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(08-07-2020 12:46 PM)RuckleSt Wrote:  

(08-07-2020 09:48 AM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  Guys, use your heads. They run testing on asymptomatic professional athletes and find at least 2-3 guys per team who have it without any clue. The whole premise of this disease is that it is remarkably contagious. Tests are sensitive at about a 97-99% threshold, meaning that about 1-3% of tests might be false negatives, depending on the approach.

There's a reason the CDC estimates current case numbers are under-reported by a significant margin. There's a reason analysis of excess deaths in the past few months suggests the same.

Like as not, thousands of people have had, do have, or will have the virus and will never know.

I don't think the number of cases being under reported. I would almost guarantee actual cases is 5 times confirmed, but it wouldn't surprised me if it was 20 times (~100 million). I just find it comical that a test from the CDC has a 50% failure rate. IMO, both the CDC and WHO have lost a lot of credibility in the last 6 months.

That's not a 50% failure rate.

30% false positive means 30% chance that if you're actually negative, you will test positive.

20% false negative means 20% chance that if you're actually positive, you will test negative.

So that's a 20-30% error rate. Still high, but I think the article linked above is referring to the first CDC test in Jan/Feb that was a massive failure (and that caused many experts to blame the CDC & FDA for the explosion of deaths in March/April. FDA shares the blame because they refused to approve any privately developed tests at first in favor of the CDC test).

I've heard from several reliable immunology experts in my social circle that US-based tests got much more reliable by the beginning of the summer.

The administration of the tests is messed up though. A good friend from Oklahoma told me her friend's work asked them all to get tested voluntarily in July. After signing in and sitting in the waiting room for 2 hours, she left the test center without getting a test taken. A few days later she got a letter in the mail saying she had tested positive. That's not a scientific error; it's a bureaucratic one.