Why is testing bad?

I read lots of quotes from sources who blame the increase in Covid-19 infections on increased testing? Why would we not wish to know about the growing problem and who might need to know they are infected? I do not understand this. I know it is political but we can't just wish it away by not testing people - can we?

Please help me understand why it is not good to know that the infection rate if growing?

The increase in cases is reported to spread fear so it’s all over the news, once the death rate dropped off they stopped reporting those numbers.

Well here In Dane county WI It's a 4 hour wait to get tested. I guess I'll take my chances.

How do we know it's growing? They weren't giving this amount of test in March. If you test more you are going to have more positives. It's set up that way. The one thing you never hear about is the death rate. Wonder what it is at present? I know you are scared Charles. Stay at home as much as you can and it may take longer for the virus to infect you. I'm afraid however, you will eventually get the virus. The common cold has never been cured and I figure Covid 19 won't either.

NBC News just covered the fact that the death rate is steeply going down, while the number of known cases is steeply going up. They said the reason is that mostly young healthy people are getting infected now.

Keith

This is correct^^^

It's a virus. All of us will be exposed eventually.

Why bother with a test? If you test negative today you may be exposed tommorrow.

We are updateted every day. It tells us how many are tested It tells how many tested positive and how many were hospitalized. And the death rate. Pretty straight forward information.

When was the last time you heard about the daily death rate since it started to go down, not much. CBS news tonight focused on the projection of hitting 200,000 In 5 months to keep the fear going.

I will bet money that if Biden wins, this whole virus "thingy" will fail to raise a blip on news media's radar...

Why would you not want to know that you were carrying a highly infectious disease? That is the question. Should we treat 100% of the population to curb the spread, or treat nobody and let the chips fall where they may? Which is it?

Sooner infected people most younger find out, they can stay away from older less healthy family members.
Maybe be smart and stay away from others their age though I doubt it. Its not about them selves like Trump always thinks. It about others like normal people think.
My wife is a nurse and past director of nurses at a large long term care facility.
They shut down early before white house even signed on. Their infection control person said gov. Is not correct in down playing this. As of now. The only unit in Mass. Without the virus. No deaths... no staff sick.
Ounce of prevention is worth a pound on cure.
No tin foil hats needed either
Don

Cripes.......this will never end.
I'm taking some Grandkids fishin tomorrow. Icky worms and everything.

Gary I'm afraid the genie is out of the bottle and you're right, it will never end.

Make sure you wear your masks and practice social distancing.

You really think this infection is political? What about jock itch and toenail fungus?

They said the masks will be in fashion for years to come 2-3 maybe.

The virus isn't political , but the media coverage sure is .

What are you going to treat them with? There is no proven prevention or cure. The shut downs and social distancing probably slowed the spread and that was what it was intended to do. This virus will run it course, it just may take a little longer. The increase in the number of positive test results is proof of that.

As stated earlier, a lot more folks are getting tested since the testing capabilities and availability have improved. And many of the new positive results are younger, seemingly healthy folks who do not have symptoms. As the positives increase and the deaths decline, this virus certainly does not appear to be the mass killer that we have been told it was. This does not mean it is not serious, especially for the more vulnerable, but it is not proving to be as bad as the early predictions indicated.

The medical field opening back up to do elective procedures is accounting for some of the increased testing and some places will now test anyone who wants to be tested. I was tested prior to a surgical procedure last week and will be tested again this week prior to another procedure.

Number one. To know if the infection rate is increasing or decreasing you have to divide the number of people infected by the number of people tested.

Number two. You have to test the same way. Early much of the testing was done on people who showed symptoms. Now much of the testing is done on random people although some testing is through tracing targeted groups who are likely infected. The number of positives doubling when you are doubling the number of tests means the same infection rate.

In some cases increasing daily numbers is just a reflection of increased amount of testing. You don't have to keep increasing testing to get the infection rate.

Number three. You can't add antibody positives in new cases. Those are old cases.



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Why is testing bad?
read this

Well for 1, different strains of corona have been around for long time and no one cared until recently. And like you said. It's political.

Infection?! Thought it was a virus. Yes, jock itch and toenail fungus is next. Then crabs.

