The same story is running on the front page of the Guardian.
We've known for ages that lateral flow tests are dog shit with a high chance of a false positive.
This was raised as an issue last year when they tested the whole of Liverpool. At the time we were assured that the tests were accurate and those asking the awkward questions were dismissed as alt-right conspiracy theorists / Covid deniers.
"The efficacy of rapid LFT tests has been the subject of debate for months, with some experts claiming the government is only endorsing them because they invested in billions of them earlier on in the pandemic.
Robert Dingwall, a professor of sociology on the government's SAGE committee, previously told Sky News they are "pretty useless".
"These tests miss people with early infections, so they are not really any kind of solution," he said.
"The government has bought a huge stockpile of these tests and something has to be done with them."
As most of us said a few weeks back, mass testing twice a week the entire population of healthy people with these dodgy LF tests from China makes no sense and is just a costly, environmentally unfriendly waste of time.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and getting back to the way of life pre-2020 is the answer to this pandemic. Not lockdowns, not project moonshot, not face coverings, not social distancing.
0
0
This isn't massively surprising. Bit of Bayesian stats init.
Same idea lies behind why it's not a good idea to do screening for rare cancers.
0
0
I’ve been banging on about positive predictive value for months now. I’m glad to have been ahead of the curve (ha).
Next we will be discussing ROC curves...
0
0
The same story is running on the front page of the Guardian.
We've known for ages that lateral flow tests are dog shit with a high chance of a false positive.
This was raised as an issue last year when they tested the whole of Liverpool. At the time we were assured that the tests were accurate and those asking the awkward questions were dismissed as alt-right conspiracy theorists / Covid deniers.
How things have changed...
0
0
Maybe Robert Dingwall of SAGE is a team sane plant. I'm sure team basic can parse how we are still wrong somehow
0
0
Well indeed:
"The efficacy of rapid LFT tests has been the subject of debate for months, with some experts claiming the government is only endorsing them because they invested in billions of them earlier on in the pandemic.
Robert Dingwall, a professor of sociology on the government's SAGE committee, previously told Sky News they are "pretty useless".
"These tests miss people with early infections, so they are not really any kind of solution," he said.
"The government has bought a huge stockpile of these tests and something has to be done with them."
0
0
As most of us said a few weeks back, mass testing twice a week the entire population of healthy people with these dodgy LF tests from China makes no sense and is just a costly, environmentally unfriendly waste of time.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and getting back to the way of life pre-2020 is the answer to this pandemic. Not lockdowns, not project moonshot, not face coverings, not social distancing.
0
0
"The government has bought a huge stockpile of these tests and something has to be done with them."
Indeed- which is why this idiot Tory party need our intense scorn.
0
0
I have no intention of going anywhere near a lateral flow test
Join the discussion