packgrad said:

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statefan91 said:

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packgrad said:

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What do you think they're implying? Do you think they're implying that masks caused an increase in cases?

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I'm not sure how the outdoor mask mandate is relevant to the increase in cases, that's why I was asking.

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You don't see a correlation between mandating masks outside to reduce cases and an increase in cases? Wow…. Ok… sure.

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Well I don't have the article to see what they were drawing the connection for, but no I don't see the connection between mandating masks outside to reduce cases and an increase in cases immediately after. It looks like they implemented the outdoor mask mandate 8/27, which based on the google data is not too far away from when it looks like they peaked in cases: Oregon Case Data

It seems like the outdoor mask mandate didn't really affect the case counts, although I'm sure those who were proponents will point to the decline in cases within a couple weeks of it being implemented.

statefan91 said:

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packgrad said:

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statefan91 said:

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packgrad said:

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What do you think they're implying? Do you think they're implying that masks caused an increase in cases?

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I'm not sure how the outdoor mask mandate is relevant to the increase in cases, that's why I was asking.

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You don't see a correlation between mandating masks outside to reduce cases and an increase in cases? Wow…. Ok… sure.

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Well I don't have the article to see what they were drawing the connection for, but no I don't see the connection between mandating masks outside to reduce cases and an increase in cases immediately after. It looks like they implemented the outdoor mask mandate 8/27, which based on the google data is not too far away from when it looks like they peaked in cases: Oregon Case Data

It seems like the outdoor mask mandate didn't really affect the case counts, although I'm sure those who were proponents will point to the decline in cases within a couple weeks of it being implemented.

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You could google the quote and read the article yourself, or you could choose the willful ignorance route and throw out "are they saying masks are causing Covid" deflections.

From 8/24, when the mandate started, to 9/21 active cases increased 73%. Governor Brown even said "Masks are a quick and simple tool we can immediately deploy to protect ourselves and our families, and quickly help stop further spread of COVID-19." Masks are quick and easy. All upside. Even outside. Yet cases increased 73%.

Eventually people will stop listening to Democrats because they do not remotely believe in science. They believe in control, and their minions believe in falling in place.

I'm not the one that posted the quote and chose not to link it, sorry.

You could conversely assume that the rate of increase could've been even greater had they not enacted their mask mandate. My question was what the article was intending to draw out of correlating the two variables.

I doubt the mask mandate had much of an effect on the cases since outdoor spread has been studied and found to be negligible.

statefan91 said:

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You could conversely assume that the rate of increase could've been even greater had they not enacted their mask mandate.

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If you're a virus cheerleader with a "Science" sign in your yard, you most certainly could assume that.

statefan91 said:

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I'm not the one that posted the quote and chose not to link it, sorry.

You could conversely assume that the rate of increase could've been even greater had they not enacted their mask mandate. My question was what the article was intending to draw out of correlating the two variables.

I doubt the mask mandate had much of an effect on the cases since outdoor spread has been studied and found to be negligible.

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LOL, I dutifully provide a link to every National Review article and no one comments on any of them. This time I save time by just quoting the relevant comments and everyone wants to see the link. Sigh. Sorry for the inconvenience.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/after-mandating-masks-outdoors-oregons-active-covid-19-cases-increased-73-percent/

packgrad said:

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statefan91 said:

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You could conversely assume that the rate of increase could've been even greater had they not enacted their mask mandate.

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If you're a virus cheerleader with a "Science" sign in your yard, you most certainly could assume that.

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These are the same people that say a beating heart doesn't mean there is life. These are the same people that say men can have babies and women can have *****'. These are the same people that say there are over 100+ sexes. These are the same people 40 years ago said the Earth would be covered in ice by 1995. These are the same people that say we only have 8 years to save the Earth. They have said the same thing for the last 80 years or so. These are the same people that acknowledge there was more carbon in the atmosphere in the 1800's than there is now despite the population being less than 60% then than now.

Yeah... these are the people that call us "rubes," "uneducated," "science-deniers." I call them clowns.

Science to them is whatever fits their agendas. It's all about keeping power and establishing a two class world wide system. The ruling class and their followers.

Wayland said:

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Wayland said:

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Mormad said:

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Wayland said:

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Mormad said:

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Wayland said:

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And here we get to the problem of false positives. Other Coronaviruses setting off tests.

EDIT: Apparently there is another coronavirus from a German study that was setting of false positives 7% of the time.

All of this isn't an issue when you are using tests rationally. But when every false positive is used as a cause to shut down schools and businesses, you need to be diligent.

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Political implications aside, what do you worry would have a bigger impact on society (not individual), false positives or false negatives? What is the current FP and FN rates of the most commonly used tests? Maybe Davie can help here with the analysis, but using those rates, if an asymptomatic individual tests positive one day, and negative the 2 subsequent days, what's the likelihood the person is actually positive?