You do realize our bodies right all kinds of nasty stuff on a day to day bases right? Want to live in a bubble?

Don't forget crabs too, but that only spreads from wearing someone else's swim suit. Bahaha.

You mean like some kind of an IMMUNE system or something crazy like that? Don't be silly. There's no profit in a body healing itself.

Charles,
It’s not really blaming it’s just facts. Increased testing. Increased positives. Less percentage of people dying from it. I think more testing is great. Just shows the elephant in the room to anyone with common sense.

Two very smart people have told me "We are each our own unique being. No two people will react the same to the same condition. One may die from mercury poisoning, the next may have a system that can filter the mercury out through waste." Such is life.

Yes. It IS an infection. That's why you run a fever.

Seems to me it would be a good thing for everyone to get a grip on the correct terminology. You are infected with the virus.

A PCR nasal swab test is designed to detect the RNA of the virus...The ANTIGEN.

A blood test....serology....is required to detect ANTIBODIES

Not true. There's this girl I dated for awhile........

You know you're having a bad day when you get diagnosed with jock itch and crabs.

Political . The Atlantic (left leahihg enough ?)
Now if a persons test comes back positive , they have you list
everyone you came into contact with , and they are counted as a " new " case
until they're tested , so if you came into contact with 50 people ,
there's 51 " new " cases .

'Scuse me for the improper terminology. I never done went to college. But I'm healthy as a horse. Other than falling down and floppin around sometimes.

Good !! I knew that same gal !

Kristi Krabkroch?

Why get a test for a disease that has a 99% survival rate?

Her whole family !!

LOVED her mom !!

Orange man bad.

To determine whether you may be infecting others

Minn. has tested over 600,000, over 30,000 positives with around 1500 deaths. Over 1100 of the deaths from nursing homes and long term care facilities. Death rate a quarter of one percent, and if Walz would have kept positive cases away from old folks and the infirm over 80% of those deaths would have been prevented.

Mom was too old for me. I liked Kristi a lot though.

If we'd have never even started testing for the virus, some people would have gotten sick, a few people would have died, it would have come and gone like the flu, and we wouldn't have millions out of work and on welfare.

Is the govt ever going to financially recover from all that stimulus money that it p--sed in the wind? At 20 yo i wonder how many years of my life i'll have to work to pay it off.

I would practice abstinence. As much as possible.

You'll never pay it off. It will continue to grow every year. And don't have kids.....they don't deserve what's coming in the next years.

What if you put a mask over it?

The population they were testing initially skewed the results then, and the population they are testing now skews these results. Along with the amount of tests available both then and now altering any conclusions accuracy.

The way testing has progressed is a statistical mess, fraught with inaccuracy and loaded with assumptions.

And in case you were wondering why Texas ICU's are filling up;. It is because they are starting to see "patients as usual" again. Only 15% of the "overwhelmed" hospital's patients are Covid related. The vast majority are surgical/emergency patients.

I find it very strange that the Covid-19 pathogen is stopped by the red river between TX and OK, and by the boundaries between GA, AL and FL.
Weird how two big conservative states (FL and TX) are now in Covid's cross hairs. This virus is smarter than we give it credit.
In an election year, it seeks out certain places at certain times.
Mask or no mask.

Like showering with your socks on...

Yes...it is a smart virus. It only infects people that attend Trump rallies but not protesters in the big cities.

I've never had either of those, so they must be fake.

It is not difficult to find the death rate for all nations and the USA if one is interested in doing so. Currently the US death rate is 4.32% of those confirmed infected die. Six weeks ago the percentage was 5.8% so yes we are gong down as we test more people and the average age of the persons testing positive goes down. This compares with a few countries like Brazil which has a 3.99%, Germany 4.4%Mexico at 11.9% and Great Britain at 15.5%.
The median age in the USA is 38, Germany is 45, while Brazil and Mexico are much lower in their 20s. The best thing going for the large populated countries like Brazil, Indonesia, India, etc.and most of Africa is they are very young which offsets poverty and poorer health care services.
Most experts feel that to have successful herd immunity we need 50-70% of the population exposed or positive. That range is based on the morbidity or infection rate of the disease. I don't know where COVID fits on that line.
If we are switching to the herd immunity approach it will take a long time to infect another 150-200 million people

Bryce

Median age is irrelevant, average age is the number we should watch.

