C.D.C. Test Counting Error Leaves Epidemiologists 'Really Baffled'

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

C.D.C. Test Counting Error Leaves Epidemiologists ‘Really Baffled’

The Centers for Disease Control has been lumping together tests for active coronavirus with tests for recovered patients, boosting testing totals but muddying the pandemic’s course.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sheila Kaplan and Sarah Mervosh
Published May 22, 2020
Updated May 23, 2020, 12:08 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — As it tracks the coronavirus’s spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is combining tests that detect active infection with those that detect recovery from Covid-19 — a system that muddies the picture of the pandemic but raises the percentage of Americans tested as President Trump boasts about testing.

Now that serology tests, which look for antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered, are more widespread, C.D.C. officials said Friday they would work to separate them from the results of diagnostic tests, which detect active infection. One of the agency’s data tracker websites has been lumping them together.

Stunned epidemiologists say data from antibody tests and active virus tests should never be mixed because diagnostic testing seeks to quantify the amount of active disease in the population. Serological testing can also be unreliable. And patients who have had both diagnostic and serology tests would be counted twice in the totals.

“It just doesn’t make any sense; all of us are really baffled,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida.

Epidemiologists, state health officials and a spokeswoman for the C.D.C. said there was no ill intent; they attributed the flawed reporting system to confusion and fatigue in overworked state and local health departments that typically track infections — not tests — during outbreaks. The C.D.C. relies on states to report their data.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/us/politics/coronavirus-tests-cdc.html

[Lochloosa]

1. No I'll intent my ass. These people are fucking with our lives.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

2. In Brazil, patients who die are removed from the total of people who have been infected.

Their argument is that if a person is dead they are no longer infected. It keeps the total number of cases down.

[The Magistrate]

3. That Kind Of Thing, Sir

Always tempts me just to stand back in awe and watch a player play....

[Igel]

4. We do it here, too.

There's a number of active cases and a number for recovered and/or dead. Depending on the site, it's "and" or "or".

Because if you're dead, unless the coroner or funeral home lackey screws up it's not likely to cause droplets containing active virus to go airborne.

[Igel]

5. The websites don't actually track infections.

They track positive tests.

One woman's story was posted here yesterday, she'd suffered from COVID for 50 days and had had 8 COVID tests.

There you go--8 different "infections" if that's what the websites monitor. But still just one person.

You measure what you want to know about.

The COVID test numbers ... they just tell you the number of positive tests. Not the prevalence in society (which is a standard error) unless you have a large number of tests compared to the number of infections (and no preference for testing just the symptomatic). Divide that by the total number of tests and you get an upperbound for the current infection rate in the areas you're testing.

Positive test # and the # positive antibody tests tell you how far along in a lower-bound sort of way you are to having most of the population infected.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. Trump's CDC.

[Javaman]

7. Trumps ministry of love

We are so fucked.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Four