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Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#61

Post by BoxOfRain »

telesilla wrote: post #11

Is the Telegraph a paper of good repute? The article feels to me as somehow manipulative however I'm not local to the UK. I am wondering if this is propaganda or if these results are actually plausible.

It's a mainstream paper and it's pretty good by the standards of the British press. It's got a right-wing slant but that's not a bad thing in and of itself, it's not sensationalist in the same way the tabloids are. It's been more overtly Tory (in contrast with small-c conservative) over the last few years but I suspect that has a lot to do with our current Prime Minister having once been on their payroll as a journalist.

I tend to read a range of ideological slants when it comes to the British press, I find the Telegraph's and the Guardian's takes to be the most interesting of the bunch usually.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#62

Post by jmull »

snegu wrote: post #45
raziel2p wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they may be catching covid in hospitals, there's no way to know for sure, but it seems unlikely to account for all these cases. But yeah this is going to be picked up by covid-deniers as more "proof" that covid is exaggarated.

I am not by any means a "covid-denier," but it seems to me this is evidence that the impact of Covid may be exaggerated. It's hard to say by how much (and I would be interested to learn if this is happening in US hospitals also).

> this is evidence that the impact of Covid may be exaggerated

I don't think so. When assessing the impact of Covid, we look at the change in overall, all-cause numbers, like all-cause deaths. (Which do show a big impact.)

The reason we watch covid hospitalizations is that it is a good leading indicator of covid deaths. The "leading" part is important, because that allows health policy to react faster to what's happening, which makes it more effective at reducing the impact of Covid.

(You may also worry that covid deaths are being similarly over-counted, but the all-cause death numbers tell us we're actually undercounting the overall number.)

Anyway, I guess ultimately we can't stop people from misusing the covid hospitalizations number, but it is a very useful number.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#63

Post by a9h74j »

killjoywashere wrote: post #43
dataflow wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it's even worse: "Different machines can produce different Ct values for the same sample, and the same machine can give different Ct values for different samples from the same person." [1] I'm not sure I even understand the statement, but I guess it means it could be that they (somehow) couldn't report them even if they wanted to. [1] https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/11/pcr-test-re...

I ran one of the first labs to validate the original CDC assay (we got the controls to work). Ct numbers were a slippery slope we should never have gone down for COVID-19 PCR tests because snot is not like blood, a homogenous substance with well known homeostatic parameters that are under tight physiologic control. Do you know someone went swimming? Do you know if they were crying? Did they just eat some particularly…

I would like to see QC statistics from some of the large test-processing centers which have IIRC been established. Surely they send a blind fraction of known-negative or control samples through, to get good statistics on false-positive rates?

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#64

Post by analyte123 »

ssully wrote: post #60
timr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have looked and I cannot even find how increasing CT values affect the false positive rate for the PCR testing. If my understanding is correct a single increment of CT essentially doubles the sensitivity of the test, so difference between CT value of 35 and 40 is 32 fold. I have never used this particular set of primers, but have done a lot of PCR. In general, at 30+ cycles, PCR is prone to spurious amplification…

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I feel like you are trying to say more with "but then 'cases' became some kind of top-line media metric". Should cases not be an important metric for people to know?

I think his point is that having a minute amount (possibly non-viable) of viral DNA in your respiratory tract does not necessarily make you a true "case" in terms of being actively infected with the virus.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#65

Post by wut2doobiedo »

themark wrote: post #58
mizzack wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I strongly suspect that the goal was to cast a wide net (i.e. bias toward false positives) at the expense of accuracy, but then "cases" became some kind of top-line media metric... Then in January the WHO updated the diagnostic protocol [1] because of that false positive/low confidence problem. Unsurprisingly, case counts plummeted in the following weeks. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information…

When I bring this up in conversations with people they make me feel like a kook. I am not sure what to think anymore.

Because what to do is highly variable doesn’t mean we need to take unnecessary risk to know literal truth.

Urban area population density requires different mitigations than rural, except rural communities rely on urban ones as logistics pipelines.

So normalize; mask up, stay home. Prefer all gas, no brakes, based on stats? There may not be enough real people to keep the internet on later.