Median shows that half the population is that number or below or half higher. The average is just adding up all the totals and dividing by the number of people. They many times can be very close but can be skewed considerably.
Based on the fact that we see median ages of 19 to 48 from nation to nation to me gives a good idea of the age and also it shows the age differences quite well. Your thoughts are probably more accurate when dealing with populations of humans as there are not numbers below zero and very few over 100 and a lot of people, billions of people.

Bryce

Bryce, Two weeks ago the CDC estimated that 20 million Americans have had the disease. On that day there were 124,000 total deaths attributed to Covid-19. 20,000,000/124,000 , you can do the math. In May our biggest hospital chain in Pennsylvania (UPMC) reported that the average age of death from Covid 19 was 84 years of age. The average age of death for all residents of the commonwealth is 78. More numbers for you to ponder.

The post was not to try and defend any side of this issue. To me the info would help to see which nations with much younger populations that have poor health care and sanitation may not have nearly as high of a percentage of severe cases or deaths. Also the 20 million is an estimate. the data I used was based on confirmed cases.

Bryce

it's correct but misleading, the common cold is caused by over 200 different viruses, making it an nonsensical comparison to Covid. Though, the point is taken, that it's a virus-family we haven't cured.

US death rate as a percentage of cases is meaningless unless you know the number of cases, which they don't. If they were only testing symptomatic and Frontline workers, then you know nothing about the relation to the population as a whole. Being as apparently over half the cases show no symptoms , then you really don't know the total potential cases. People showing symptoms test positive at a relatively low rate. Mathematical models might show possibilities of case numbers but there are far too many variables to draw accurate conclusions.

Same with the other countries percentages and death rates. Unless the other countries are following the same testing protocals, comparison cannot be made accurately.

You can figure out roughly the amount of people infected and previously infected by the infection rate. If 10% of your test subjects are infected then you can roughly extrapolate to 10% of the untested people are infected. Not exact, a rough approximation.

The death rate compared to confirmed cases is pretty meaningless. IMHO

If a 1 year old died and a 100 people a 100 years old died the median age is 50, average age would be 99. Posting median age makes it look worse than it is. Liberal States do the same thing.

Median

Arrange your numbers in numerical order.
Count how many numbers you have.
If you have an odd number, divide by 2 and round up to get the position of the median number.
If you have an even number, divide by 2. Go to the number in that position and average it with the number in the next higher position to get the median.

1, one hundred 100's

I have 101 numbers. I divide this by 2 since it is an odd number which is 50.5 and round up to 51. The number in the 51st position is 100.

Do it your way then.

It sucks when someone insists on doing it correctly.

NPR story today said that Ebola killed 11,000 people in Africa between 2014 and 2016. In the same area, Covid has killed 12,000 in four months. Remember when we feared Ebola? Now some people almost laugh at Covid. Ebola was now political, yet it was a killer.

I was told a month ago when went docter for allergies, diagonse post nasal drip, that I csnt take covid test unless symptoms or sick nowhere around here , go docter. It cost u $200 easy for test, there are free test places , but I heard a major hassle, wait hrs take, inaccurate inconclusive results. I wouldnt unless sick, the bldg manager approach last week an ssy something about we aredo targeted. Testing ? Never heard nothing else. But could he legally come up an ssy, u got take a test to work here ? Even though not sick ? I won't. I heard major hassle an even no symptoms. U take a test, an forced stay ur house for 2 weeks or more for maybe test results. ? Have show ur results post on bulletin board ? That is bs

You can not extrapolate the infection rate if the initial subjects chosen for testing are prioritized by symptoms or high exposure levels. Your conclusion is based entirely on the sample population tested, which so far is heavily weighted towards a certain result.

NPR just like New York times and Washington Post, hate trump. Anything to make him look bad is standard policy for all three.

Walleye, I could have looked it up also, figured 1/2% out of a hundred is pretty close.