Michael McNamara TD getting to the truth, Cases, PCR testing flaws.

mandrake04

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I'm saying how the way it's been calculated by them is wrong..

If you have 10,000 tests with 1000 positives and a false positive rate of 1% then you have 100 false positives.
What they've done is take the 1% from the 1000 positive tests to come up with 10 false positives. That is wrong.

1% of 10,000 is 100 correct, 1% of a 1000 is 10 ......now if we apply that logic like you suggest.

What if you had 10,000 tests and none were positive? if the false positivity rate is 1% how may of the 0 positive results is false?

is it still 100?

sabat

Nonoperational wrote: »

I'd like to make a point on this if I may.

I'm a doctor working on the front line through 2 large teaching hospitals in Ireland during the pandemic.
I've seen approximately 400 patients ?covid.
I have gotten covid myself as have 9 of my friends/collegues.
I have no vested interests. Nobody pays me under the table. Nobody tries to get me to push vaccines. I have no agenda.

I hate covid. It is ruining my job, ruining the teaching in my job, ruining meetings and conferences. Everything at work now is 'shut up and do what your told you're a covid hero thanks'. The restrictions are ruining my social and family life. I wish it was all a load of bollix and we cold forget about it.

In my honest experience really the vast majority of the above post is complete nonsense.
The vast vast majority, in fact well over 95%, of patients in hospitals with covid that I have seen are there with a primary diagnosis of Covid pneumonia or other serious manifestation of the disease. They have some of the dirtiest X-rays and CT scans I've ever seen. They have massive CRPs. Very abnormal bloods. People seem to miss the point that you have to be very very sick to be admitted to hospital with covid. We want you at home recovering at home. We are encouraged to send anyone home that doesn't need oxygen. Honestly almost none of the cases are 'oh he has a broken leg and is PCR positive". We also have many patients who never test positive but never test positive for anything else either and almost certainly have covid.

At the moment we have 35 patients with covid in our hospital. 32 of these are admitted recently through ED with problems breathing. 3 got it in hospital when in for other procedures.

I had covid as did 9 of my friends and colleagues. It wasn't a critical illness for 8 of us but we were very very shook for a week or so and one of those colleagues remains very sick. This is a preciously healthy person in their 40s.

Personally I'm actually in favour of having less restrictions, making sure the at risk really mind themselves and beefing up the hospital system. But Jesus is hard to read some of the blatant lies posted here as fact.

Our test positivity rate is less than 3% last time I checked. Despite all the "PCR is ****e, it picks up if you ever looked at covid" spouted as gospel, 97% of people test negative. We have to so bronchoscopy on some people to actually get a positive PCR test. This is in a preselected population with a high pre test probability because they have to exhibit symptoms of covid in the first place. You'd swear everyone in the country was a false positive. A complete lack of knowledge into the statistics of diagnostic tests.

Everyone is free to have their own opinions on how we should deal with this as a society. Basing things on hospital admissions and capacity makes sense to me.

That's approximately 2 patients per day in a major hospital and 1 friend or colleague per month since this began. Does the response still sound proportionate?

drunkmonkey

mandrake04 wrote: »

1% of 10,000 is 100 correct, 1% of a 1000 is 10 ......now if we apply that logic like you suggest.

Stop there, your calculations are wrong in your original post. It's not some logic I just made up. You have to take the percentage from all the tests not just the positives, there is no other way to calculate it.

Martina1991

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Stop there, your calculations are wrong in your original post. It's not some logic I just made up. You have to take the percentage from all the tests not just the positives, there is no other way to calculate it.

So you're saying 2.5% (wherever you got that) of all tests are false positives.

We've done 1,195,508 tests to date.
2.5% of 1,195,508= 29,888 false positives.

We have 36,597 cases to date.

You are implying 29,888 / 36,597 are false positives.

You're saying 82% of our cases are false positives.

drunkmonkey

Martina1991 wrote: »

So you're saying 2.5% (wherever you got that) of all tests are false positives.

No I said .8% the same as the UK, another poster said our rate is .2%

2.5% is just a figure someone else said. I am not and have never said our false positive rate is 2.5%.

mandrake04

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Stop there, your calculations are wrong in your original post. It's not some logic I just made up. You have to take the percentage from all the tests not just the positives, there is no other way to calculate it.

mandrake04 wrote: »

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Very simple calculation for you, if we test 10000 people and 100 are positive. With a false positive rate of 2.5% how many cases have we.

