58 ms·

> I strongly suspect that the goal was to cast a wide net (i.e. bias toward false positives) at the expense of accuracy, but then "cases" became some kind of t

> I strongly suspect that the goal was to cast a wide net (i.e. bias toward false positives) at the expense of accuracy, but then "cases" became some kind of top-line media metric... Then in January the WHO updated the diagnostic protocol [1] because of that false positive/low confidence problem. Unsurprisingly, case counts plummeted in the following weeks. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users-2020-05 https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-not...

timr 5y ago
Yep. It was stunning to me that this was rarely mentioned in the press.
themark 5y ago
When I bring this up in conversations with people they make me feel like a kook. I am not sure what to think anymore.
- wut2doobiedo 5y ago
  Because what to do is highly variable doesn’t mean we need to take unnecessary risk to know literal truth. Urban area population density requires different mitigations than rural, except rural communities rely on urban ones as logistics pipelines. So normalize; mask up, stay home. Prefer all gas, no brakes, based on stats? There may not be enough real people to keep the internet on later. Nothing about the lockdown was for saving you or me specifically, but systems of behavior we rely on.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nradov 5y ago
    That isn't a valid reason. The infection fatality rate for most people who keep the Internet running is way less than 1%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
- simonh 5y ago
  For me this is interesting, but not really material to anything. Sure, the tests we have for this new virus have needed to be adjusted and calibrated as we learn more about it. It's unfortunate if the numbers are a bit messed up, it would be better if they were more accurate, but real life is messy. I don't think you're a kook, and I can only guess what those people were thinking. Maybe they just wondered... and therefore, what?
  - kook_throwaway 5y ago
    Abusing high cycle thresholds for false positives isn't a new strategy. PCR inventor Kary Mullis is on video calling Fauci out for doing exactly that. Unfortunately I can't even link the two videos because they keep getting memory holed. If you search around you might get lucky, otherwise I'll upload my saved copy when I get off work.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Note that the background for this is that Kary Mullis believed AIDS wasn’t caused by HIV and was therefore angry at Fauci and the entire medical/scientific establishment for linking HIV and AIDS. He died in 2019 so his criticisms of Fauci were related to HIV, not SARS-CoV-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Views_on_HIV/AIDS_and_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Views_on_HIV/AIDS_...
      - themark 5y ago
        The video they are referring to has a very specific part about pcr testing (relevant to the discussion here). I think it is reasonable to trust his opinion on the matter regardless of what he thinks about AIDS.
        briefcomment 5y ago
        He is also a Nobel laureate.
        javagram 5y ago
- mizzack 5y ago
  It didn't help that the WHO released the updated guidelines the day Biden was inaugurated. For that reason alone it became another thought-terminating political topic -- you're either dismissed as a conspiracy theorist for correlating these events, or you're dismissing the value of the vaccine rollout/lockdowns/other measures, or you're a sheep following the dominant media narrative.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    It's harder to dismiss when you also consider the first vaccine approvals kept getting delayed until they were released immediately after the election.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Note that it was hardly “delayed” since all initial predictions for the vaccine to be approved were around 12 months, in the end it only took about 10 months. Reports last year indicated Trump’s own FDA was responsible for setting out the needed time for data gathering and review that pushed it into mid-November. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months-monitoring-delaying-vaccine/story?id=73454563 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months... Meanwhile other countries including China and Russia didn’t approve their own vaccines faster, seeming to indicate the timeline had little to do with U.S. politics.
      - jimmygrapes 5y ago
        It is worth considering that maybe Sinovac (and whatever the Russian one(s) is/are called) may have been released far earlier than they would have been if the U.S. and others had not developed their own faster. Think of space wars - even if you lose the race to first, you still want to be in 2nd vs 500th. If they were developed at a more traditional pace, would they be more effective? Would any of them be? And what would be the consequences of waiting? Would it be millions more deaths, or would natural herd immunity emerge? Both? Would the more virulent variants have appeared without a marginally effective strain evolving as a result of marginally effective vaccines?
beerandt 5y ago
On inauguration day.
- apercu 5y ago
  Sure, and it could be political. In fact, most things of this nature are at that level. So, maybe, the people in charge didn't like the previous US government admin so they didn't help improve its numbers. That is certainly more likely and believable than some vast left-wing conspiracy to implant Bill Gate's microchips in to your iPhone carrying ass to "track" you. :)
  - leereeves 5y ago
    Instead you're just talking about a left-wing conspiracy to lie to the public in order to take control of the government. Things like that make people suspicious, and make it easy for people who don't know the difference between a quantum dot[1] and a microchip to misunderstand when Bill Gates calls for a national tracking system[2]. 1: (a quantum dot to store medical information beneath the skin really was funded by Bill Gates) https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218 https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218 2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/03/18/bill-gates-calls-for-national-tracking-system-for-coronavirus-during-reddit-ama/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/03/18/bill-gates...
    - kook_throwaway 5y ago
      >Instead you're just talking about a left-wing conspiracy to lie to the public in order to take control of the government. To take control of the government or for good PR/propaganda? Governments have never had any issues conspiring and lying to the public, remember when Fauci said not to use masks because they didn't help? Or those WMDs that we will surely find any day now?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - 5y ago
icegreentea2 5y ago
Are you sure this is the right link? I looked at this notice, and compared to the previous version from December 2020 (https://www.terviseamet.ee/sites/default/files/MSO/2020_ohutusalane_teave/detsember/who_soovitused_sars-cov-2_testide_tulemuste_hindamise_kohta.pdf https://www.terviseamet.ee/sites/default/files/MSO/2020_ohut...) and they appear broadly similar... there's perhaps a bit more upfront on the need to deal with weakly positive results, but they both tell you to read your device IFU and adjust your thresholds accordingly.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  Probably changed post-publication. That's a super common thing now. And why you always need to both use an archiver site and possibly save a local copy.
  - javagram 5y ago
    Rather than speculate why didn’t you just do a google search? A quick google and check of archive.org finds the document released in December with an archive date of dec 16. https://web.archive.org/web/20201216033740/https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201214/World-Health-Organization-issues-notice-for-in-vitro-diagnostics-users.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20201216033740/https://www.news-...
blywi 5y ago
This WHO statement has been widely misinterpreted, is is not the case that PCR tests were resulting in inflated numbers of false positives, see Reuters fact check [1] from February 4, 2021, and [2] from April 8, 2021. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-who-instructions-pcr-guidan-idUSKBN2A429W https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-who-instruction... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-who-pcr-idUSL1N2M10ID https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-who-pcr-idUSL1N2M1...
- themark 5y ago
  “The WHO information notice is not a retraction; rather, it is a clarification for laboratory professionals on how to interpret PCR results.” Why would WHO feel the need to tell people to read the operating manuals closely? I’m sure its not because the accuracy was too high.
robocat 5y ago
WHO did give a good reason: “ WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.” Given that reason, cause and effect would be hard to pick.

