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To: Pearls Before Swine

I think CDC is saying that the rate of false positives can be high relative to the number of positives in a large sample of tests. For example, if 1% of a population has the virus, but the test has a false positive rate of 1%, then 2% of the people tested will get a positive result - those actually positive and the false positives. In this case 50% of the positives are false.
But if 20% of the population actually has the virus, an additional 1% false positive is only 1/21 of the total number of positives (less than 5% of the positives are false positives)


16 posted on 05/28/2020 4:44:03 AM PDT by brookwood (Obama said you could keep your plan - Sanders says higher taxes will improve the weather)
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To: brookwood

We’re saying the same thing.

Even a low false positive rate gives an exaggerated reading in a population with a low incidence of infection.

But emphasizing this seems misleading, doesn’t it?


17 posted on 05/28/2020 5:02:05 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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