The answer might surprise you as I know by your answer above your calculations are wrong.

10,000 tests, 100 indicate positive and if you assume false positive rate is 2.5% then true cases could only be either 97 or 98. (as you cant really have half a case)

Ok 10,000 tests , 100 indicate positive results using 2.5% that means 2.5 of the 100 cases are false....since you cant have 2.5 of a case the true positive is either 97 or 98.

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Your taking the 2.5% from the 100 cases, the 2.5% is from the 10,000 tests. See the problem now.

now if you apply your logic of taking 10,000 tests and applying 2.5% and say instead of saying 100 of the results are positive we say 0 are positive, then your logic indicates that there is 2.5% of the 10,000 are false.



so of 0 positive results 250 of them are false.... according to you.


Ok just to show that I'm not tricking you are anything lets say, 10,000 tests and 10 are positive, we can use your favorite rate of 2.5% False Positives.

so we have now 10 positive results, but applying your logic 250 of the 10 are false.

drunkmonkey

mandrake04 wrote: »

Ok 10,000 tests , 100 indicate positive results using 2.5% that means 2.5 of the 100 cases are false....since you cant have 2.5 of a case the true positive is either 97 or 98.




now if you apply your logic of taking 10,000 tests and applying 2.5% and say instead of saying 100 of the results are positive we say 0 are positive, then your logic indicates that there is 2.5% of the 10,000 are false.



so of 0 positive results 250 of them are false.... according to you.


Ok just to show that I'm not tricking you are anything lets say, 10,000 tests and 10 are positive, we can use your favorite rate of 2.5% False Positives.

so we have now 10 positive results, but applying your logic 250 of the 10 are false.

Honest to God what are you dribbling on about.

2.5% is nothing it's a made up number by another poster, it's not my favorite number and I don't believe in any way shape or forum that is the Irish false positive rate. It was used for discussion nothing more.

I'm not even going to bother trying to work out all the things you've done above but it's true to say that if the false positive rate is high enough you can end up in a situation where none of the positives are positive. I'm not saying that's the case.

Martina1991

drunkmonkey wrote: »

No I said .8% the same as the UK, another poster said our rate is .2%

2.5% is just a figure someone else said. I am not and have never said our false positive rate is 2.5%.

Why are you taking the rate from the UK government as being right and dismissing Cillian DeGascun.

The UK have no idea how their testing is going except that is going badly.

They built pop up labs in 6 weeks and staffed them with volunteers. They didn't have the IT, logistics, quality control or accreditation to support it.
Data fell into a black hole, swabs were double counted.
Now they're falling further behind as those volunteers go back to their day jobs and demand increases.

They're sending swabs to Italy and Germany. They sent 50,000 to the US and thousands of them had to be discarded.

They use a postal system where people take swabs themselves, which only adds to sampling and processing errors. They tried to do this because they dont have enough testing centers and people have to drive long journeys just to be swabbed.

They diverted resources away from NHS labs that are accredited with qualified staff and have all the logistics and IT to support the transport and transmission of results. These NHS labs are only running at a fraction of their potential capacity because they are not given the reagents to process samples.

And now only 28% of their tests are coming back within 24 hours, a number that is only decreasing.


Sources:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-testing-lighthouse-labs-nhs-deaths-delay-a9589381.html

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/inside-story-dunkirk-labs-test-and-trace-fiasco-a4554006.html?fbclid=IwAR3IzwzUkOXq7lQrLOSGQBKuzTsENCLwpxQJ35aXw3v83EiEWEtCSychAEA

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/exclusive-tens-thousands-covid-19-tests-voided-decision-send/

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/28/concerns-over-delays-and-errors-at-uk-drive-in-coronavirus-test-centres

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54281071

Tij da feen

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Honest to God what are you dribbling on about.

2.5% is nothing it's a made up number by another poster, it's not my favorite number and I don't believe in any way shape or forum that is the Irish false positive rate. It was used for discussion nothing more.

I'm not even going to bother trying to work out all the things you've done above but it's true to say that if the false positive rate is high enough you can end up in a situation where none of the positives are positive. I'm not saying that's the case.

Then what are you saying is the case? You're not making a consistent point here.