I think i know that answer to the first, but I'm not sure of the other questions but i have been thinking about it. Thanks for your and Davie's thoughts about it.

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I would have to qualify my answer with "It depends"

The lower the community spread the higher the impact of false positives is especially WHEN you take unreasonable actions and overreact to the point you are closing businesses and schools over a single test.

If someone is FN and asymptomatic, not worried.

It is the secondary actions of actions of the FP that is the problem. When we are in the quick growth stage of the pandemic, maybe we can accept a few FPs. The lower the overall actual REAL number of infections out there, the higher percent of the detected cases are FPs. And again, the problem isn't the FP, it is the gross overreaction to a positive PCR test.

If someone tests positive one day, and then even has only 1 negative test the next day, given the over-sensitivity of PCR testing, I would consider the person non-infectious. The ramp up is pretty quick once positive and for someone to test negative AFTER testing positive and still be infectious would be a pretty remote chance. And I would be comfortable with that assessment with either PCR or paper antigen tests.

The problem again with 'positive', for these arguments 'positive' means HAS COVID19 and is INFECTIOUS.

False positives could be lab error, detection of other corona virus, or detection of past infection (so technically positive but no longer infectious).

There is some value to determining that someone MAY have had COVID19 in the past, but we shouldn't be treating a past infection as an ACTIVE case when detected.

I would love for the media to ask questions on what the false positive rate actually is, or do some similar studies that they are doing in Europe and detecting 3-7% false positive rates when other coronaviruses are mixed into samples.


Which is why we need to be going to the 'less sensitive' tests.

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That's an interesting take. Honestly, i only agree with the overreaction part i think.

Again, for societal health and defeating a pandemic:

1. I definitely don't want less sensitive tests, and therefore more false negatives just so the numbers look better, but falsely so.

2. I worry about the asymptomatic FNs as they can be speaders and not know it. FPs suck for the individual because he'll take unnecessary precautions, but there's less societal impact. FNs suck for the society, because those felt to be negative are cruising around feeling free to spread.

3. If a test has a 3-7% FP rate, then it's pretty specific, not overly sensitive. If it says you have the disease, you most likely have the disease. If a test has a 30% FN rate, then it's not overly sensitive. If it says you don't have the disease, there's still a reasonable chance you have the disease.

So given that the pcr tests are specific (low FPs,5%) and not really sensitive for various reasons (high false negatives, maybe 30%), i think that a person who tests positive one day (95% chance they ARE positive) and negative the next (70% chance they're actually negative) more likely has the disease. The question is, if they test negative twice, does 95% confidence still trump 2 negatives with 70% confidence? Idk... Davie may have to use statistics there.

Anyway. That's what I've been thinking, which seems opposite of you. Who knows, brother? Again, may just be differing 30,000 foot views.

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I think you have a little bit of a misinterpretation of what I said, likely because I didn't say it well.

The whole point is preventing outbreaks. We want to catch 'connectors' before they spread the virus because once all the connecting bridges are burned, it is a lot harder to spread.

If there is some diagnostic reason to be able to detect that someone had COVID sometime in the past 3 months, I don't care how much amplification you run the PCR test through. If you have a purpose, amplify away.

For the purposes of controlling spread, isolating an already non-infectious person makes no sense. So why do we care (outside the hospital/medical environment for treatment) if at some point in the past they had COVID?

We want to know if they are ACTUALLY INFECTIOUS right now. Which is why I say you go with the 'less sensitive' test that is only catching cases where there is enough virus to actually spread it.

The amount of time where the virus can be detected on the front end of the infection with PCR before someone is infectious is very short, so by the time you catch it with the PCR they would already be identified with a less sensitive test. The 'less sensitive' test would then NOT detect the long tail where the person is well past the infectious stage.

I can't vouch for the correctness of the science in this video, but the theory is great. Starting around the 5 minute mark.

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Remember when a year ago, the concept of 'test to stay' as a bridge was being discussed here under the guise of 'less sensitive' testing?

I do.


Edit: Quoted post is from Sept 2020.

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Different context, champ. There was no guise. The discussion leading up to your clarifying post here had centered around the likelihood of an adult (if i recall, a single specific instance of an adult with symptoms) having the disease if he tested positive one day, and negative the next based on the, at that time, understanding of the reliability of pcr testing. Once the dude tested positive once, he fell out of the test to stay arm. In addition, if he was sick, i assume you'd have wanted him to stay at home anyway and not retest to stay.

