This paper used by Sage suggested 400 of 1600 positives were false. Still happy to have your school child home under house arrest for two weeks?

[Treesofwood]

Big problem with false positive us unnecessary self isolation for the person rested. Now it can lead to 300 children also being asked to self isolate for 2 weeks. This paper suggests when numbers are low, which they are at the moment, falso positives are a big problem. The more we test, the more we find them. www.gov.uk/government/publications/gos-impact-of-false-positives-and-negatives-3-june-2020
And the more children miss education and even being allowed to breathe fresh air if other threads on here are something to go by.
Obviously this is not a peer reviewed paper, but it is of enough interest and reliability to be used by Sage. Interested to hear thoughts, including if I have actually totally misinterpreted it.

I’m not happy, but what’s the alternative? We could, of course, abandon testing, isolation, and any measures, treating like any cold or flu, but that would lead to far, far more a Covid cases and far more children off school than what we currently have. So even if you don’t care about Covid spreading, if you care about keeping your child in school, you’ll accept that testing is better than no testing, despite its flaws.

@Treesofwood

It's not much different if you actually follow it. But semantics aside, are you happy to self isolate with such a high false positive rate?

There is no such "high false positive rate". Your source states

"The UK operational false positive rate is unknown. There are no published studies on the operational false positive rate of any national COVID-19 testing programme."

Then have another test if someone genuinely has no symptoms. Or does not believe the test. Problem solved .

I would be more worried that France has had 10000 positive cases today and the figure is rising everyday .

And this is the estimate from ONS of the people testing positive

With confidence limits

2bazookas Did you read the whole paper?

Unsure33 Fine if it's you. What if its an unknown child within your child's bubble if 240? You won't know who it is, much less be able to insist on a retest. The impact of false positives are much higher now we have children in school, bring sent home because of a positive test in their year group. (Or false positive as the case may be)

It's not house arrest. Please don't be silly. Yes, I would keep my child home, as I would rather an error in testing kept them home unnecessarily rather than out and about with a virus.

Yes. Yes I'm 100% happy with it because it's hardly torturous to be at home for 2 weeks and I don't want to be a twat who doesn't give a shit if I or a family members spreads covid.

Alwayslatte I said house arrest because if you follow the rules really that is what it is. Especially if there is actually no medical reason for them to be home. There are people on other threads here who are very clear that there should be no foot stepped over the threshold.

Ktp100 You can't give people covid if you haven't got it. If the person who you were a close contact of did not actually have covid then you can't have caught it from them. Or do you just stay home all the time just in case.

Thanks for the explanation. What rate of RNA do other European countries set as their positive rate?

I would still rather isolate even if result was a false positive. Rather be safe than sorry - 2weeks of possible boredom compared to a lifetime of guilt if I passed anything on resulting in long term illness or death.

This is why positives should be followed up with further testing.

And I would be more worried about the people got a false positive so therefore thought they had already had it and therefore had immunity, the went on to catch it for real but didn’t bother to isolate that time because “it can’t be covid, I’ve already had it.

@Treesofwood

Bluelinings I'm shocked that you don't have an issue with imposed self isolation due to false positives. Why would you think that is OK?

Are you OK with people with a false negative attending work, school, social settings?

False positives and negatives are part of testing. Not ideal but they are.

If I had to isolate for 14 days for a false positive, where’s the harm enough to cause shock.

The study mentioned here just talks about the false positives from any similar tests. There’s no scandal. No known number of false positive of these years.

I’d rather protect others for the sake of a couple of weeks.

What’s so shocking about wanting to protect others?

these tests not these years

I am concerned about large numbers of people self isolating due to false positives. Not for myself - I would find it hard but I am on maternity leave so as a family we can manage it. But have people not seen the posts on here from those who fear for their livelihoods if they have to have their children off school for two weeks? What may be “two weeks of boredom” for you may be someone else losing the ability to feed their children and keep a roof over their heads. It does matter if that is happening to a lot of people as a result of false positives - does caring about people’s lives beyond Covid not also fall into the category of protecting others? I’m shocked that people can’t see beyond their own circumstances, but that has rather been a feature of this whole year.

