21 ms·
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 stat
by 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 agoPresumably 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 agoThere 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 agoThat 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 agoYes 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.