When will this shit end?

[Crazyfool01]

could those tests also have been more productive if used earlier ? ...... my workplace must have failed to sign up to anything .... so mandatory workplace signup would have found lots of the positive cases and prevented deaths ... 

[efcfanwirral]

1 minute ago, crazyfool1 said:

could those tests also have been more productive if used earlier ? ...... my workplace must have failed to sign up to anything .... so mandatory workplace signup would have found lots of the positive cases and prevented deaths ... 

Not that this will make you feel comforted, but I assume it was political. Lots of closed supermarkets because of no staff would be a bad look for the Tories...

[xxialac]

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

lol

 

Lateral flow tests produce fewer than one false positive per 1,000 tests, DHSC research says

The Department of Health and Social Care has published research today that it says shows that lateral flow tests produce fewer than one false positive per 1,000 tests carried out. The accuracy of these tests has become a particular concern for parents because pupils who test positive in a lateral flow test conducted on school premises have to isolate, even if a subsequent PCR test is negative.

The research is here (pdf), and the DHSC’s summary is here. Explaining the findings, DHSC said:

New analysis published today shows lateral flow tests (LFD) to have a specificity of at least 99.9% when used to test in the community and could be as high as 99.97%.

Following the roll-out of millions of LFD tests in the community which has provided real-world data, NHS Test and Trace has been able to conduct further analysis of rapid testing using LFDs. New findings on their specificity, which is a measure of how good the test is at detecting true negative cases, show that for every 1,000 lateral flow tests carried out, there is less than one false positive result.

I'm open to that possibility.

But also confused and haven't been following this but this seems far too good to be true.

What about false negatives?

[zahidf]

Just now, xxialac said:

I'm open to that possibility.

But also confused and haven't been following this but this seems far too good to be true.

What about false negatives?

What about false negatives?

[steviewevie]

5 minutes ago, zahidf said:

WORLD BEATING

In evidence to the Commons women and equalities committee Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, said the UK may have the highest rate of rate of vaccine positivity (support for getting vaccinated) in the word. He said:

When I took this job on back in mid-November, I think if you look at the ONS data or other published polls, vaccine positivity was in the high 70s, touching 80%.

It’s now at 94% of the UK adult population saying that they are likely or very likely to take the vaccine.

I think that is, for your committee, the best measure that the strategy is working, watching that number continue to climb - the highest probably in the world, I think, if I’m not mistaken, in terms of vaccine positivity.

you working for the government or something?

[Crazyfool01]

1 minute ago, efcfanwirral said:

Not that this will make you feel comforted, but I assume it was political. Lots of closed supermarkets because of no staff would be a bad look for the Tories...

yep thats fair ... Im just sad that a small outbreak recently might have been contained through testing and prevented one of my colleagues taking it home ... with sad consequences for her partner 😞 

[xxialac]

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

What about false negatives?

What percentage of cases are shown as negative when they were in fact positive?

[efcfanwirral]

Just now, crazyfool1 said:

yep thats fair ... Im just sad that a small outbreak recently might have been contained through testing and prevented one of my colleagues taking it home ... with sad consequences for her partner 😞 

I'm sure that's played out all over the country 😔

[Crazyfool01]

1 minute ago, steviewevie said:

you working for the government or something?

ZAHDIF IS WORLD BEATING 

[Crazyfool01]

Just now, efcfanwirral said:

I'm sure that's played out all over the country 😔

yeah very true ...  it seems like we had a testing capacity at this point sadly 😞 

[zahidf]

3 minutes ago, xxialac said:

What percentage of cases are shown as negative when they were in fact positive?

75%. Throw them in the bin.

 

Or, probably very close to the false positives figure I'd have thought.

[zahidf]

4 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

you working for the government or something?

I wish! Some of that SWEET propaganda cash 

[xxialac]

Just now, zahidf said:

75%. Throw them in the bin.

 

Or, probably very close to the false positives figure I'd have thought.

You've lost me completely there.

Must be some data on this - perhaps someone can identify and share.

 

[xxialac]

4 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

I don't know - probably 1 in a million but these are the important questions of the day apparently 🙂 

Whilst I don't know what the answer is, it's clearly not 1 in a million or countries would not insist on the gold standard PCR test for international travel.

[xxialac]

1 minute ago, Barry Fish said:

I don't think it matters..

The point of these tests and this testing is to try and keep as many kids in school as possible in the most straight forward manner.

I think its being over analysed.  Its 100% better than last September having these tests even if they miss a few or wrong identify a few.

I agree it doesn't matter in that regard.

But if we want to beat our chests that we are the bestest testing country in the world, like, ever and other countries are losers....be good if we're comparing like with like.

[Simsy]

50 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

If this guy's even part right they might have to cancel that,

https://nitter.tedomum.net/GVDBossche

 

"For those who may have some difficulty in understanding how mass vaccination drives viral immune escape, it will suffice to watch infectivity and morbidity rates in those countries who have now succeeded in vaccinating millions of people in just a few weeks. "

He's written an open letter to the WHO warning that the vaccine rollout is a disaster and will lead to more deaths. One for an evaluation by Toilet Duck i think.

