverge--2020-05-07--The spring of iterative hardware updates

A few days ago Marques Brownlee declared 2020 “ the year of the ultraminor Apple update.
” He ’ s got good evidence for doing so : the iPad Pro , iPhone SE , and even the new 13-inch MacBook Pros are all fairly minor on paper .
I think I can both narrow and expand that declaration , though .
I hold out hope we ’ ll see something more substantial this fall in a few products ( looking at you , Pixel and iPhone ) , so let ’ s narrow it to this spring .
But let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : yesterday ’ s pile of new hardware announcements from both Microsoft and Sonos are the very definition of iterative updates .
Microsoft put out new versions of the Surface Book , Surface Go , Surface headphones , and Surface Dock that amount to spec bumps .
But the thing about spec bumps is sometimes they turn out to be transformative .
I ’ m typing this on a Surface Go 2 and while it ’ s much , much too early for me to say that it ’ s an entirely different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can see the potential .
As I noted in my first-look video , Microsoft addressed the three biggest complaints with the original : screen size , speed , and battery life .
That combination has the potential to turn it from a frustrating but fun little computer into a genuine iPad Pro competitor .
I think there are more questions for the Surface Book 3 .
Microsoft has thrown a ton of powerful new GPU options and other components at it , but at the same time it ’ s still shying away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increasingly depending on .
It also opted for the lower-wattage 15W Intel chips instead of the 45W chips in the MacBook Pro .
All of those decisions make a certain kind of sense in Microsoft ’ s ecosystem , but they make it a harder machine to wrap your head around .
Depending on how Tom Warren ’ s review turns out , the Book 3 could end up being a bold rethink of what counts as “ powerful ” ... or it could disappoint .
Which brings me to Sonos and its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finally ! )
puts Dolby Atmos into the company ’ s product lineup .
It ’ s almost ridiculously expensive , but if the sound quality justifies it then it will make sense in Sonos ’ lineup — especially since there ’ s now the Sonos Beam soundbar on the lower end .
Iterative updates are easy to take for granted .
They ’ re almost never a reason to upgrade on their own .
But they mean that when you do go out and buy the laptop you need or the speaker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ longer .
Without iterative updates , you might expect tech companies to reinvent their products too often , to hit revolutionary home runs every year .
When tech companies try that strategy , they invariably bomb .
Lenovo ’ s many , many wacky laptop concepts come to mind .
The other alternative is simply for companies to not keep up with the latest components .
Apple itself was guilty of that problem in its Mac lineup for years — which caused a particularly sharp angst because the only viable way to run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brownlee is right : the updates this season can seem ultraminor .
And the sentiment behind that tweet is also right — ultraminor updates are vexing when you know the company making the product is capable of more .
This spring ’ s iPad Pro felt nearly unnecessary , if I ’ m being brutally honest .
That ’ s the way with iterative updates .
You never really know if they ’ re just keeping up with the times or if their alterations add up to much more .
2020 ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s just an iPhone 8 with a super fast processor and potentially a slightly upgraded camera module , but the result is a $ 399 phone that is faster than any Android phone at any price .
And hey : sometimes knowing you aren ’ t going to be tempted to want to upgrade your current setup is a relief .
┏ Microsoft launches Surface Book 3 with new Nvidia GPU options , up to 32GB of RAM , and faster SSDs .
┏ Microsoft ’ s new Surface Go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Intel processor .
┏ Microsoft ’ s new Surface Dock 2 is made for the USB-C era .
┏ The Surface Earbuds get a new $ 199 price ahead of May 12th release date .
┏ Microsoft reveals Xbox Series X boot screen , confirms July event for Halo Infinite and more .
┏ Microsoft shifts Windows 10X towards more of a Chrome OS competitor .
┏ Sonos announces the Arc , its first Dolby Atmos soundbar .
┏ The new Sonos Five looks and sounds identical to the Play:5 it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new app and big S2 software update on June 8th .
More from The Verge ┏ Vizio conquered the smart TV ; now it wants to put Atmos in your living room .
┏ The NFC specification is adding a new wireless charging standard .
┏ Nest is rolling out mandatory two-factor authentication starting this month .
┏ Google ’ s Stadia controller will finally work wirelessly with computers starting this week .