Test to stay is a great idea, but has its limitations too, right? Wouldn't its effectiveness as a tool be highly dependent on the test's sensitivity and specificity at all stages of infection (like every other test in medicine), the prevalence of disease, the pathogenicity of disease, and the risks to the cohort? For kids, to keep them in school, it's a great idea and will likely prove to work relatively well in most situations. For a group home of obese immunocompromised homeless people, it's probably less reliable to hang your hat on. Especially if a particular test has a high false negative rate, right? The caveat remains that if people just listen to you and stay at home when they're sick none of this matters as much, especially adults. But they don't. Especially if their cvs home kit says they're negative.

Mormad said:

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Wayland said:

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Wayland said:

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Mormad said:

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Wayland said:

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Mormad said:

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Wayland said:

---

And here we get to the problem of false positives. Other Coronaviruses setting off tests.

EDIT: Apparently there is another coronavirus from a German study that was setting of false positives 7% of the time.

All of this isn't an issue when you are using tests rationally. But when every false positive is used as a cause to shut down schools and businesses, you need to be diligent.

---

Political implications aside, what do you worry would have a bigger impact on society (not individual), false positives or false negatives? What is the current FP and FN rates of the most commonly used tests? Maybe Davie can help here with the analysis, but using those rates, if an asymptomatic individual tests positive one day, and negative the 2 subsequent days, what's the likelihood the person is actually positive?

I think i know that answer to the first, but I'm not sure of the other questions but i have been thinking about it. Thanks for your and Davie's thoughts about it.

---

I would have to qualify my answer with "It depends"

The lower the community spread the higher the impact of false positives is especially WHEN you take unreasonable actions and overreact to the point you are closing businesses and schools over a single test.

If someone is FN and asymptomatic, not worried.

It is the secondary actions of actions of the FP that is the problem. When we are in the quick growth stage of the pandemic, maybe we can accept a few FPs. The lower the overall actual REAL number of infections out there, the higher percent of the detected cases are FPs. And again, the problem isn't the FP, it is the gross overreaction to a positive PCR test.

If someone tests positive one day, and then even has only 1 negative test the next day, given the over-sensitivity of PCR testing, I would consider the person non-infectious. The ramp up is pretty quick once positive and for someone to test negative AFTER testing positive and still be infectious would be a pretty remote chance. And I would be comfortable with that assessment with either PCR or paper antigen tests.

The problem again with 'positive', for these arguments 'positive' means HAS COVID19 and is INFECTIOUS.

False positives could be lab error, detection of other corona virus, or detection of past infection (so technically positive but no longer infectious).

There is some value to determining that someone MAY have had COVID19 in the past, but we shouldn't be treating a past infection as an ACTIVE case when detected.

I would love for the media to ask questions on what the false positive rate actually is, or do some similar studies that they are doing in Europe and detecting 3-7% false positive rates when other coronaviruses are mixed into samples.


Which is why we need to be going to the 'less sensitive' tests.

---

That's an interesting take. Honestly, i only agree with the overreaction part i think.

Again, for societal health and defeating a pandemic:

1. I definitely don't want less sensitive tests, and therefore more false negatives just so the numbers look better, but falsely so.

2. I worry about the asymptomatic FNs as they can be speaders and not know it. FPs suck for the individual because he'll take unnecessary precautions, but there's less societal impact. FNs suck for the society, because those felt to be negative are cruising around feeling free to spread.

3. If a test has a 3-7% FP rate, then it's pretty specific, not overly sensitive. If it says you have the disease, you most likely have the disease. If a test has a 30% FN rate, then it's not overly sensitive. If it says you don't have the disease, there's still a reasonable chance you have the disease.

So given that the pcr tests are specific (low FPs,5%) and not really sensitive for various reasons (high false negatives, maybe 30%), i think that a person who tests positive one day (95% chance they ARE positive) and negative the next (70% chance they're actually negative) more likely has the disease. The question is, if they test negative twice, does 95% confidence still trump 2 negatives with 70% confidence? Idk... Davie may have to use statistics there.

Anyway. That's what I've been thinking, which seems opposite of you. Who knows, brother? Again, may just be differing 30,000 foot views.

---

I think you have a little bit of a misinterpretation of what I said, likely because I didn't say it well.

The whole point is preventing outbreaks. We want to catch 'connectors' before they spread the virus because once all the connecting bridges are burned, it is a lot harder to spread.

If there is some diagnostic reason to be able to detect that someone had COVID sometime in the past 3 months, I don't care how much amplification you run the PCR test through. If you have a purpose, amplify away.

For the purposes of controlling spread, isolating an already non-infectious person makes no sense. So why do we care (outside the hospital/medical environment for treatment) if at some point in the past they had COVID?

We want to know if they are ACTUALLY INFECTIOUS right now. Which is why I say you go with the 'less sensitive' test that is only catching cases where there is enough virus to actually spread it.

The amount of time where the virus can be detected on the front end of the infection with PCR before someone is infectious is very short, so by the time you catch it with the PCR they would already be identified with a less sensitive test. The 'less sensitive' test would then NOT detect the long tail where the person is well past the infectious stage.

