<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">Really not good to combine them at all. Not sure what the CDC is thinking... Or perhaps they don’t have much say in it.<br><br><div dir="ltr">SR Ballard</div><div dir="ltr"><br>On May 21, 2020, at 7:36 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span><font size="4">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 tell<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">s</span> 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.</font><div><br><font size="4">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! </font><div><br></div><div><div><div><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/"><font size="4">How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?</font></a><br></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">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.</font></div></div><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage">Delay in Lockdown Led to at Least 36,000 More Deaths, Models Find</a></font><br></div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">John K Clark</font></div></div></div></div>
</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>extropy-chat mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a></span><br><span><a href="http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat">http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat</a></span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>