City Journal is running an excellent article on Covid19 testing. It's especially important to understand the problems involved in the type of testing that was recently conducted in California. Most of the testing done in the US currently is done on persons who are exhibiting relatively serious symptoms that at least raise a concern that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is involved. The two sets of tests from California, on the other hand, attempted to establish the degree to which the virus may have spread in the general population--including those who are exhibiting no symptoms. The problems with this type of testing begin with the fact that the tests used were not FDA approved and had a very low level of specificity (more on that below). These tests, it turns out, had a specificity of only 90-95%--read on and you'll see why
Please Read This Re Covid19 Testing
Please Read This Re Covid19 Testing
Please Read This Re Covid19 Testing
City Journal is running an excellent article on Covid19 testing. It's especially important to understand the problems involved in the type of testing that was recently conducted in California. Most of the testing done in the US currently is done on persons who are exhibiting relatively serious symptoms that at least raise a concern that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is involved. The two sets of tests from California, on the other hand, attempted to establish the degree to which the virus may have spread in the general population--including those who are exhibiting no symptoms. The problems with this type of testing begin with the fact that the tests used were not FDA approved and had a very low level of specificity (more on that below). These tests, it turns out, had a specificity of only 90-95%--read on and you'll see why