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The NYC studies actually look halfway decent. The big problem with serological tests is that even good ones may have, say, a 2% false positive rate. So if you t
by ekidd 6y ago
The NYC studies actually look halfway decent. The big problem with serological tests is that even good ones may have, say, a 2% false positive rate. So if you test a population where nobody is infected, the test will say that 2% have been infected.
To get good numbers, you need a population where lots of people have been infected. That will allow true positives to swamp the false positives, which is what happened in the NYC study that claimed 21% of people had already been infected. Even if it's really only 19%, that doesn't change much.
You also need a good random sampling procedure. IIRC, the NYC study tested people shopping for essentials at mid-day. This underrepresents essential workers, people who are really good at self-isolation, and people who are currently sick. But still, it's not too bad.
The New York City numbers suggest that very roughly 1% of people infected with the virus will die, depending on how you count probable but unconfirmed COVID deaths reported by NYC. This could be off by a factor of two in either direction, depending on how good the random sampling was, and the characteristics of a given population.
- MengerSponge 6y agoNicely put. With a case fatality of ~1%, we need orders of magnitude reduction, not factors of 2. If anyone wants to quibble over a factor of 2 you've missed the point. Now my nightly rant: I did this kind of false positive calculation in high school statistics, and I hated it. Still do. I hate that we're dealing with this BS. I hate that stupid people put us in this position, and that smart people aren't smart enough to not be absolute knobs.