Are We Failing the Coronavirus-Antibody Test?

Again and again, the mistakes that the Trump Administration makes in handling the coronavirus crisis seem to break in the worst possible direction. The latest example concerns antibody tests, which are meant to show whether someone has had COVID-19, but, in practice, often do not. There are more than two hundred tests out there now, produced by a wide range of companies and labs, with little control over how they are marketed; only a dozen have even gone through the process of getting what's known as an Emergency Use Authorization, or E.U.A., from the Food and Drug Administration, which is less rigorous than a normal approval. The F.D.A. has told other companies that they can go ahead and peddle their tests based on self-reported measures of accuracy to clinics, doctors' offices, businesses, or state and local governments. Some tests are not just imperfect but shoddy; "terrible" is the word one researcher used in describing certain tests to CNN.