About those COVID Tests

[_Gadianton]

I expect more of those kinds of stories, Canpakes. Wonder if Subs is going to head out to Jacksoville Florida for a beach party?

My right-most right-wing friend/acquaintance a few weeks ago was repeating all the stuff about it's exaggerated, and the seasonal flu is worse, and "libertards" this and that. He's in his sixties and not super healthy. His wife also. He's well off, wife works for airport and I didn't let down in telling him she needs to retire ASAP, and he needs to tell his kids to pound sand and keep their cluster-bomb rug-rats away from him. Go hunt for his masks in his garage, and all the stuff. Not sure how much my advice advanced his decisions, but he did go through a faith-crisis and became very scared; his wife retired and he's a social distance fanatic; barely goes to store etc. His worldview has emerged unharmed, though. He now believes that nobody could have predicted this, that Trump has it under control, but doesn't express himself in a dignified fashion. He also doesn't believe it's a bio weapon from Wuhan lab, and claims that's a left-wing conspiracy theory from CNN. Not sure what the actual source of his information is for his new worldview but at least he's taking it serious.

[_canpakes]

How about getting the news from alternative sources online? There are some good ones like realclearpolitcs, the hill, alternet, truthout, grayzone, zerohedge, consortium news etc. One needs to realize that they all still have an agenda but one can learn how to sift through the garbage.

You’re still left with the same issue you complained about in your prior post: “too much improper use of anecdotes and implying that they equal the whole”. And then my response above applies just the same.

[_MeDotOrg]

I think you're seeing people draw something close to the opposite conclusion from the prelim prevalence studies showing high rates of infection. If a lot more people are infected with no serious disease than previously thought (by an order of magnitude or more), that both means the disease isn't nearly as dangerous as believed and that herd immunity is further along. The studies are quite optimistic in that regard.

The authors of the Stanford study have written anti-lockdown op-eds prior to this pre-print in support of that idea.

I think it's important to urge caution because the sampling methodologies used leave a lot to be desired. The biology sources I prefer are treating it as scandalously bad. Let's take these findings with a grain of salt for now.

Valid complaints, EA.

[_Res Ipsa]

Pop quiz. I’ve never been tested for COVID and have never had symptoms. If I get one of these new blood tests and I test positive, what are the odds I’ve had COVID and didn’t know it?

[_Icarus]

50%?

[_EAllusion]

[quote="Res Ipsa" post_id=1222320 time=1587428466 user_id=16705]
Pop quiz. I’ve never been tested for COVID and have never had symptoms. If I get one of these new blood tests and I test positive, what are the odds I’ve had COVID and didn’t know it?
[/quote]

Sounds like the false positive/false negative rates for these tests are all over the map. Until we know which test, I'm not sure we can plug the numbers we need into Bayes to get an answer.

[_EAllusion]

I plugged some crude estimates in and got around 20%.

[_Icarus]

The naysayers keep telling me the actual mortality rate for COVID-19 is about 0.5% which if true, means were looking at at least 10 million infected based on current deaths.

[_EAllusion]

One of the things that doesn't make a lot of sense with the *really* optimistic mortality estimates is we have a variety of known hotspots of coronavirus spread that allowed us to track the disease outcomes of people who were infected and those tend to be consistent with the general mortality estimates and well above the most optimistic numbers. The implied number of asymptomatic people in these estimates are also much, much higher than the asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases combined in those instances. Seems goofy.

[_EAllusion]

The LA study is "out" if by you are willing to count science by press release as "out." It's topline numbers are similar to the Stanford study, but it is incestuous with it, so that's not necessarily surprising. So much bad journalism is going to come of this.