Thanks for starting this thread, OP. Really valuable debate to open up, and I 100% have a moral issue with people being made to lockdown for false positives.

What’s the difference between a false positive and an asymptomatic carrier? I guess the asymptomatic carrier spreads the virus but the false positive doesn’t. They look the same in terms of the test though.

I suppose, if all positives were re-tested (either with the same or a different test), the number that are positive 2 times in a row are more likely to be true positives. It will not catch everyone, but it might help. The impact of self-isolation can be mitigated if the govt put in support measures. The govt can put in food delivery and rent support if they want but I don’t think the country is willing.

The detection rate is very high when compared to clinical tests for other conditions. Yes, some people will have a false positive. An awful lot more will have an unclear result. They won't bother isolating. Some people will test positive and keep right on going. In the general scheme of things, I'd be more worried about the people who don't hear they are positive, can't access tests, or can't afford to isolate, rather than this statistically small number for whom the test is the problem. In short, there's a lot more to get worked up about at the moment.

Thanks for starting this thread, OP. Really valuable debate to open up, and I 100% have a moral issue with people being made to lockdown for false positives.

Apart from a better test, which can’t be magically developed, or a second test - which we don’t seem to have the capacity for at the moment - what’s the alternative?

I think there’s a much bigger moral issue in not requiring the much larger number of true positives to isolate (which is logically the only alternative to not requiring false positives to isolate) as there’ll be more infection spread causing health (Covid and non-Covid, economic, educational and social issues!

I think this is a much bigger issue than many people realise when we are testing so many and the prevalence is relatively low compared to March and April we could easily be in a situation where there are more false positives than true positives. And it means that the virus will still be considered a problem for ever.
I don’t think we should be asking people to Isolate for two weeks on this basis it is disproportionate. It may keep happening to the same people who then can’t get an education, go to work or care for others.
The big mistake is thinking that we can get rid of the virus at all. The best we can do is slow it down so the NHS can cope. Elimination isn’t possible because the world is so interconnected and in some countries it is risk catching it or starving.
Sweden’s approach is looking wiser and wiser. Hard lockdowns just delay the inevitable.

Are we really meant to say “look, you’ve had a positive test, but it’s possible it could be false!... so just go about your daily business as normal.”?

To be honest, even getting the 25 percent of false positives to isolate is probably pretty useful in terms of reducing the spread of the virus. It’s like a randomly selected mini lockdown.

And if the Moonshot thing were to happen www.wired.co.uk/article/operation-moonshot-coronavirus-testing

False positives, false negatives - maybe they just even themselves out.

As for kids bit spreading it - time will tell. They spread everything else. Three days after being back at school with no social distancing and overcrowded, poorly ventilated rooms I had a horrid sore throat and a week later now have a cold. That's definitely come from school - doesn't help when you've 5 and 6 year olds sneezing over your tables and equipment. They appear incapable of 'catching' their coughs and sneezes no matter how many times we show them. I spend half my day with the cleaning spray out!

I teach 270 young children every week with no SD etc whilst being clinically vulnerable. I have no doubt children need to be in school, and they're loving being back.

But let's not pretend that schools are Covid secure really.

And let's not throw around deliberately inflammatory phrases of house arrest rather than self isolation - it doesn't help.

Throw away all the nonsense phrases designed to cajole (bubbles, secure) and those designed to inflame (house arrest, muzzles, etc) linked to this and just accept that we are back, the kids are back, families are back mixing and we're all hoping that it works out for the best.

[quote SheepandCow]@Kaktus I wrote to my MP ages ago.
Presumably all the we should all ignore it and 'live' with it kill the vulnerable/develop Long Covid posters write to their MPs and not campaign/post here?
Should nobody comment here and instead only write to their MP?[/quote]
It was just a question. I have seen you post on hundreds of threads that we should be following the NZ and Australia approach. I was wondering if you were actually campaigning for that in real life rather than just telling MN what we need to do.