A few days ago Marques Brownlee declared 2020 “the year of the ultraminor Apple update.” He’s got good evidence for doing so: the iPad Pro, iPhone SE, and even the new 13-inch MacBook Pros are all fairly minor on paper. I think I can both narrow and expand that declaration, though. I hold out hope we’ll see something more substantial this fall in a few products (looking at you, Pixel and iPhone), so let’s narrow it to this spring.
But let’s also expand it beyond Apple: yesterday’s pile of new hardware announcements from both Microsoft and Sonos are the very definition of iterative updates. Microsoft put out new versions of the Surface Book, Surface Go, Surface headphones, and Surface Dock that amount to spec bumps.
But the thing about spec bumps is sometimes they turn out to be transformative. I’m typing this on a Surface Go 2 and while it’s much, much too early for me to say that it’s an entirely different kind of computer than before, I can see the potential. As I noted in my first-look video, Microsoft addressed the three biggest complaints with the original: screen size, speed, and battery life. That combination has the potential to turn it from a frustrating but fun little computer into a genuine iPad Pro competitor.
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I think there are more questions for the Surface Book 3. Microsoft has thrown a ton of powerful new GPU options and other components at it, but at the same time it’s still shying away from the Thunderbolt ports that creatives are increasingly depending on. It also opted for the lower-wattage 15W Intel chips instead of the 45W chips in the MacBook Pro.
All of those decisions make a certain kind of sense in Microsoft’s ecosystem, but they make it a harder machine to wrap your head around. Depending on how Tom Warren’s review turns out, the Book 3 could end up being a bold rethink of what counts as “powerful” ...or it could disappoint.
Which brings me to Sonos and its new Arc soundbar, which finally (finally!) puts Dolby Atmos into the company’s product lineup. It’s almost ridiculously expensive, but if the sound quality justifies it then it will make sense in Sonos’ lineup — especially since there’s now the Sonos Beam soundbar on the lower end.
Iterative updates are easy to take for granted. They’re almost never a reason to upgrade on their own. But they mean that when you do go out and buy the laptop you need or the speaker you want, it’ll last longer.
Without iterative updates, you might expect tech companies to reinvent their products too often, to hit revolutionary home runs every year. When tech companies try that strategy, they invariably bomb. Lenovo’s many, many wacky laptop concepts come to mind.
The other alternative is simply for companies to not keep up with the latest components. Apple itself was guilty of that problem in its Mac lineup for years — which caused a particularly sharp angst because the only viable way to run macOS is to buy a Mac.
Brownlee is right: the updates this season can seem ultraminor. And the sentiment behind that tweet is also right — ultraminor updates are vexing when you know the company making the product is capable of more. This spring’s iPad Pro felt nearly unnecessary, if I’m being brutally honest.
That’s the way with iterative updates. You never really know if they’re just keeping up with the times or if their alterations add up to much more. 2020’s iPhone SE is very much the latter. It’s just an iPhone 8 with a super fast processor and potentially a slightly upgraded camera module, but the result is a $399 phone that is faster than any Android phone at any price.
And hey: sometimes knowing you aren’t going to be tempted to want to upgrade your current setup is a relief.
Microsoft news
Verge Deal of the day Apple’s AirPods Pro are $30 off at Amazon Normally $250, the Apple AirPods Pro wireless earbuds are down to $220 at Amazon. Compared to the standard AirPods, these feature better sound quality and noise cancellation. We’ve seen these drop a bit lower in price before, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy . Prices displayed are based on the MSRP at time of posting.
Sonos news


theverge--2020-05-07--Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and more Viacom channels coming to YouTube TV

When Viacom and CBS closed their merger in December 2019 , the latter company gained access to a plethora of networks — networks the newly merged company , ViacomCBS , is now bringing to distribution partner Google in a new deal with YouTube TV .
Nickelodeon , MTV , Comedy Central , BET , CMT , Paramount Network , TV Land , and VH1 will all launch on YouTube TV this summer , the company announced today .
The multi-year deal also includes prior CBS channels that were available to YouTube TV subscribers , including CBS broadcast stations , CBS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Channel , and The CW .
YouTube TV will also continue to carry ViacomCBS ’ premium cable brand , Showtime , as part of the extended distribution agreement .
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed .
“ We are thrilled to have reached an expanded agreement with YouTube TV that recognizes the full power of our newly combined portfolio as ViacomCBS , ” Ray Hopkins , president of US networks distribution at ViacomCBS , said in a press release .
“ Google has been an excellent partner , and we look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entertainment networks to YouTube TV subscribers for the first time.
” “ We are thrilled to have reached an expanded agreement with YouTube TV that recognizes the full power of our newly combined portfolio as ViacomCBS ” Viacom ’ s collection of established , popular cable channels is a bundle of assets that YouTube TV can provide to subscribers .
Nickelodeon , MTV , BET , and Comedy Central can help bring in new subscribers or keep current customers from canceling their service .
ViacomCBS has also worked with various YouTube creators to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ networks .
Distributing Nickelodeon , MTV , BET , and Comedy Central via YouTube , a platform their audience is on , could help reach viewers not purchasing cable packages or tuning into linear television .
The increase in channels coming to YouTube TV , however , could potentially precipitate a hike in monthly cost for the service .
When YouTube TV added Turner networks ( TNT , TBS , CNN , truTV , Cartoon Network , and Adult Swim ) in 2018 , the service saw a $ 5 price hike from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a month .
Then , in April 2019 , YouTube hiked the price on its service another $ 10 to $ 50 a month following the addition of Discovery channels ( Discovery Channel , HGTV , Food Network , TLC ) and local feeds from four of the major broadcasters .
These deals , on top of others that Google has made with companies like WarnerMedia ( YouTube TV will carry HBO ) , a potential price hike isn ’ t out of the question .
Adding more channels means more costs for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ growing business that Google wants to invest in .
CEO Sundar Pichai called YouTube TV an “ exciting product ” for the company in a February 2019 earnings call , adding that it has “ long run value ” for the company because it “ brings our advertising products together including being able to serve it across TV.
” YouTube TV currently has more than two million subscribers .
“ So we are clearly investing in areas where we see opportunity , ” Pichai said .
“ We are pretty thorough about making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other side .
And so we monitored with metrics and beat engagement and revenue growth and we see a lot of opportunity here .
”

