Academic

SOMEBODY?S STARTING TO NOTICE THE PROBLEM OF CORONAVIRUS FALSE POSITIVES. ?Although false positives?

By Glenn Reynolds

SOMEBODY’S STARTING TO NOTICE THE PROBLEM OF CORONAVIRUS FALSE POSITIVES. “Although false positives may seem relatively harmless in comparison with their false-negative cousins, ‘people can absolutely get hurt,’ said Dr. Benjamin Mazer, a pathologist and diagnostics expert at Johns Hopkins University. . . . In places where the virus is relatively scarce, false positives may even outnumber actual positives ? eroding trust in tests and, under some circumstances, prompting outbreaks of their own. A positive result on a coronavirus test sets off a cascade of consequences. According to guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who test positive should immediately isolate for at least 10 days after their symptoms start (if they experience symptoms at all). That is 10 days spent away from friends and family, and 10 days of potential productivity in a school or workplace lost. . . . False positives can also be disastrous from a treatment standpoint, said Linoj Samuel, a clinical microbiologist at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. People with the flu or Covid-19, for example, often show similar symptoms, but may only be tested for one of them at a time. If a patient is given an incorrect diagnosis of Covid-19, that person could be deprived of treatment that could alleviate their illness, or be given a costly therapy that does little to speed their recovery.”

Plus: “As testing in the United States continues to increase, experts have expressed concerns that frequent and high-profile diagnostic errors could seed disillusionment among the general public.”

And if you get sent to isolation with other coronavirus-positive people, you could catch it, when you were actually disease-free before.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on October 25, 2020 (boomark / email).