Then the government release a guide for health professionals about interpreting PCR test results and it seems, pretty clearly, to throw up some pretty huge questions. It opens the door to questioning the majority of test results, does it not?
that’s not to say those results are all wrong, but it is saying that they cannot be taken to be right, either, without clinical context and evaluation of the person.
Yet nobody is interested? It’s not in the media, and nobody, absolutely nobody on here has a comment on it? No matter which side of the debate you sit on, surely you can acknowledge that this is interesting? Why is this ignored, given the potential implications of what it says?
Why does it all have to be so black and white - you believe everything and question nothing and you are a good citizen
Test works, but people can interpret results wrong, very easily, but an example below of why this can happen for positive cases in the UK:
Cases went up, then more people died
Cases went down, then less people died
Cases stayed flat, deaths stayed flat/ reduced slightly
Cases went back up, then more people died
The cases have predicted the deaths for 8 months in the UK (case relies on positive test, so test works, that's put that to bed)
A problem we have is people should not look at the death/ case graphs if they're not skilled with numbers, basic example:
Timeframe 1: 10 deaths, 10 cases
Timeframe 2: 10 deaths, 100 cases
Looks like it got weaker right? Or the test has changed right? Nope.
Timeframe 1: 10 deaths, 50 cases (only found 50 cases as we only tested 100 people, there was actually 1000 cases)
Timeframe 2: 10 deaths, 100 cases (only found 100 cases as we only tested 500 people, there was actually 1500 cases)
Ahh, but now it got weaker right (10 deaths v 1000 cases) or (10 deaths v 1500 cases), or the test has changed right? Nope.
Scenario 1: 10 deaths, 50 cases (only found 50 cases as we only tested 100 people, there was actually 1000 cases, 100 nurses, no gear, no experience)
Scenario 2: 10 deaths, 100 cases (only found 100 cases as we only tested 500 people, there was actually 1500 cases, 100 nurses, some gear, some experience))
So the tests didn't get worse, we just got better at detecting the cases, and got better at treating the cases.
Problem is all of that cannot be shown on one graph, but people look at the graph and don't get why we had more deaths before from "less cases" and now have less deaths from "more cases". We don't have more cases, we have just found more of the cases, and the cases we do get, we know how to treat better and have more resources to treat them better (for now).
What we've not got better at is stopping the cases/ deaths (too slow to react to increases)
What we've not got better at is tracking and tracing the cases/ deaths
Is it perfect? No
Does it need to be perfect? No
Has the quality of the test changed? No
Has the amount of tests per expected case increased? Yes
Does this effect how we interpret the data? Yes
Does it mean the test doesn't work? No
The test could be 50% accurate and it would still be fine for planning a response, if you knew it's accuracy was 50%. Obviously it's more accurate than this, and the more accurate the better.
Test more
React to test % positive faster
Track and trace better