(03-17-2020 12:20 PM)At Ease Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 11:16 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I couldn't disagree with this conclusion more and have expressed why. HE says it created a false sense of security to NOT have testing. As I have discussed ad nauseum, for the general population, I couldn't disagree more. False negatives are the risk here. If you're risk averse as you claim to be... you can either wait on facts, or you can follow the healthcare standard of care in the absence of those facts.

I know we all have our pre-set conclusions and that arguing towards them can be difficult sometimes, but even still, I am surprised you are sticking with this bogus explanation. False negatives are only a risk if you over-interpret the test result; these are an inherent limitation in any test like this-- RTPCR is noisy, the material is at low abundance and unstable, and the sequence-specificity of the assay assumes the nucleotide sequence tested for will be static, when we know that these agents are highly mutable. Anyone handling these tests will have been trained on how to interpret them, and the CDC has clear guidelines on this.

And even then, false negatives are certainly less damaging than say.. having no test and no way to monitor the spread of the disease.

Bogus explanation? Please clarify. If you're talking about someone in the administration claiming this explains their actions, I haven't seen it nor do I care... that isn't me and not remotely what I'm talking about. That's political BS.

If you're saying it's not valid, you're absolutely wrong when it comes to pandemics and the spread of viruses. Any healthcare worker will tell you that it is the clinical 'standard of care' for flu and the means by which a providers actions are measured to treat someone with symptoms but a negative test as if the test was positive. Why would the standard of care... the clinical expectation be that we give anti-virals or engage in anti-viral protocols to someone without a positive test for a virus?

What I'm saying is that MANY Americans (on both sides) do not like authority.... and they do not like being made to do things without indisputable FACTS to prove that they must. A test is one of these 'facts'... but it is only valid if it really is a FACT (near 100% accuracy). Heck... HIV and pregnancy are big risks and still many people at risk refuse to take precautions. You seem to be talking about data analysis, and I'm talking about the spread of disease. I don't care if the infection rate is 2% or 1%... I care that it is 'more or less than it otherwise would be' based on how we handle it.

Someone with a negative test, even if told to quarantine and do whatever else is far less likely to comply than someone with the exact same symptoms but a positive test. A false negative puts many people at risk. A false positive skews the analytical data and inconveniences someone, but does not put others at risk.

Recall that early on, there were reported cases of people with symptoms being tested many times before testing positive.