The Public Should Ignore Both Skepticism About Testing in Wuhan and Recommendations for Repeated Lockdowns; and Scientists Should Take Care A thread that will lead to this ... 1/
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Conclusion: When they (i) dismiss policies with benefits that exceed cost by orders of magnitude, and (ii) bless an endless cycle of lockdown and reopening, scientists are observationally equivalent to madmen and fools. /2
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It is all too easy for people with knowledge of such disciplines as virology and epidemiology to overreach when they opine on policies for managing the pandemic. 3/
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Consider this comment from a virologist about the policy of testing 11 million people in Wuhan: "For a city of around 10 million, Dr. Jin said, a sample of about 100,000 people would have been more than sufficient." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/world/asia/coronavirus-wuhan-tests.html … 4/
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To evaluate Dr. Jin's assertion, let's start by stipulating that: (1) The plan for testing all residents of Wuhan will not identify every single asymptomatic spreader of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. (2) Testing for asymptomatic spreaders is one part of a broader policy response. 5/
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What we know about the official plan: Among the 6.7 million people in Wuhan who have already been tested, 206 individuals with no symptoms tested positive. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-26/wuhan-tests-millions-in-12-days-as-china-fears-second-virus-wave … 6/
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If the proportions hold steady, testing all 11 million residents will identify and allow the isolation of around 300 asymptomatic spreaders of the virus. 7/
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The Times also paraphrased some concern from Dr. Jin concerning the accuracy of the tests: "Trying to conduct so many [tests], in quick succession, in makeshift testing tents, could produce many erroneous results." 8/
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In fact, false positives are no concern. For a few hundred people, it will be trivial to confirm an initial positive with a second test. 9/
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And a false negative rate of p percent is a manageable disadvantage. With N asymptomatic spreaders in Wuhan, the official plan means that N will be reduced to p*N: If p = 30%, then N --> 0.30 N If p = 5%, then N --> 0.05 N 10/
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Lots of issues in this thread, but this is a big one. Evidence indicates that this sort of test has a false-negative rate between 100-67% during the first 4 days of infection, meaning you may catch ~none~ of the people who are asymptomatic spreaderspic.twitter.com/UgKTTtuWl6
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