5 ms·

Most commenters here didn't read the article properly and completely misunderstood what this is about. To be fair, it's not explained super clearly. So to clar

• wenc 6y ago
  My first reaction was: wouldn't people who tested negative -- and knew their results -- behave differently from people who didn't know what their infection status was? Wouldn't that skew the study? But then again, from observing my friends (who are mostly younger), many of them behave as if they didn't have the virus anyway -- even those who hadn't been tested. So yes, the results might be a little skewed, but the results should still be instructive.
  • david_draco 6y ago
    Presumably real large-scale events will also require a negative test result from participants in the near future. In that case, the study would be applicable.
  • dathinab 6y ago
    There is also always the risc that you contacted it since the last test, so the period in which you can feel to safely not be infectious is rather short.
    • fragmede 6y ago
      That risk is much lower if it takes 15-minute to get the test results, as opposed to tests that take an unknown amount of days/weeks to get results. The linked article does not discuss in depth what kind of testing took place, only that it did.
      • dathinab 6y ago
        Yes but not if the short tests work reliably. The best not yet on the market short tests we have do have a lot sensitivity but high specificity, i.e if they say you have it you most likely have it but if they say you don't have it you can't rely on it at all. (As as I know) This is still somewhat useful as it turns out they still do a reasonable good job wrt. Sensitivity iff you are highly infectious. So it might be useful to at least "weed out" the most infectious people before grant events or e.g. school, which would probably already be a great improvement I guess.
• deleted 6y ago
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• 08-15 6y ago
  > Only people who tested negative were allowed to the event. I can't confirm that. The BBC article doesn't mention testing at all, and Spiegel Online writes: "Mitmachen darf jeder, der keine Vorerkrankungen der Lunge oder des Herzens hat und zwischen 18 und 50 Jahre alt ist." (Anyone with no prior illness of the lungs or heart and between 18 and 50 years of age is allowed to participate.) and "Alle Teilnehmer mussten zwei Tage vor dem Studientag einen Abstrich aus ihrem Rachen abliefern, der auf eine Corona-Infektion getestet wurde. Eine Probe war positiv." (All participants had to submit a throat swab two days prior, which was tested for Corona infection. One sample was positive.) The first part seems to refer to prior illnesses other than Covid, even though it doesn't specifically say so. The second part doesn't say that the positive sample was excluded from the concert. Reading between the lines, this whole experiment does indeed appear to test the spread of the actual virus.