Either way, false positive tests are a red herring. We know that the increase in cases lately can NOT be pointed to false positives as our % of overall tests coming back positive has been increasing.
If there were false positives due to testing methods then the % levels would've:

• A. Been consistent, even when our daily cases were low.
• B. Be consistent across counties

Furthermore, the likelihood of actual positives are much higher due to Test and Trace (since we're testing based on either being symptomatic or being a close contact with a confirmed individual). If someone had a false positive then the likelihood of their close contacts also getting a false positive is statistically improbable.

If we were randomly testing the population at large, then false positives would be much more relevant as we wouldn't be testing based on exposure to the virus.

Dempo1

Always thought this guy was a bit of a chancer, seemed completely disinterested and certainly proved very cynical towards all things NPHET. He seemed to spend more time brushing back that impressive head of hair (Trump will be envious), with his hands I might add than actually listening to contributions but at least he bothered to get it cut for the last session.

drunkmonkey

Tij da feen wrote: »

Then what are you saying is the case? You're not making a consistent point here.

I'm not trying to make any point, a lot of posters have latched onto the false positive thing and completely derailed the thread going over the same ground. Some people are calculating the false positivity incorrectly that is all.

I made my point in the opening statement that we have 3 things at play here, we have the People testing positive who aren't sick and we have no idea when they had the virus. We have all hospital admission who test positive counted as hospital admissions when in fact they could not have any active covid. Then we've the false positives.

Anyway it sounds like Leo knows what's up...

Martina1991

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I made my point in the opening statement that we have 3 things at play here, we have the People testing positive who aren't sick and we have no idea when they had the virus. We have all hospital admission who test positive counted as hospital admissions when in fact they could not have any active covid. Then we've the false positives.

So to use your 0.8 example...
0.8% of 1,195,508 (all tests)= 9,564
9,564/ 36,597 cases= 26%

So you think a quarter of all our cases are false positives.
Doesn't that seem awfully high for an assay with >99% specificity.

Your premise appears to be that people who test positive aren't infectious, the numbers are overinflated and things aren't as bad as they seem.
Even IF a large percentage of cases were "false" positive, isn't it an awfully big coincidence that the number of hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths are increasing too.

MadYaker

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I'm not trying to make any point, a lot of posters have latched onto the false positive thing and completely derailed the thread going over the same ground. Some people are calculating the false positivity incorrectly that is all.

I made my point in the opening statement that we have 3 things at play here, we have the People testing positive who aren't sick and we have no idea when they had the virus. We have all hospital admission who test positive counted as hospital admissions when in fact they could not have any active covid. Then we've the false positives.

Anyway it sounds like Leo knows what's up...

You're waaay out of your depth on this issue lets be honest, along with most of the people expressing an opinion.

drunkmonkey

Martina1991 wrote: »

So to use your 0.8 example...
0.8% of 1,195,508 (all tests)= 9,564
9,564/ 36,597 cases= 26%

So you think a quarter of all our cases are false positives.
Doesn't that seem awfully high for an assay with >99% specificity.

Your premise appears to be that people who test positive aren't infectious, the numbers are overinflated and things aren't as bad as they seem.
Even IF a large percentage of cases were "false" positive, isn't it an awfully big coincidence that the number of hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths are increasing too.

Will you stop with the you thing, it's not my premise, take it up with the likes of Carl Carl Heneghan and the rest of the qualified experts.

Hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths are all questionable as we know from the start of the thread. You can not say they are all a result of Covid and that's especially true with a highly transmissible virus.

If you want to get into to coincidences we were told by the experts to our government that introducing mandatory policy in the general public without fact based evidence cases could rise similar to what was noted in the UK, guess what cases are still going up.

People who test positive are not necessarily infective and we the public have no idea when their Covid was active. Again that's not me it's a fault of the test. The CCO said it himself, what more do you need.

There's a few of you at it trying to dismiss what I've said to discredit the evidence, you wrong in that approach as it's not me your trying to discredit it's the experts, NPHET and the rest or the evidence in front of you.

odyssey06

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Will you stop with the you thing, it's not my premise, take it up with the likes of Carl Carl Heneghan and the rest of the qualified experts.
Hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths are all questionable as we know from the start of the thread. You can not say they are all a result of Covid and that's especially true with a highly transmissible virus.
If you want to get into to coincidences we were told by the experts to our government that introducing mandatory policy in the general public without fact based evidence cases could rise similar to what was noted in the UK, guess what cases are still going up.

