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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

#231

Post by forcry »

ericlavigne wrote: post #166
forcry wrote: post #20

The most baffling thing is not standardising CT values for RT-PCR tests. 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. CDC is suggesting CT value of 28 for detecting breakthrough infections a…

Imagine the CDC yelling: "Don't throw that away! I need more details! Please! If you won't finish the job, please let me do that work!" That's my translation of the document I found when looking into this issue. More details below... === "CDC is suggesting CT value of 28 for detecting breakthrough infections after vaccinations... So that means, a breakthrough infection needs to have 128 times viral load in someone wh…

I am not sure I like someone vocalising CDCs thought. It is kind of disturbing. I mean, you can be cutting someone throat and saying "be quite my child, it is all for best"..

anyway here is what I have responded to a similar comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27995222

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#232

Post by forcry »

simpleguitar wrote: post #204
forcry wrote: post #20

The most baffling thing is not standardising CT values for RT-PCR tests. 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. CDC is suggesting CT value of 28 for detecting breakthrough infections a…

So forget breakthrough infections for a second. Covid has both pre-sympomatic AND asymptomatic transmission. This has been proven. In many places, a negative PCR test means you do not have/carry the disease and can participate in risky activities. The NFL, and the NBA, did this. Movie studios did this. Australia and New Zealand did it as a whole country. To do that, you need a very sensitive test, not something that…

>To do that, you need a very sensitive test, not something that only confirms symptomatic infection.

Now, that makes sense.

But you have also take into account that these are not just numbers. But these are numbers that can destroy countries and communities by implying perpetual lockdowns.

It becomes even more comical that RT-PCR does even when positive, does not imply presence of the virus, but some fragments of a dead virus or even genetic material of some other viruses.

I can only be appalled at the indifference of these people to mandate lockdowns that destroy lives and businesses, based on positivity rate of such a test.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#233

Post by bilvar »

fabbari wrote: post #195
bilvar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, even if they were asymptomatic and released from hospital e.g for their broken leg, they would still go in statistics as "This person was hospitalised for COVID-19".

You didn't read the article, did you now? The numbers say - according to the article itself - that of the patients hospitalized and diagnosed with Covid 44% had a positive test before being admitted - 43% had a positive test within 2 days and the remaining 13% tested positive within 2 weeks [they don't mention the distribution]. What I find repulsive about this article is that they never say 'someone with a broken le…

Adults do not throw tantrums. Maybe you should take your own advice.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#234

Post by pasabagi »

native_samples wrote: post #229
pasabagi wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a scientist - I'm actually an ex-philosophy student. I guess part of my feeling is, sure, science has problems (every scientist will tell you that) but are there better institutions to give us actionable information in the middle of a pandemic? My feeling is no. So, even if I accept your diagnosis of science as "groupthink, politics and power games", I'd say that's just humans. All institutions, all fields ar…

Do we need institutions to give us actionable information? That starting point contains quite a few assumptions that aren't obvious to me. It's obviously convenient if you have such an institution that's accurate, and there's some logical and cost effective action that comes with it, but if no such institutions exist then the right thing to do is not trust one anyway. On the topic of consensus specifically, I don't b…

> Do we need institutions to give us actionable information?

We're at a point where scientific work is the sum of an enormous number of specialists, most of whom are only marginally able to judge the work of those outside their field.

That implies that, to engage with a scientific fact (say, global warming) you are always engaging with a gigantic aggregate of facts from an enormous variety of disciplines.

It's just not realistic for a layperson to absorb all the literature that leads to a consensus and come to an informed conclusion. Sometimes, people who are experts in their fields can do something on that level, but ultimately, they're making those summary judgements at the mercy of implicit or explicit consensus, hierarchy, reputation - all the elements of group-think that make up institutions.

I think what you're describing in regards to consensus is just what a consensus is. Take evolution for example: you can't imagine a more starker difference in views between like, Dawkins or Lyn Marguiles over what that word means. So there's a 'consensus', in that both of them are evolutionary biologists, but a dissensus insofar as what they mean by that. People, in a vacuum, have an infinite variety of opinions, many of which are superficially similar, but are different on a ton of subtle points.

