Coronavirus cases may be much fewer than reported

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

by vic_nyc • 6 years ago

9 4 6 years ago

anoncake2• 6 years ago

Does a viral load at the levels the article calls a false positive still trigger the production of antibodies?

rurban2• 6 years ago

Of course not. This phenomenon us known since May, my estimation is about 20% of such false positive PCR tests. It's getting cold, people are getting symptoms, and the rate of asymptomatic cases is 90%. So a lot of people are getting tested now, but had an infection months ago. The PCR tests still picks up the pieces now.

Every PCR positive cannot be called new infection, because both might be false. Not new, and not infected.

That's why everybody is putting the much better and cheaper antigen tests forward. Only when that is positive, a PCR test needs to be done. Antibody tests are highly unreliable, but antigen tests have no false positives. China tested a whole 5 mill city in a few days with antigen tests, Slovakia tested their entire population in two weekends.

anoncake2• 6 years ago

So people have the virus in their bloodstream, but it doesn't do anything and the immune system doesn't react either? I don't understand.

Coronavirus cases may be much fewer than reported

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