People who test positive are not necessarily infective and we the public have no idea when their Covid was active. Again that's not me it's a fault of the test. The CCO said it himself, what more do you need.

There's a few of you at it trying to dismiss what I've said to discredit the evidence, you wrong in that approach as it's not me your trying to discredit it's the experts, NPHET and the rest or the evidence in front of you.

Strange you only seem to think experts are qualified when they agree with you. What about all the qualified experts who don't? Are they still qualified?

As for Dr Carl Heneghan, even people within his instiution publicly disagree with him on masks and other measures. He doesn't have a monopoly on 'fact based evidence'.
His evidence on masks to the Oireachtas committee was riddled with holes, he flat out ignored questions from McNamara when he, to his credit, tried to pull him up on the difference between masks as barrier versus as PPE.
He cites a study on the use of cloth coverings by cleaning staff in hospitals as PPE and cites that as a 'fact' against use of masks as a barrier?
Nonsense.

I'm not even sure what point you are trying to make.
You seem to be trying to discredit the cases and deaths counts.
And yes, the exact number of cases deaths etc is questionable in the sense of 100% knowledge. There are false positives. There are people recorded as died with covid for whom it didn't make a material difference.
But in terms of the purpose for which they are used - it's irrelevent.
In terms of the big picture - it's irrelevent.

Would it be great if we had a test as to whether someone is infectious? Yes.
And? What's the point? We don't. So what's your proposal?
In the absence of that we have to, and the only reasonable course of action is to assume they are infectious.

It changes nothing. They are accurate enough for the purpose for which they
are deployed - tracking increase in cases, strain on our hospital system.
It's up to you to show how they are not or what alternative approach would be better.

The threat of this virus is a highly infectious virus with the potential to overwhlem our health system. All I see on this thread is a smokescreen.

drunkmonkey

What's my proposal, stop basing restrictions on daily case numbers and scaring the **** out of old people every day in the process. It's cruel and people are sick to the teeth of it.

odyssey06

drunkmonkey wrote: »

What's my proposal, stop basing restrictions on daily case numbers and scaring the **** out of old people every day in the process. It's cruel and people are sick to the teeth of it.

Is it based on daily case numbers alone?
My understanding is that they look at a range of metrics - cases, trends, hospitalisations, positivity rate in testing, people referred by GPs.
Given the lag between cases and hospitalisations it would be wrong to not pay attention to positive cases.

They are trying to protect people.
It's not cruel, they are dealing with a cruel world the virus has propelled us into.
If they didn't release the info there would be lots of people claiming cover up.
Personally I think it should be twice a week.
But dammed if you do, damned if you don't.

Nonoperational

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Will you stop with the you thing, it's not my premise, take it up with the likes of Carl Carl Heneghan and the rest of the qualified experts.

Hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths are all questionable as we know from the start of the thread. You can not say they are all a result of Covid and that's especially true with a highly transmissible virus.

If you want to get into to coincidences we were told by the experts to our government that introducing mandatory policy in the general public without fact based evidence cases could rise similar to what was noted in the UK, guess what cases are still going up.

People who test positive are not necessarily infective and we the public have no idea when their Covid was active. Again that's not me it's a fault of the test. The CCO said it himself, what more do you need.

There's a few of you at it trying to dismiss what I've said to discredit the evidence, you wrong in that approach as it's not me your trying to discredit it's the experts, NPHET and the rest or the evidence in front of you.

You are making an absolutely show of yourself. Will you have a google of false negative and false positives and sensitivity and specifity and stop making your posts look like the most remedial on boards.

lucernarian

Akesh wrote: »

I think one of the major problems has been the way data has been lumped together. E.g. admissions for Covid-19 can be someone, perfectly healthy with Covid-19 but was admitted with a broken leg, heart attack etc. Now while this creates a problem for the health service as the patient will have to be isolated, it also gives people scope to question the reliability of the data being provided.

Similarly, the whole notion of 'trust the science', washed away pretty quickly over the whole face mask debacle which was science based on stock.

Not just on stock, there is the 2 metres social distancing advice which seems to have been well founded throughout the world - that negates the need for mask wearing in most circumstances, and indeed if we had still no availability of face coverings in the country today, we would have little else to manage control of the pandemic except lockdown-like measures.