When Viacom and CBS closed their merger in December 2019, the latter company gained access to a plethora of networks — networks the newly merged company, ViacomCBS, is now bringing to distribution partner Google in a new deal with YouTube TV.
Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, CMT, Paramount Network, TV Land, and VH1 will all launch on YouTube TV this summer, the company announced today. The multi-year deal also includes prior CBS channels that were available to YouTube TV subscribers, including CBS broadcast stations, CBS Sports Network, Pop TV, Smithsonian Channel, and The CW. YouTube TV will also continue to carry ViacomCBS’ premium cable brand, Showtime, as part of the extended distribution agreement. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“We are thrilled to have reached an expanded agreement with YouTube TV that recognizes the full power of our newly combined portfolio as ViacomCBS,” Ray Hopkins, president of US networks distribution at ViacomCBS, said in a press release. “Google has been an excellent partner, and we look forward to bringing even more of our entertainment networks to YouTube TV subscribers for the first time.”
“We are thrilled to have reached an expanded agreement with YouTube TV that recognizes the full power of our newly combined portfolio as ViacomCBS”
Viacom’s collection of established, popular cable channels is a bundle of assets that YouTube TV can provide to subscribers. Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, and Comedy Central can help bring in new subscribers or keep current customers from canceling their service. ViacomCBS has also worked with various YouTube creators to create original series for those very same networks. Distributing Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, and Comedy Central via YouTube, a platform their audience is on, could help reach viewers not purchasing cable packages or tuning into linear television.
The increase in channels coming to YouTube TV, however, could potentially precipitate a hike in monthly cost for the service. When YouTube TV added Turner networks (TNT, TBS, CNN, truTV, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim) in 2018, the service saw a $5 price hike from $35 a month to $40 a month. Then, in April 2019, YouTube hiked the price on its service another $10 to $50 a month following the addition of Discovery channels (Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC) and local feeds from four of the major broadcasters. These deals, on top of others that Google has made with companies like WarnerMedia (YouTube TV will carry HBO), a potential price hike isn’t out of the question.
Adding more channels means more costs for Google, but YouTube TV is a growing business that Google wants to invest in. CEO Sundar Pichai called YouTube TV an “exciting product” for the company in a February 2019 earnings call, adding that it has “long run value” for the company because it “brings our advertising products together including being able to serve it across TV.” YouTube TV currently has more than two million subscribers.


theverge--2020-05-07--UrbanEars first true wireless earbuds start at just $69

Swedish audio brand UrbanEars has announced its first pairs of true wireless earbuds , the Luma and the Alby .
@ @ @ @ @ , but that ’ s understandable considering they ’ re priced at just $ 99 @ @ @ @ @ The UrbanEars Alby are the cheaper of the two at $ 69 , and for @ @ @ @ @ getting three hours of battery life from the earbuds themselves , plus an extra 12 @ @ @ @ @ case .
They ’ ve got an IPX4 resistance to water splashing , and there @ @ @ @ @ on each earbud for making calls .
Stepping up to the $ 99 Luma gets @ @ @ @ @ 5 hours per charge , a wireless charging ( or USB-C ) case that provides @ @ @ @ @ an extra microphone on each earbud to reduce background noise when calling .
Both sets @ @ @ @ @ voice controls and are available in black , green , white , or violet .
@ @ @ @ @ Luma and the Alby will be available to buy this summer .

