5 ms·
The reported specificity and sensitivity of RT-PCR testing is quite good, but obviously not 100%. RT-PCR is considered the "gold standard" in viral testing. If
by zaroth 7y ago
The reported specificity and sensitivity of RT-PCR testing is quite good, but obviously not 100%. RT-PCR is considered the "gold standard" in viral testing.
If you want to contact trace, we would need many orders of magnitude more testing.
If you want to know prevalence over time, and therefore Rt, we could ascertain it very accurately with much less testing, but it would need to be done against statistically valid and unbiased random samples of the population, not at all what is going on today.
Since the testing we are doing today doesn't really satisfy either condition, and there's also no front-line approved treatments for those that are definitively diagnosed (rather, we treat the symptoms, which are self-evident), frankly I'm not sure I understand the extreme focus on testing.
- sjg007 7y agoThese tests have a false negative rate of 30%
- nitrogen 7y agoI'm not sure I understand the extreme focus on testing. 3blue1brown on YouTube created a simple model that suggests that testing and quarantine of positive cases is the most effective way to slow the spread (within the simplified model). Testing should allow us to isolate just the infected, and ease off the restrictions on others.
- ethbro 7y agoWith statistically valid random testing, even detecting clusters / communities (as opposed to individuals) and clearing same would be conducive to reopening the economy. Unfortunately, the path to doing so "I'm going to force you to get tested, despite you having no symptoms" is political anathema.
- aianus 7y ago> "I'm going to force you to get tested, despite you having no symptoms" is political anathema This seems less extreme and more palatable than "I'm going to force you to stay home and lose your job, despite you having no symptoms" which is very nonetheless popular right now.
- zaroth 7y agoNo, no, there’s never going to be enough testing to test asymptomatic cases — Thats everybody. And a test doesn’t tell you you aren’t going to be positive tomorrow. It just tells you you weren’t positive 48 hours ago! Fauci explained all this live at the press conference. I wish people would listen. With AIDS it’s different. You can get tested, be negative, take no at-risk behaviors, and a year later that negative test is still relevant. With COVID by the time you have a negative test result back it’s no longer even relevant. Only positive tests are relevant. The fact is that there’s no point in testing people to demonstrate that they are negative. And there will never be enough testing to test every asymptomatic person, and a significant proportion of spread is from asymptomatic carriers. Those three incontrovertible facts lead to some very basic and sobering conclusions. So this fear of people being forced to show a negative test assumes we’ve somehow found our way into an anti-science twilight zone kabuki theater to begin with. Which frankly wouldn’t be far off from where we are already, but can we please at least acknowledge it’s based on fear and hysteria and not any kind of science?
- ethbro 7y ago> statistically valid random testing Believe you missed a word in there? Random testing for surveillance purposes would absolutely require testing asymptomatic people. Not because you care if they're sick (though that's useful information), but because you care if the community has a change in the Sars-CoV-2 infection rate.
- redis_mlc 7y ago> I'm not sure I understand the extreme focus on testing. Group think.