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

[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.