I can't vouch for the correctness of the science in this video, but the theory is great. Starting around the 5 minute mark.

---

Remember when a year ago, the concept of 'test to stay' as a bridge was being discussed here under the guise of 'less sensitive' testing?

I do.


Edit: Quoted post is from Sept 2020.

---

Different context, champ. There was no guise. The discussion leading up to your clarifying post here had centered around the likelihood of an adult (if i recall, a single specific instance of an adult with symptoms) having the disease if he tested positive one day, and negative the next based on the, at that time, understanding of the reliability of pcr testing. Once the dude tested positive once, he fell out of the test to stay arm. In addition, if he was sick, i assume you'd have wanted him to stay at home anyway and not retest to stay.

Test to stay is a great idea, but has its limitations too, right? Wouldn't its effectiveness as a tool be highly dependent on the test's sensitivity and specificity at all stages of infection (like every other test in medicine), the prevalence of disease, the pathogenicity of disease, and the risks to the cohort? For kids, to keep them in school, it's a great idea and will likely prove to work relatively well in most situations. For a group home of obese immunocompromised homeless people, it's probably less reliable to hang your hat on. Especially if a particular test has a high false negative rate, right? The caveat remains that if people just listen to you and stay at home when they're sick none of this matters as much, especially adults. But they don't. Especially if their cvs home kit says they're negative.

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Again, this was the second posting of this video. The other post is buried somewhere talking about schools which is what the video was discussing (at 12:15 mark in video discusses pre-school testing), I am too lazy to find the other post.

Everything has its limitations, but it is a whole hell of a lot better than nothing.

Nothing is 100%. We aren't completely eliminating COVID, good enough will have to do.

So now we can get to the law of unintended consequences. My son has missed over a week of school, as a completely healthy child because of an outside of school contact (my wife), if we couldn't send him to live with family... it could have been 3 weeks.

Do you know how the school knew he had a contact? We told them. While it has been a disruption to our lives we are fortunate in our resources? I can only imagine the disruption to people who DON'T have somewhere to send their kid and have to leave their home for work.

What do you do? Keep the kid home and not work? Send them to school without testing and never fess up? I mean, you 'think' the kid is healthy. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Wouldn't it be best to at least give these situations an opportunity to get back to school and 'maybe' be good enough instead of just rolling the dice? The test is just an opportunity to catch a case and not prevent further disruption... there are no guarantees.

On the flip side, only 2% of quarantined close school contacts end up testing positive. That mean 49 out of 50 kids are losing 1-3 weeks of school for no reason. EDIT: Per Davie below... maybe I had this wrong and it is 0.2%

For a group of obese immunocompromised homeless people, it is still better than nothing. But guess what.... at some point they will be exposed at some point that case is going to slip through. Not a matter of 'if', just a matter of 'when'. But I am all for taking additional precautionary measures for limited at risk scenarios, if the cost of those measures has been weighed.

We have faced 19 months of widely implemented mandates where costs have not been weighed. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence of the damage from the closing of schools and the erosion of education, we are still dancing with theater.

And you know we are not talking about a hypothetical disease here? We are talking about stop-gap measures to keep kids in schools in the face of ridiculous health policies and COVID? The alternative right now is the ridiculous quarantining of health kids for weeks.

I mean, this **** is random, my work from home fully vaxxed wife who doesn't really go out and wears a mask everywhere indoors with no know close contacts got COVID cause **** was in the air somewhere (super low probability case). I have lived in the house with her, unmasked, sharing an HVAC system, and with at least casual interaction and to this point (knock on wood) I have remained negative. But, ya, after she got COVID, it pretty much sealed the deal for me that all this broad theater is bull**** (not that I wasn't mostly there already).

Daviewolf83 said:

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To add to the test-to-stay discussion, it appears quarantine protocols in some states (NC likely one of them) are keeping large numbers of healthy students quarantined and out of in-person learning.

Test the kids and if negative, they can return to school. If positive, they quarantine. We need policies across the US weighted toward keeping kids in school and not out of school. Currently, many of the protocols are weighted in a way that leads to large chunks of lost in-person time for kids who would test negative.

Just 0.2% of quarantined schoolkids in L.A. are testing positive fo COVID. Maybe we shouldn't be yanking them out of school for 10 days? https://t.co/UmIfJk4oIJ via @reason

— Monica Gandhi MD, MPH (@MonicaGandhi9) September 22, 2021

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Surprisingly, our county Board of Education came up with a test-to-stay program. School nurses have rapid tests on hand if a student has symptoms. If negative, they go back to class. If they are asked to quarantine due to an exposure, they can return with a negative test after 5 days post-exposure. They still miss some, but much less when there was a 14 day required quarantine.