Suboptimal abs? They've seen me try to do sit-ups 🤣

[Crazyfool01]

whats the best site to look at vaccinations ? mainly Europe ... Id like to see some improving numbers there ... 

[zahidf]

EU at it again

 

 

 

[zahidf]

7 minutes ago, xxialac said:

I agree it doesn't matter in that regard.

But if we want to beat our chests that we are the bestest testing country in the world, like, ever and other countries are losers....be good if we're comparing like with like.

I don't think anyone called other counties losers.  Its good we are ramping up testing.

[steviewevie]

34 minutes ago, zahidf said:

I don't think anyone called other counties losers.  Its good we are ramping up testing.

isn't it implied by saying world beating?

Edited March 10, 2021 by steviewevie

[steviewevie]

37 minutes ago, zahidf said:

EU at it again

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/world/europe/eu-exports-vaccines.html

[BobWillis2]

The more you look into the more it seems that the issue with accuracy is less about the test and more with how well or badly the swabbing was done. 
There were reported issues last year of PCR tests being much less accurate if the swab wasn’t pushed far enough up the nose and self swabbing was often useless because people couldn’t force themselves to push the swab far enough up their nose. 
The same issues occur with the LFD, and instructions seem to differ from testing site to testing site. Some NHS Trusts are only swabbing nostril(s) and not the throat at all. 
Some places will tell you do both tonsils and both nostrils, some 1 of each and some 2 of 1 and 1 of the other. 
Not all sites will tell you not to eat, drink or smoke for 30 minutes before, and very few sites will tell you that the end of the swab cannot touch anything other than your tonsils or it voids the result (but doesn’t actually show as a void test on the cassette) even though that’s quite a hard thing to do. 
I imagine a lot of the issues with the Liverpool trial in particular is that these things perhaps weren’t known at the time so the testing was a lot less accurate than it could have been. The innova tests are still the worst of the lot but the accuracy is higher than its perceived to be. 

 

[steviewevie]

Variant porn found in south London.

[philipsteak]

52 minutes ago, BobWillis2 said:

The more you look into the more it seems that the issue with accuracy is less about the test and more with how well or badly the swabbing was done. 
There were reported issues last year of PCR tests being much less accurate if the swab wasn’t pushed far enough up the nose and self swabbing was often useless because people couldn’t force themselves to push the swab far enough up their nose. 
The same issues occur with the LFD, and instructions seem to differ from testing site to testing site. Some NHS Trusts are only swabbing nostril(s) and not the throat at all. 
Some places will tell you do both tonsils and both nostrils, some 1 of each and some 2 of 1 and 1 of the other. 
Not all sites will tell you not to eat, drink or smoke for 30 minutes before, and very few sites will tell you that the end of the swab cannot touch anything other than your tonsils or it voids the result (but doesn’t actually show as a void test on the cassette) even though that’s quite a hard thing to do. 
I imagine a lot of the issues with the Liverpool trial in particular is that these things perhaps weren’t known at the time so the testing was a lot less accurate than it could have been. The innova tests are still the worst of the lot but the accuracy is higher than its perceived to be. 

 

This changed between shifts at the vaccination centre I'm at. Went from throat and nostrils, to just nostrils. At a guess I'd say because of the thing you say about how hard it is to touch your tonsils without touching anywhere else. (this info, about not touching anywhere else, was included when I got a PCR test at a testing centre)

[Toilet Duck]

2 hours ago, gizmoman said:

If this guy's even part right they might have to cancel that,

https://nitter.tedomum.net/GVDBossche

 

"For those who may have some difficulty in understanding how mass vaccination drives viral immune escape, it will suffice to watch infectivity and morbidity rates in those countries who have now succeeded in vaccinating millions of people in just a few weeks. "

He's written an open letter to the WHO warning that the vaccine rollout is a disaster and will lead to more deaths. One for an evaluation by Toilet Duck i think.

Howdy, so, we’ve kinda been through this before in a couple of guises...antibody enhanced disease and variants that escape neutralising antibodies. On the first, as it happens, this was brought up by one of the Oxford team in a talk he gave us this morning. Despite the evidence from SARS being poor quality pre-clinical studies, they checked for it anyway and simply saw no evidence for it. The data from the trials doesn’t support it either, nor does our real world use (effectiveness). Israel and the UK are in the period he is suggesting here and morbidity and mortality continue to fall in vaccinated populations rather than any signal of increasing. So, lots of people have looked at this, even though it was only a remote possibility and just don’t see any evidence for it. The second part is immune escaping variants. While variants that evade neutralising antibodies have emerged, variants that evade every part of our immune response are extremely unlikely. One of the key things about the genetic vaccines compared to subunit ones, is that the antigen that stimulates our immune response has to be made inside our cells. This means it gets displayed on the surface of our cells and elicits a far more complex immune response compared to older while killed/attenuated/subunit vaccines. The amount of changes required to escape all of that would likely render the virus inactive. The selection pressures he talks about are already there and they are driving independent evolution of the same changes. This in itself is reassuring as it means there’s only so many places the virus actually can change and still function. So the scenario presented is unlikely.