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A comment on U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international air passengers. Parent comment

Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by echelon on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @07:11PM (#25756003)
Tests have false negatives. The problem isn't so much the test, but rather the public which isn't fully qualified to interpret the results.

Biology and chemistry are complicated and messy. Sometimes signal is noisy or below the limit of detection.

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Re:U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international... by dboreham on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @09:24PM (#25757191)
It's also subtle in that while false negatives are common, false positives are rare (very rare). But general public don't get that subtlty and assume "the test isn't reliable" so a positive means they're not infected.

Source: numerous friends and relatives.

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