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Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

nature.com

221–230 of 236 posts

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#221
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe that?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10159620/

Thank you!

Footnote: That's a 180 turn-around from state-of-the-art science a year or so ago. At the time, we thought there were individuals where it persisted (evidence in immunocompromised), but nothing like this.

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if neither you nor anyone else ever notice you got sick, then you didn't get sick using any conventional definition of sickness because disease is defined as a collection of symptoms. So was Typhoid Mary sick? Is an asymptomatic patient with a positive HIV test? Kary Mullis--the inventor of PCR!--says no: > A man with gray hair and a goatee raises his hand. He says he's been HIV-positive since 1984, that he too…

HIV and AIDS is a good example of separating pathogen and disease. Being HIV+ isn't the same thing as having AIDS. You can have HIV+ and not be sick as the anecdote from the story indicates (14 years HIV+ without developing AIDS?).

If he's not sick, then why should he take AZT? And if Typhoid Mary isn't sick, then why can't she work as a cook?

The point is that even if you feel good now, a positive HIV test means that without treatment, you'll almost certainly die within the next 10-20 years. You can also infect others, and they'll die too. (As to the 14 years, the patient Mullis talked to was presumably some combination of lucky and/or benefiting from the AZT he'd taken previously.)

Likewise, a positive SARS-CoV-2 test meant that you'll die with p ~ 1%[1] within the next couple months. That's much less bad than HIV, and the relative benefits of treatment are much smaller; but that's spectacularly higher than baseline mortality, so the test is clearly predictive.

The concept of asymptomatic disease is well-recognized in medicine; just google the phrase. I'm not sure how Kary Mullis managed to convince so many people to reject it.

1. That's a CFR over all ages, confirmed deaths divided by confirmed positives. The IFR is of course lower, but the statement is conditioned on a positive test.

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#223
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at the CDC's offical long COVID data and do your own calculations. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm

because we all know the CDC has been a reliable source of information with them constantly changing to stats to whatever they liked to see... suuure

You think the CDC is fudging the data to make it look like bi people are getting all the long covid?

Why?

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#224
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also there was an outbreak at a Belgian Antarctic base. Incoming personel took PCR tests, tested negative and were also quarantined for 10 days in South Africa. Then they took an additional PCR test 48h before departure. Six days after arrival there was the first Covid case. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-outbreak-belgian-researc... Of course, certain news outlets like for instance the BBC have failed to disclos…

Interesting. I hadn't heard that one. However it's happened before, in the 1980s. Some researchers who were staying at a British Antarctic base over winter were entirely isolated once the last plane left. Months later they starting coming down with colds, despite none of them being sick originally. Back then epidemiology was a more curious field so this was investigated in some depth. Nobody had opened any new crates…

#2 could hold some truth. Almost every time I have a drinking session, I develop a common cold: runny nose, maybe a little cough. Summer, winter, doesn't matter. Resolves in a day or two but it's another inconvenience on top of the hangover.

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#225
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every single person and business wants money, using it as a motive without any other evidence is meaningless.

Lobbying the government to make it mandatory for people to use your products goes beyond ‘wants money’.

I can't see the original comment because it's flagged but they made an accusation and gave the motive as money.

Lobbying isn't illegal and I don't think it's corrupt (per the definition?). More importantly if there was lobbying then an accusation doesn't make sense because that's in the open. It's like accusing me of eating breakfast

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read several of your responses here, and thanks for the info, but I have to say, your tone comes off as "I know better and would have been more sensible if I were in charge." When you're in the heart of an epidemic that's going to kill millions, you err on the side of caution. Quarantining you at home, for example, makes sense when you're dealing with a deadly disease and you don't know enough to know you're not…

> Quarantining you at home, for example, makes sense when you're dealing with a deadly disease Intuitively yes, in reality no. It was known by March 2020 that quarantines had no effect because of the outcome of trying it on the Diamond Princess, a sealed environment where quarantine could be perfectly enforced. That didn't stop SARS-CoV-2 spreading between cabins and causing COVID apparently at random, i.e. it'd prop…

Sweden seemed quite sensible. Maybe we should just copy them next time.

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIV and AIDS is a good example of separating pathogen and disease. Being HIV+ isn't the same thing as having AIDS. You can have HIV+ and not be sick as the anecdote from the story indicates (14 years HIV+ without developing AIDS?).

If he's not sick, then why should he take AZT? And if Typhoid Mary isn't sick, then why can't she work as a cook? The point is that even if you feel good now, a positive HIV test means that without treatment, you'll almost certainly die within the next 10-20 years. You can also infect others, and they'll die too. (As to the 14 years, the patient Mullis talked to was presumably some combination of lucky and/or benefit…

You're conflating asymptomatic with pre-symptomatic. The former means you never develop symptoms. The latter means you are about to get sick but aren't currently.

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got direct experience of this when my wife got COVID and was sick for a couple of weeks, I was then quarantined by the government at home but never got sick. How this could happen was never officially explained. It seems you have been doing in-depth research about Sars-Cov-2/Covid-19, how did you miss the secondary attack rate/household infection rate? It used to be one of the crucial measures of transmission in…

I referenced the SAR in the post you're replying to (not under that name). Measuring that it's quite low isn't an explanation of why that happens, or an incorporation of that fact into policy. I get what you mean about consensus but scientific consensus is by definition clear cut, it's supposed to mean 100% agreement. Often something is presented as a scientific consensus when it's really not, rather, people who disa…

> Often something is presented as a scientific consensus

> During COVID a lot of things were presented to the public as if it were 100% obvious and agreed with by every specialist

Who is it that presents things to the public? Who are "they"? Who is "the media"? At least in the country I live in different journalists/writers/bloggers had very different opinions and they changed significantly over time. You could even watch the scientific process in real-time: New evidence comes in, people update their beliefs.

> scientific consensus is by definition clear cut

> maintain this illusion of universal agreement.

> Policy was globally homogenous

We can agree or disagree whether there are these groups that all act in unison, what I want to point out is that you need these homogenous groups for your argument to work.

If different countries had come to similar conclusions independently, that would mean the conclusion are likely valid, no? If different journalists/experts/scientist from different countries/cultures/political backgrounds came to similar conclusions independently, that would mean the conclusion is likely valid, no?

I'm making a guess here: I hypothesise that your discontent stems from the fact that you don't want other people to tell you what to do or not to do. In particular you disagree with the concept that society is a mechanism to distribute both wealth but also burden. Does that ring a bell?

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every single person and business wants money, using it as a motive without any other evidence is meaningless.

It's a great default explanation for pretty much everything.

Which makes it terrible evidence for anything. Using the poster's logic if a bank was robbed in a city every single person capable of robbing the bank is a suspect.

Re: Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

#230
post #74
post #70

If anyone cares to increase the resolution of a rapid test, I recommend using Fiji and treating the image of the test strip like an antibody blot image and run the quantitative gel analysis (easy to find info on the web). The software integrates the signal along the direction of the strip, correcting for lighting conditions, and the resulting single curve can clarify a little bump well before (or after) the viral loa…

> run the quantitative gel analysis (easy to find info on the web) You lost me at this bit. Use Fiji to run the gel analysis or is this via ImageJ or something else?

Apologies for the confusion. Yes, run the gel analysis using Fiji. (Fiji is is a package distribution of ImageJ.)
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