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50% accurate I'd agree is useless. But the parent said 50% false positive, presumably with close to a 0% false negative would be VERY useful and save potential
by sliken 7y ago
50% accurate I'd agree is useless.
But the parent said 50% false positive, presumably with close to a 0% false negative would be VERY useful and save potentially millions of lives. We need enough tests yesterday or so to avoid a repeat of Italy and a 50% false positive rate (with a very low false negative rate) could help do that.
- makomk 7y agoEven the properly-conducted version of this test has a fairly substantial false negative rate, somewhere around the 30% mark, and if it's done by students using samples that might not be taken correctly on a rigged-together testing setup that's going to get worse. Seriously, you might as well flip a coin.
- awrence 7y agoThat’s fair, if the assumption is that false negatives are very low or 0 (in which case it’s a super high accuracy test at low contamination rates and super useful). And yeah obviously we desperately need a decent test like three months ago.
- leereeves 7y agoA test with a 50% false positive rate, administered to 100 million people who aren't infected, would say 50 million people were infected. False positive rate is a confusing term; it means the % of tests that should be negative that report a false positive. I think the term for what you're probably thinking of (% of positive results that are false positives) is the false discovery rate.