timr 5y ago

Yep. It was stunning to me that this was rarely mentioned in the press.

themark 5y ago

When I bring this up in conversations with people they make me feel like a kook. I am not sure what to think anymore.

wut2doobiedo 5y ago
Because what to do is highly variable doesn’t mean we need to take unnecessary risk to know literal truth. Urban area population density requires different mitigations than rural, except rural communities rely on urban ones as logistics pipelines. So normalize; mask up, stay home. Prefer all gas, no brakes, based on stats? There may not be enough real people to keep the internet on later. Nothing about the lockdown was for saving you or me specifically, but systems of behavior we rely on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nradov 5y ago
  That isn't a valid reason. The infection fatality rate for most people who keep the Internet running is way less than 1%. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
simonh 5y ago
For me this is interesting, but not really material to anything. Sure, the tests we have for this new virus have needed to be adjusted and calibrated as we learn more about it. It's unfortunate if the numbers are a bit messed up, it would be better if they were more accurate, but real life is messy. I don't think you're a kook, and I can only guess what those people were thinking. Maybe they just wondered... and therefore, what?
- kook_throwaway 5y ago
  Abusing high cycle thresholds for false positives isn't a new strategy. PCR inventor Kary Mullis is on video calling Fauci out for doing exactly that. Unfortunately I can't even link the two videos because they keep getting memory holed. If you search around you might get lucky, otherwise I'll upload my saved copy when I get off work.
  - javagram 5y ago
    Note that the background for this is that Kary Mullis believed AIDS wasn’t caused by HIV and was therefore angry at Fauci and the entire medical/scientific establishment for linking HIV and AIDS. He died in 2019 so his criticisms of Fauci were related to HIV, not SARS-CoV-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Views_on_HIV/AIDS_and_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Views_on_HIV/AIDS_...
    - themark 5y ago
      The video they are referring to has a very specific part about pcr testing (relevant to the discussion here). I think it is reasonable to trust his opinion on the matter regardless of what he thinks about AIDS.
      - briefcomment 5y ago
        He is also a Nobel laureate.
      - javagram 5y ago
mizzack 5y ago
It didn't help that the WHO released the updated guidelines the day Biden was inaugurated. For that reason alone it became another thought-terminating political topic -- you're either dismissed as a conspiracy theorist for correlating these events, or you're dismissing the value of the vaccine rollout/lockdowns/other measures, or you're a sheep following the dominant media narrative.
- beerandt 5y ago
  It's harder to dismiss when you also consider the first vaccine approvals kept getting delayed until they were released immediately after the election.
  - javagram 5y ago
    Note that it was hardly “delayed” since all initial predictions for the vaccine to be approved were around 12 months, in the end it only took about 10 months. Reports last year indicated Trump’s own FDA was responsible for setting out the needed time for data gathering and review that pushed it into mid-November. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months-monitoring-delaying-vaccine/story?id=73454563 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months... Meanwhile other countries including China and Russia didn’t approve their own vaccines faster, seeming to indicate the timeline had little to do with U.S. politics.
    - jimmygrapes 5y ago
      It is worth considering that maybe Sinovac (and whatever the Russian one(s) is/are called) may have been released far earlier than they would have been if the U.S. and others had not developed their own faster. Think of space wars - even if you lose the race to first, you still want to be in 2nd vs 500th. If they were developed at a more traditional pace, would they be more effective? Would any of them be? And what would be the consequences of waiting? Would it be millions more deaths, or would natural herd immunity emerge? Both? Would the more virulent variants have appeared without a marginally effective strain evolving as a result of marginally effective vaccines?

