Shouldn't we optimize for a higher number of false positives? In the end, sending someone in quarantine for 2 weeks without them being infected is probably less dangerous than a false negative. So making tests overly sensitive would seem more applicable to me here.
Re:Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19
by chimprich on Thursday March 26, 2020 @08:53AM
(#22693007)
If you're quarantining a large number of medics then that's potentially serious and possibly more dangerous overall if your numbers are off.
You could administer two tests for those, I believe that's what's already done.
Re:Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19
by adventured on Thursday March 26, 2020 @07:06AM
(#22692356)
No, we should optimize for a balance between the two.
For example a 150,000 batch of rapid tests China recently sent to Czechia had 80% error rates. You don't want to be mass quarantining people because of such terrible testing supplies.
Re:Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19
by mschuster91 on Thursday March 26, 2020 @12:36PM
(#22695314)
There's nothing inherently bad with mass quarantines.
Inaccuracy of up to 15% could still keep the viral R0 under 1.0 (the critical value for eliminating an epidemic).
From the article:
> "False negative rates up to 15% could be tolerated if 80% comply with testing, and false positives can be almost arbitrarily high when a high fraction of the population is already effectively quarantined"
https://medium.com/@sten.linnarsson/to-stop-covid-19-test-ev...