4 ms·

Makes me wonder how much of the rapidly established covid testing infrastructure around the world delivers actual results. Fun fact: In some places like Singap

by harha 5y ago

Makes me wonder how much of the rapidly established covid testing infrastructure around the world delivers actual results. Fun fact: In some places like Singapore you don't even get the chance to test again to verify the result, you just serve your time in quarantine and then get back your "safe" status.

ghshephard 5y ago
Probably for the best back in populations of close to 0 community incidence, low acquired immunity, and prior to the vaccines being available. Better to have a few hundred (few thousand?) people incorrectly spend time in quarantine, than to have community spread results in people/businesses being locked down.
- harha 5y ago
  That's the state right now with almost all of the population vaccinated. I don't think it's for the best, it ignores any other medical conditions and offers no way to double check a result that could come from a dodgy test center.
  - ghshephard 5y ago
    I think once their is some population immunity, that you start to put more effort into confirming people really are infectious. It's partially why I don't think the CDC rules about not requiring a test after the fifth day really matters in most places in the United States - 20+% of people in the general population are already infected in places like New York. Wearing a mask for 5 days after quarantining for 5 days, while not ideal - ensures that our medical and logistic and other critical systems keep working for the next 3-4 weeks.
gbear605 5y ago
At least in the last few months, at-home tests have been available to replicate lab results, and they seem to be consistent.
amirkdv 5y ago
Except for PCR has been around for decades and its basic principles are taught in first year molecular biology courses. Whereas Theranos' newfangled secret "innovation" was ... well, a secret throughout.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- harha 5y ago
  Yeah that was sketchy right from the pitch. But even with the established PCR tests and with all the theatre around it, I doubt that this quantity of testing is being performed up to the highest standards and there are a bunch of "entrepreneurs" in this space too who may benefit from little supervision or consequences.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Blood tests have also been around decades and are taught to first year students. The devil is in the details. In this case the people claiming COVID PCR tests were bogus were right. The US CDC has now admitted it. They recently changed their testing rules to stop PCR testing people at the end of their self isolation period because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks whilst being clinical false positives, and thus (Rochelle Walensky's words) "we would have people in isolation for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs" [1]. Nothing changed to prompt this - no new science or discovery or anything like that. They just suddenly noticed something that random bloggers knew in April 2020: that COVID PCR positives don't imply you're infectious. Also note the use of the word "would" and not "did"; apparently she's in denial about what happened here. There are lots of other issues with them beyond the cold positive problems of course. In theory PCR tests are precise because they triangulate the presence of at least three genes. In the beginning that's what they looked for. Over time that's slipped and they're now routinely reporting PCR tests as positive if they only detect a single gene. I took a PCR last week where the certificate stated outright they only looked for one gene. This crops up in other ways. To detect Omicron, they were taking PCR tests that failed to trigger on one gene (thus technically should have been classed as negative) and then treated them as positives, being sent for sequencing to determine if they were Omicron or not. But only samples with Ct <= 30 were sent. They use this threshold when normally even 40 is accepted to be a positive (Ct is log scale so 40 is a very tiny level of detection compared to 30) because it turns out any sample that triggers over 30 is so destroyed it's unsequenceable. They can't even find enough viable virus to know what it is. That doesn't stop them classifying such samples as "infectious and must self isolate" normally, though. And all that's before you even get to the cause/effect confusion the tests represent. No, COVID PCR testing is a mess. The only reason Holmes is a convict and those guys aren't is that Holmes wanted to be the next Steve Jobs, so she worked entirely in the private sector. If she'd been selling COVID stuff to the government she'd have been fine, even doing the same things. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/live-updates/coronavirus/?id=81952698&cid=social_twitter_abcn#81984630 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/live-updates/coronavirus/?id=8...
sampo 5y ago
> Makes me wonder how much of the rapidly established covid testing infrastructure around the world delivers actual results. There was a scammy company is Sweden that wrote everyone negative covid results, without actually bothering to analyze the samples: https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/swedish-police-investigate-faulty-covid-19-tests/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/swedish...

