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This has been a known issue that the virology/epidemiology/public health community has been screaming about for months. There was a great investigative piece in NYT where every expert quoted said we need to reduce test sensitivity. COVID watchers took note. Few others did... https://twitter.com/andyswan/status/1351975650521993221
...but it’s extremely important. As more and more people get vaccines, people who had previous positive tests may think they have antibodies they actually don’t, passing on or delaying getting shot(s). This is a MAJOR problem because a lot of people are unknowingly vulnerable...
Moreover, experts worried that false positives created a testing backlog since many people test multiple times, especially after a positive, which delayed access to testing for truly ill and contagious people.
And now, there’s going to be the political concern that testing sensitivity was unreasonably high to hurt Trump by racking up cases, and now that Biden is in office, lowering the threshold will show a more dramatic decline (we are already seeing a decline) in them...
Scientists have begged testing companies to lower the cycles to no avail. Pushback was that in doing so, they’d potentially have a few cases fall through the cracks. But scientists warned that dead virus was causing false positives at a way higher rate.
No matter what happens with test sensitivity, the real measures are going to be fatalities and hospitalizations, neither of which are “faked” by oversensitive tests.
AND EVEN IF YOU TESTED POSITIVE, YOUR ANTIBODIES ARE NOT AS GOOD OR ADAPTABLE AS A VACCINE!!!!! Get the shot!!!
AND EVEN IF YOU TESTED POSITIVE, YOUR ANTIBODIES ARE NOT AS GOOD OR ADAPTABLE AS A VACCINE!!!!! Get the shot!!!