There are a lot of problems in this kind of setup, but I feel if you're going to call institutions in western society 'smoking hulks' when it comes to trust or credibility, mainstream science is one of the last ones you should come to.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#235

Post by apercu »

betwixthewires wrote: post #175
kook_throwaway wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead you're just talking about a left-wing conspiracy to lie to the public in order to take control of the government. To take control of the government or for good PR/propaganda? Governments have never had any issues conspiring and lying to the public, remember when Fauci said not to use masks because they didn't help? Or those WMDs that we will surely find any day now?

I'm not who you're replying to, but I'd like to know, what reason would WHO or anyone else have to maintain a high false positive rate under one admin and correct it for the next, other than to lessen the chances of the previous admin's reelection? It wasn't "good PR" it was bad PR, specifically for the previous admin in an election year. That sounds a lot like "lie to the public in order to take control of governmen…

Or using whatever agency they had to direct the US voters towards what they feel is more effect public health policies and stopping millions of unnecessary deaths?

Look, I am not defending anyone, I am saying that _all_ things of this nature are political.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#236

Post by CogitoCogito »

areyousure wrote: post #165
javagram wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it was hardly “delayed” since all initial predictions for the vaccine to be approved were around 12 months, in the end it only took about 10 months. Reports last year indicated Trump’s own FDA was responsible for setting out the needed time for data gathering and review that pushed it into mid-November. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months... Meanwhile other countries including China…

Both Russia and China started using their vaccines in August 2020: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-claims-first-corona... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-...

Aren't their vaccines significantly less effective than Moderna, Pfizer, etc.? In that case, I'm not sure we should let their earlier release reflect negatively on those that took longer to be ready. On the contrary, maybe we should instead consider the possibility that the Russian and Chinese vaccines were rushed.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#237

Post by mistermann »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #199
mistermann wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that a pattern of not disclosing that statistics that are implied to be factual are actually to some degree ~estimates contributed to the extreme level of polarization over "facts" and "the science", as well as the increasing distrust of the media. Sure, most people don't consider these things too logically, but then if those distributing the facts can't be bothered either, how shall we accurately assign bl…

Whose to blame for 60,000 people dying in Vietnam? Whose to blame for Lobotomies winning the Nobel Prize? Whose to blame for Thalidomide being widely distributed? Almost anything can be passed off as legitimate without accountability with a concerted effort by 'authorities' and the 'news media', it's even worse in the modern short attention span news cycle.

The true (accurate/correct) multi-dimensional causality is unknown.

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#238

Post by forcry »

blywi wrote: post #164
forcry wrote: post #20

The most baffling thing is not standardising CT values for RT-PCR tests. 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. CDC is suggesting CT value of 28 for detecting breakthrough infections a…

Do you have source for that claim? I tried to find that recommendation, but all I came up with, was this fact check [1]. According to the fact check the CDC did NOT change cycle threshold, and the thresholds used to decide if test result is positive, are not different for vaccinated and unvaccinated. The quoted 28 cycle threshold is apparently only used for deciding if a sample can be submitted for sequencing. [1] ht…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27995222

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#239

Post by doesnotexist »

timr wrote: post #217
doesnotexist wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely misleading. They don't write 87% of patients tested positive before or early on in their admission. Even, the headline is written to convey the opposite. What they are doing is breaking it into two numbers that are each less than 50% to obscure the magnitude of the sum and then lumping the second number (patients who tested early in their admission) with those who tested positive later. It's easy to ove…

> It's entirely misleading. They don't write 87% of patients tested positive before or early on in their admission. Well, no, they didn't. They wrote the entirely true statement that over half tested positive after admission. The fact that you disagree with one possible interpretation of this fact does not make it misleading. It's just a fact. (I will grant you that the subhead is sensationalized, but the title on th…

https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1421554277319729153?...

Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

#240

Post by robocat »

robocat wrote: post #107

If say 10% of a randomly sampled population tests positive, and 56% of admissions test positive, then only 5.6% of admissions should be unrelated to Covid[^]. The premise of this article is bullshit. Sure, there will be situations where someone comes in with a broken leg (unrelated to Covid) and tests positive. Note that the article mentions PCR, so we are not talking antibody tests. Are there figures for what percen…

Actual UK population infection number is ~ 1.5% - see studies referenced by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28037172
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