Up to 90 per cent of people diagnosed with coronavirus may not be carrying enough of it to infect anyone else, study finds as experts say tests are too sensitive

Daily Mail ^ | August 30, 2020 | Marlene Lenthang

[rickmichaels]

Up to 90 percent of people tested for COVID-19 in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada in July carried barely any traces of the virus and it could be because today's tests are 'too sensitive', experts say.

Health experts say PCR testing - the most widely used diagnostic test for COVID-19 in the US - are too sensitive and need to be adjusted to rule out people who have insignificant amounts of the virus in their systems because they're likely not contagious.

Today the PCR test, which provides a yes or no answer if a patient is infected, doesn't say how much of the virus a patient has in their body.

PCR tests analyze genetic matter from the virus in cycles and today's tests typically take 37 or 40 cycles, but experts say this is too high because it detects very small amounts of the virus that don't pose a risk.

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

“It does show that the 99.97% is wrong, though, since we’ve already lost nearly twice that number.”

Latest CDC data show that less than 10,000 died ONLY from the virus.

[DennisR]

Oh well. You are light years ahead of Gov Gruesome, who famously predicted that about 25 million Californians would get it by last May.

[DallasBiff]

My post wasn’t meant to be sarcasm.

[reformedliberal]

Noted.

[lepton]

Wow. Months behind what was obvious when they came out.

[lepton]

I don’t think tests can be too sensitive.

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They can certainly be too sensitive for a particular use - such as detecting exposure to fragments when folks think it is detecting the actually infected.

[lepton]

60 to 80 thousand people die every year in this country from the flu.

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9k-80k...maybe...to a middling level of confidence.

[lepton]

I’m sure that if not the majority of those who died of covid would have died this year or something else.

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A fair number would have, but the demographics of those dying is rather different from those who die of the flu.

That said, we’re still not to the point of truly reliable statistics on how many have died. That typically takes 6-12 months even for decent estimates of the flu that aren’t +/- 50%.

[lepton]

“It does show that the 99.97% is wrong, though, since we’ve already lost nearly twice that number.”

Latest CDC data show that less than 10,000 died ONLY from the virus.

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Which is an even more nonsensical way of looking at it than attributing everyone who died who had any trace of COVID in their system as dying of COVID. It’s like pointing out that virtually no one dies from the flu, and ignoring those that died from dehydration or pneumonia caused by the flu.

In NYC alone, in April alone, roughly 19,000 people died compared to the normal 4500. That alone says your numbers don’t say what you think they do.