Should also note that both are very high tech, very expensive, and very labor intensive.
Should also note that both are very high tech, very expensive, and very labor intensive.
As a 3++ decade intel guy who knows he doesn't regularly speak english, thanks! If we could pretend we're speaking to congress....?Originally Posted by ccmdfd
I'm so very sorry to hear about the loss of your friend and how badly her husband is doing. It's just made that much worse that we're so close to the vaccines rolling out. Would be like getting killed the last week of a war before cease-fire is called.
Interesting comment from a fellow widow who is the current coroner and former Sheriff of an extremely rural county in MO and a former services nurse (not sure which one.) We aren’t close, just occasional on-line acquaintances.
She claims the majority of positive PCR tests they are seeing are false positives.
I am having a very hard time believing this. Has any of our medical professionals seen anything like this?
Last edited by HeavyDuty; 12-13-2020 at 07:38 PM.
Ken
BBI: ...”you better not forget the safe word because shit's about to get weird”...
revchuck38: ...”mo' ammo is mo' betta' unless you're swimming or on fire.”
We now have to quarantine Younger Offspring for a week. We just found out his middle school homeroom teacher tested positive and is now very sick.
"The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so."
― Ennius
I have good insurance, and I'm guessing that if I survived an ICU stay on ECMO, my next stop after I got healthy enough to shuffle across the room would be to a bankruptcy attorney.
I was into 10mm Auto before it sold out and went mainstream, but these days I'm here for the revolver and epidemiology information.
Not a medical professional, and the plural of anecdote is not data, but I'm right near you and am seeing two things in my immediate social group now:
1. People that clearly have COVID (loss of taste, sick) getting negative tests. And...
2. Random people getting random positives that have no symptoms.
My social group has had more of #1 than #2 now, which is scary.
My personal opinion, looking at Boston/Worcester area wastewater graphs (which likely is the same as southern NH), is that more people have it than ever before and the wheels are coming off at labs due to workload.
Hopefully a scientist can jump in here to correct if needed and add relevant detail, but I don't know how you'd get false positives unless they're manually pipetting and accidentally causing cross-contamination between samples.
As far as false negatives, I wonder how much of that is due to delays between the time samples are collected and when they're actually tested, or if other issues such as PCR reagents not being kept cold and going bad after a few days either during transport or after arrival at the lab.
Anecdotally it sounds like PCR swabs are coming out positive 3+ weeks after a true infection. PCR is exquisitely sensitive (that's why they use it to detect tiny amounts of DNA found at crime scenes) so false positivity isn't surprising. It could be that PCR is detecting dead/shed viral particles that are still lingering well after the infection has resolved but that is pure speculation. I haven't read anything authoritative on the subject. My sister (late 20s otherwise healthy ER RN) had COVID (largely asymptomatic) and was PCR + 5 weeks after she noticed first symptoms.
re: false negatives, that could be from timing of the testing itself; IIRC they are recommending something like at least 5 days after exposure before you go in for PCR testing for that reason. In someone who is floridly ill, the only explanation I can think of would be lab error, or a non-COVID upper respiratory infection presenting with very similar symptoms (flu, some other bug, etc).
Yup.
Not an expert, but here's a discussion:
https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-upd...cr-test-result
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