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The article is only tangentially about Covid test reliability. It's actually a "reopen the UK" thinkpiece with some poorly-drawn conclusions to support that sta

The article is only tangentially about Covid test reliability. It's actually a "reopen the UK" thinkpiece with some poorly-drawn conclusions to support that stance. While it points out the obvious insights you get with testing unreliabily (which anyone who knows anything about statistics will nod along with), it mistakenly uses it to reach this conclusion: ...if something causes test numbers to rise then so will case numbers, which in turn will cause a further increase in testing, causing the rise to continue, triggering local lockdowns and pointless evidence free rituals, until people get depressed and stop trying to do things causing numbers being tested to fall again... Health is run by people who suffer no consequences from policy over-reactions. Lockdown induced job losses won’t affect them, as they work for the government. A larger-scale case of “one rule for them and another for us” can’t be imagined. It’s thus no surprise when we read things like Public Health England defining a COVID death as anyone who has ever tested positive and then died, for any reason, at any time i.e. the UK being supposedly “one of the worst hit countries in the world” is a statistical fantasy. PHE officials defined it this way because they didn’t want to be accused of being a nasty libertarians who were underplaying the problem just to help capitalist workers. The idea that they’d create other, bigger problems simply didn’t occur to them — or worse, it did but they didn’t care. The key to this is the over-estimation of deaths. If cases are up, but deaths are not, the author argues, we should reopen everything and stop large-spread testing, because those cases are false positives. And that's a reasonable stand, in the abstract, and the discussion of false positives is worthwhile. Unfortunately, the author uses this in combination with the possible (and unsubstantiated) over-counting of deaths (and some weird libertarian persecution complex) as a way to justify reopening the country and stopping testing. That starts to sound like a claim toward "Covid is not a big deal" at best (and "Covid is fake" at worst).

aogaili 6y ago
You might not like or agree with article, but I actually found it very well reasoned and provide alternative point of view to a very important discussion. Thus I'm really puzzled why this community would flag it, it is disappointing frankly.
- discardable_dan 6y ago
  I think an article about false positive rates, and signal to noise, is indeed interesting. Discussing how most of the tests we have float around 1%-2%, and leaning on that to argue that reopening may be safe when tests are steady around those levels, may actually be worthwhile. Unfortunately, the article doesn't do that. Instead, it: - Calls into question the legitimacy of coronavirus death impact, consulting a flat death without considering the externalities of reduced risks that lockdowns bring about. - Links to the article suggests healthy people shouldn't be wearing masks, even though many people are contagious well before showing symptoms. - Calls into question Spain's second wave as false, the result of over-testing, even though [it isn't, the case count is rising far above any expected false-positive rate, and people are dying there](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/). - Puts forth the sentiment: "The idea that [lockdowns] create other, bigger problems simply didn’t occur to [Public Health England] — or worse, it did but they didn’t care." If the article addressed this head-on and used that metric to determine which lockdowns might be necessary, that'd be one thing. These conclusions, however, are a bit inexcusable.
aogaili 6y ago
"the discussion of false positives is worthwhile." That is why I think it shouldn't be flagged, it is the reason why we're discussing this and it is an important debate given the impact.

aogaili 6y ago

You might not like or agree with article, but I actually found it very well reasoned and provide alternative point of view to a very important discussion. Thus I'm really puzzled why this community would flag it, it is disappointing frankly.

discardable_dan 6y ago
I think an article about false positive rates, and signal to noise, is indeed interesting. Discussing how most of the tests we have float around 1%-2%, and leaning on that to argue that reopening may be safe when tests are steady around those levels, may actually be worthwhile. Unfortunately, the article doesn't do that. Instead, it: - Calls into question the legitimacy of coronavirus death impact, consulting a flat death without considering the externalities of reduced risks that lockdowns bring about. - Links to the article suggests healthy people shouldn't be wearing masks, even though many people are contagious well before showing symptoms. - Calls into question Spain's second wave as false, the result of over-testing, even though [it isn't, the case count is rising far above any expected false-positive rate, and people are dying there](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/). - Puts forth the sentiment: "The idea that [lockdowns] create other, bigger problems simply didn’t occur to [Public Health England] — or worse, it did but they didn’t care." If the article addressed this head-on and used that metric to determine which lockdowns might be necessary, that'd be one thing. These conclusions, however, are a bit inexcusable.

aogaili 6y ago

"the discussion of false positives is worthwhile." That is why I think it shouldn't be flagged, it is the reason why we're discussing this and it is an important debate given the impact.