3 ms·
Maybe because the false-positive rate for asymptomatic patients is estimated at 80%?
by rossdavidh 7y ago
Maybe because the false-positive rate for asymptomatic patients is estimated at 80%?
- elliekelly 7y agoDo you have a source for this information? This is the first I've heard of false-positives.
- ryanburk 7y agosource??
- numpad0 7y agoFalse positive? I’ve heard although false negatives(contracted but asymptomatic) can be up to 40-60%, but RT-PCR is reliable at declaring positives.
- whoisjuan 7y agoThere's a possibility for false-positives. I think there's a type of test that looks for an enzyme that you could have without contracting the virus. I saw an article in HN this morning, but I can't find it anymore. Also, false positives could happen as a result of bad logistics and management of the specimens. Some useful sources that seem to validate the occurrence of false positives: - This research on testing specifically calls out the fact that their method didn't yield false positives in trials: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045 https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E..., which seems to indicate that it's common for false positives to occur when developing testing methods for new viruses. - This research talks about false positives in asymptomatic patients: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832. "In the close contacts of COVID-19 patients, nearly half or even more of the 'asymptomatic infected individuals' reported in the active nucleic acid test screening might be false positives." - This guy in Egypt is apparently a false-positive, likely due to a mismanaged testing protocol: https://www.livescience.com/matt-swider-stuck-in-egypt-coronavirus-quarantine.html https://www.livescience.com/matt-swider-stuck-in-egypt-coron...
- Vesuvium 7y agoI imagine with many tests, even at 0.1% eventually you'll get some false positive due to human error, or other things going wrong
- LeifCarrotson 7y agoThe false positive rate is nowhere near 80%. All positive test results - both false and true - are at less than 5%. 80% might be the probability that an asymptomatic patient who tests positive is actually clear, but that's not what the statistic "false positive rate" means.
- rossdavidh 7y agoThe term "false positive" is the one used in the NIH-linked article: "Potential false-positive rate among the 'asymptomatic infected individuals' in close contacts of COVID-19 patients" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- virusduck 7y agoThis isn't an NIH-affiliated article, to be clear. It's from a Chinese set of authors on a Chinese journal. But, it's not, because the article is now nonexistent. http://rs.yiigle.com/yufabiao/1183773.htm http://rs.yiigle.com/yufabiao/1183773.htm