by harha 5y ago

ghshephard 5y ago

Probably for the best back in populations of close to 0 community incidence, low acquired immunity, and prior to the vaccines being available. Better to have a few hundred (few thousand?) people incorrectly spend time in quarantine, than to have community spread results in people/businesses being locked down.

harha 5y ago
That's the state right now with almost all of the population vaccinated. I don't think it's for the best, it ignores any other medical conditions and offers no way to double check a result that could come from a dodgy test center.
- ghshephard 5y ago
  I think once their is some population immunity, that you start to put more effort into confirming people really are infectious. It's partially why I don't think the CDC rules about not requiring a test after the fifth day really matters in most places in the United States - 20+% of people in the general population are already infected in places like New York. Wearing a mask for 5 days after quarantining for 5 days, while not ideal - ensures that our medical and logistic and other critical systems keep working for the next 3-4 weeks.

gbear605 5y ago

At least in the last few months, at-home tests have been available to replicate lab results, and they seem to be consistent.

amirkdv 5y ago

Except for PCR has been around for decades and its basic principles are taught in first year molecular biology courses. Whereas Theranos' newfangled secret "innovation" was ... well, a secret throughout.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
harha 5y ago
Yeah that was sketchy right from the pitch. But even with the established PCR tests and with all the theatre around it, I doubt that this quantity of testing is being performed up to the highest standards and there are a bunch of "entrepreneurs" in this space too who may benefit from little supervision or consequences.
native_samples 5y ago
Blood tests have also been around decades and are taught to first year students. The devil is in the details. In this case the people claiming COVID PCR tests were bogus were right. The US CDC has now admitted it. They recently changed their testing rules to stop PCR testing people at the end of their self isolation period because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks whilst being clinical false positives, and thus (Rochelle Walensky's words) "we would have people in isolation for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs" [1]. Nothing changed to prompt this - no new science or discovery or anything like that. They just suddenly noticed something that random bloggers knew in April 2020: that COVID PCR positives don't imply you're infectious. Also note the use of the word "would" and not "did"; apparently she's in denial about what happened here. There are lots of other issues with them beyond the cold positive problems of course. In theory PCR tests are precise because they triangulate the presence of at least three genes. In the beginning that's what they looked for. Over time that's slipped and they're now routinely reporting PCR tests as positive if they only detect a single gene. I took a PCR last week where the certificate stated outright they only looked for one gene. This crops up in other ways. To detect Omicron, they were taking PCR tests that failed to trigger on one gene (thus technically should have been classed as negative) and then treated them as positives, being sent for sequencing to determine if they were Omicron or not. But only samples with Ct <= 30 were sent. They use this threshold when normally even 40 is accepted to be a positive (Ct is log scale so 40 is a very tiny level of detection compared to 30) because it turns out any sample that triggers over 30 is so destroyed it's unsequenceable. They can't even find enough viable virus to know what it is. That doesn't stop them classifying such samples as "infectious and must self isolate" normally, though. And all that's before you even get to the cause/effect confusion the tests represent. No, COVID PCR testing is a mess. The only reason Holmes is a convict and those guys aren't is that Holmes wanted to be the next Steve Jobs, so she worked entirely in the private sector. If she'd been selling COVID stuff to the government she'd have been fine, even doing the same things. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/live-updates/coronavirus/?id=81952698&cid=social_twitter_abcn#81984630 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/live-updates/coronavirus/?id=8...

sampo 5y ago

> Makes me wonder how much of the rapidly established covid testing infrastructure around the world delivers actual results. There was a scammy company is Sweden that wrote everyone negative covid results, without actually bothering to analyze the samples: https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/swedish-police-investigate-faulty-covid-19-tests/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/swedish...