Nothing about the lockdown was for saving you or me specifically, but systems of behavior we rely on.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#66

Post by simonh »

themark wrote: post #58
mizzack wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I strongly suspect that the goal was to cast a wide net (i.e. bias toward false positives) at the expense of accuracy, but then "cases" became some kind of top-line media metric... Then in January the WHO updated the diagnostic protocol [1] because of that false positive/low confidence problem. Unsurprisingly, case counts plummeted in the following weeks. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information…

When I bring this up in conversations with people they make me feel like a kook. I am not sure what to think anymore.

For me this is interesting, but not really material to anything. Sure, the tests we have for this new virus have needed to be adjusted and calibrated as we learn more about it. It's unfortunate if the numbers are a bit messed up, it would be better if they were more accurate, but real life is messy.

I don't think you're a kook, and I can only guess what those people were thinking. Maybe they just wondered... and therefore, what?

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#67

Post by nickthemagicman »

ssully wrote: post #60
timr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have looked and I cannot even find how increasing CT values affect the false positive rate for the PCR testing. If my understanding is correct a single increment of CT essentially doubles the sensitivity of the test, so difference between CT value of 35 and 40 is 32 fold. I have never used this particular set of primers, but have done a lot of PCR. In general, at 30+ cycles, PCR is prone to spurious amplification…

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I feel like you are trying to say more with "but then 'cases' became some kind of top-line media metric". Should cases not be an important metric for people to know?

He's saying the definition of cases in 'actual science' vs 'the media' is different.

Not a shocker that the media would sensationalize things.

Science and PCR amplification... has a much looser definition with the possibility for much more false positives with such small number of cycles of amplification.

It was done ostensibly for cautionary purposes but the media seized on it and painted red death map visualizations for people to see with inflated death counts.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#68

Post by beerandt »

mizzack wrote: post #39
timr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have looked and I cannot even find how increasing CT values affect the false positive rate for the PCR testing. If my understanding is correct a single increment of CT essentially doubles the sensitivity of the test, so difference between CT value of 35 and 40 is 32 fold. I have never used this particular set of primers, but have done a lot of PCR. In general, at 30+ cycles, PCR is prone to spurious amplification…

> I strongly suspect that the goal was to cast a wide net (i.e. bias toward false positives) at the expense of accuracy, but then "cases" became some kind of top-line media metric... Then in January the WHO updated the diagnostic protocol [1] because of that false positive/low confidence problem. Unsurprisingly, case counts plummeted in the following weeks. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information…

On inauguration day.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#69

Post by a9h74j »

jdavis703 wrote: post #19
literallyaduck wrote: post #7

Link is paywalled on mobile, thanks for the archive. Hospital tents that house the plague victims would be safer for regular hospital patients who were not originally infected. Doctors and nurses interacting with plague victims shouldn't work with any other patients and should stay in the quarantine zone until they are cleared.

Have you been to an ER recently? At least at my hospital this is exactly what they do. There’s a tent next to the ER entrance. They ask a bunch of questions about symptoms and do a temperature check. If you appear COVID+ they send you to the tent, otherwise you go to the regular ER.

Off-topic, but there could come a day when it is safer as a regular patient to be operated upon in a makeshift tent.

A doctor with Doctors Without Borders once said in an interview that with field tents, they did not have problems with the usual hospital-borne infections. He said it was due to the constant turnover of air and organisms.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#70

Post by simonh »

pavon wrote: post #56

> Experts said it meant the national statistics, published daily on the government website and frequently referred to by ministers, may far overstate the levels of pressures on the NHS. I don't understand this part. Isn't the important number here the total number of people in the hospital (or ICU or other ward) relative to the total number that the hospital (or ICU or other ward) can accommodate? Or alternatively, t…

The reason to population numbers and trends are important is to work out what's happening in the population, and therefore plan for dealing with changes in case load. Measuring current pressure on the NHS is important yes, but knowing that cases in the population are rising or not, and if so by how much, is also vital information for resource planning.

Having said that, clearly the tests are being recalibrated and their usage adjusted as new information becomes available. These adjustments in tests seem to have increased accuracy. Isn't that what we want? There's no conspiracy or scandal here.

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