[ExI] Virus testing

[John Clark]

The news just broke that in a boneheaded move the US Center for Disease
Control has been combining the results from the virus test with the results
of the antibody test in its statistics without telling anybody, and that
makes the results almost impossible to interpret. The virus test is the
gold standard and tells you if you have the virus right now; if you're sick
but the test is negative then something other than COVID-19 is making you
ill. The less accurate antibody test tells you if you've ever been exposed
to the virus and a positive result may mean you are immune from the virus.
One test looks ahead the other looks behind.

The virus test is only administered to those who already have symptoms of
COVID-19, but the antibody test is being given to the general population at
random and has a much higher false negative result than the virus test, so
combining those results will very strongly drive down the positive rate
statistics. And states have been using these very questionable statistics
to decide when it is safe to reopen!

How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?
<https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/>

Meanwhile a disease computer model says that if the lockdown had started
just one week earlier in March at least 36,000 American lives could have
been saved.

Delay in Lockdown Led to at Least 36,000 More Deaths, Models Find
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage>

John K Clark
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