beerandt 5y ago

On inauguration day.

apercu 5y ago
Sure, and it could be political. In fact, most things of this nature are at that level. So, maybe, the people in charge didn't like the previous US government admin so they didn't help improve its numbers. That is certainly more likely and believable than some vast left-wing conspiracy to implant Bill Gate's microchips in to your iPhone carrying ass to "track" you. :)
- leereeves 5y ago
  Instead you're just talking about a left-wing conspiracy to lie to the public in order to take control of the government. Things like that make people suspicious, and make it easy for people who don't know the difference between a quantum dot[1] and a microchip to misunderstand when Bill Gates calls for a national tracking system[2]. 1: (a quantum dot to store medical information beneath the skin really was funded by Bill Gates) https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218 https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218 2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/03/18/bill-gates-calls-for-national-tracking-system-for-coronavirus-during-reddit-ama/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/03/18/bill-gates...
  - kook_throwaway 5y ago
    >Instead you're just talking about a left-wing conspiracy to lie to the public in order to take control of the government. To take control of the government or for good PR/propaganda? Governments have never had any issues conspiring and lying to the public, remember when Fauci said not to use masks because they didn't help? Or those WMDs that we will surely find any day now?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago

icegreentea2 5y ago

Are you sure this is the right link? I looked at this notice, and compared to the previous version from December 2020 (https://www.terviseamet.ee/sites/default/files/MSO/2020_ohutusalane_teave/detsember/who_soovitused_sars-cov-2_testide_tulemuste_hindamise_kohta.pdf https://www.terviseamet.ee/sites/default/files/MSO/2020_ohut...) and they appear broadly similar... there's perhaps a bit more upfront on the need to deal with weakly positive results, but they both tell you to read your device IFU and adjust your thresholds accordingly.

xyzzy21 5y ago
Probably changed post-publication. That's a super common thing now. And why you always need to both use an archiver site and possibly save a local copy.
- javagram 5y ago
  Rather than speculate why didn’t you just do a google search? A quick google and check of archive.org finds the document released in December with an archive date of dec 16. https://web.archive.org/web/20201216033740/https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201214/World-Health-Organization-issues-notice-for-in-vitro-diagnostics-users.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20201216033740/https://www.news-...

blywi 5y ago

This WHO statement has been widely misinterpreted, is is not the case that PCR tests were resulting in inflated numbers of false positives, see Reuters fact check [1] from February 4, 2021, and [2] from April 8, 2021. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-who-instructions-pcr-guidan-idUSKBN2A429W https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-who-instruction... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-who-pcr-idUSL1N2M10ID https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-who-pcr-idUSL1N2M1...

themark 5y ago
“The WHO information notice is not a retraction; rather, it is a clarification for laboratory professionals on how to interpret PCR results.” Why would WHO feel the need to tell people to read the operating manuals closely? I’m sure its not because the accuracy was too high.

robocat 5y ago

WHO did give a good reason: “ WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.” Given that reason, cause and effect would be hard to pick.