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Do you have details? A quick glance here shows low positive test rates in the countries that seem to be doing the best. Low positive test rates seem like adequa

by mrkurt 6y ago

Do you have details? A quick glance here shows low positive test rates in the countries that seem to be doing the best. Low positive test rates seem like adequate testing. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing

makomk 6y ago
Low positive rates are an indicator that a country is having to do more testing to locate their cases than a country with a similar amount of cases, but higher positive rates. Nothing more, nothing less. At best, it indicates that the country has a relatively low infection rate (which is why countries that are doing better have low positive test rates), at worst it's because they're testing the wrong people. Think about it this way. Currently, countries like the US or much of Europe tend to offer testing to anyone with mild potential symptoms that are caused by many common diseases. If they ever reach the point where Covid-19 cases make up such a substantial proportion of people with those generic symptoms as to affect the number of tests required, the country is in really deep, Lombardy-level trouble. The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days. (Note also that South Korea doesn't routinely offer testing to people with mild symptoms. Anyone can get tested if they pay out of pocket for it, but it's discouraged and at a tenth of the testing capacity of most Western nations I don't think they could handle many people demanding it. Which means they can't reliably detect cases not linked to ones they already know about, and of course those unlinked cases grow exponentially... Makes meaningful comparison of case figures and test positivity figures hard.)
- mrkurt 6y ago
  I understand that low infection rates don't follow testing. But low infections rates _also_ means there are adequate tests for infections. What I was after was any kind detail about these countries being test constrained. Links, etc. Anything like that? > The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days.

by mrkurt 6y ago

makomk 6y ago

Low positive rates are an indicator that a country is having to do more testing to locate their cases than a country with a similar amount of cases, but higher positive rates. Nothing more, nothing less. At best, it indicates that the country has a relatively low infection rate (which is why countries that are doing better have low positive test rates), at worst it's because they're testing the wrong people. Think about it this way. Currently, countries like the US or much of Europe tend to offer testing to anyone with mild potential symptoms that are caused by many common diseases. If they ever reach the point where Covid-19 cases make up such a substantial proportion of people with those generic symptoms as to affect the number of tests required, the country is in really deep, Lombardy-level trouble. The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days. (Note also that South Korea doesn't routinely offer testing to people with mild symptoms. Anyone can get tested if they pay out of pocket for it, but it's discouraged and at a tenth of the testing capacity of most Western nations I don't think they could handle many people demanding it. Which means they can't reliably detect cases not linked to ones they already know about, and of course those unlinked cases grow exponentially... Makes meaningful comparison of case figures and test positivity figures hard.)

mrkurt 6y ago
I understand that low infection rates don't follow testing. But low infections rates _also_ means there are adequate tests for infections. What I was after was any kind detail about these countries being test constrained. Links, etc. Anything like that? > The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days.