The UrbanEars Alby are the cheaper of the two at $69, and for that price you’re getting three hours of battery life from the earbuds themselves, plus an extra 12 hours from the USB-C charging case. They’ve got an IPX4 resistance to water splashing, and there’s a single microphone on each earbud for making calls. Stepping up to the $99 Luma gets you more battery life with 5 hours per charge, a wireless charging (or USB-C) case that provides 20 hours more, and an extra microphone on each earbud to reduce background noise when calling. Both sets of buds include touch and voice controls and are available in black, green, white, or violet.


theverge--2020-05-07--The EU is trying to fix its abysmal cookie consent policy

For many internet users , the EU ’ s cookie consent policies are an aggravating and unavoidable experience when browsing the web .
Introduced in 2018 as part of the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ) , these notices ask users to agree to being tracked when visiting a site for the first time , but are often misleadingly worded or impossible to refuse .
In an effort to make cookie consent more consensual , the EU has published updated guidelines this week banning some of the worst interpretations of these policies .
The biggest change is an end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ viewing content contingent on consenting to be tracked .
The whole point of the cookie consent policy is to give people a free choice in whether or not their data is collected for things like targeted advertising .
But , as the EU notes , if a website “ puts into place a script that will block content from being visible except for a request to accept cookies ” this “ does not constitute valid consent ” as the user is “ not presented with a genuine choice.
” So : no more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sites from interpreting even the most basic interaction as consent .
Some website providers , for example , interpret simply scrolling or swiping on the page as agreeing to their tracking policies .
The EU notes the ridiculousness of this position by suggesting that if scrolling can constitute consent it can also be used to withdraw consent .
And since sites have no way of distinguishing between these two intentions , using scrolling or swiping as a proxy for consent is meaningless .
These guidelines show the EU is aware of the problems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for people affected by these mechanisms ( which includes many individuals living outside of Europe , as sites often adopt GDPR regulations internationally to save time or out of an abundance of caution ) it would be wrong to expect a quick fix .
For a start , these are only guidelines intended to shape national policy .
The EU passes laws , but it ’ s up to member states to enforce them .
And research has shown that sites consistently flout current cookie consent laws and that enforcement is minimal at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many more ways than just cookie walls to confuse and trick visitors to clicking “ agree.
” A whole range of so-called dark patterns — confusingly designed user interface choices — can mislead and coerce users .
These range from pre-ticked boxes and labyrinthine menus to simply never explaining what tracking cookies are being placed on somebody ’ s computer in the first place .
One recent study found that only 11 percent of cookie consent mechanisms “ meet the minimal requirements [ of ] European law.
” With these problems , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until cookie consent mechanisms are fixed , if they ever are .
Perhaps you had to negotiate one to even read this story , in which case , we apologize .
But let ’ s hope tearing down the cookie walls is a first step in a better direction .

For many internet users, the EU’s cookie consent policies are an aggravating and unavoidable experience when browsing the web. Introduced in 2018 as part of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), these notices ask users to agree to being tracked when visiting a site for the first time, but are often misleadingly worded or impossible to refuse. In an effort to make cookie consent more consensual, the EU has published updated guidelines this week banning some of the worst interpretations of these policies.
The biggest change is an end to “cookie walls” which make viewing content contingent on consenting to be tracked. The whole point of the cookie consent policy is to give people a free choice in whether or not their data is collected for things like targeted advertising. But, as the EU notes, if a website “puts into place a script that will block content from being visible except for a request to accept cookies” this “does not constitute valid consent” as the user is “not presented with a genuine choice.” So: no more cookie walls.
An example of a cookie consent policy with no obvious way to opt out of tracking. Screenshot: The Verge
Another big change stops sites from interpreting even the most basic interaction as consent. Some website providers, for example, interpret simply scrolling or swiping on the page as agreeing to their tracking policies. The EU notes the ridiculousness of this position by suggesting that if scrolling can constitute consent it can also be used to withdraw consent. And since sites have no way of distinguishing between these two intentions, using scrolling or swiping as a proxy for consent is meaningless.
Cookie consent mechanisms are well-intentioned but thoughtlessly implemented
These guidelines show the EU is aware of the problems with its cookie consent policy, but for people affected by these mechanisms (which includes many individuals living outside of Europe, as sites often adopt GDPR regulations internationally to save time or out of an abundance of caution) it would be wrong to expect a quick fix.
For a start, these are only guidelines intended to shape national policy. The EU passes laws, but it’s up to member states to enforce them. And research has shown that sites consistently flout current cookie consent laws and that enforcement is minimal at best.
In addition, there are many more ways than just cookie walls to confuse and trick visitors to clicking “agree.” A whole range of so-called dark patterns — confusingly designed user interface choices — can mislead and coerce users. These range from pre-ticked boxes and labyrinthine menus to simply never explaining what tracking cookies are being placed on somebody’s computer in the first place. One recent study found that only 11 percent of cookie consent mechanisms “meet the minimal requirements [of] European law.”