Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
It’s a nice theory. But nowhere does it suggest that a hypothetical poorly performing test would by itself create exponential, or near exponential, growth in a society that isn’t experiencing more positive cases of Covid-19.
Surely the same trends would be seen in Italy, Sweden, China, New Zealand or other cases with supposedly “low” prevalence of the virus. Yet they are not. Unless of course we are back at Britain being a special case for (insert reason unknown).
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Yeah, if the false positive rate is constant which you would assume it was unless the assay methodology changed, then the infection rate, not absolute numbers, would remain constant if the true positives were constant. This is why absolute numbers are not always useful (though easier to understand)
The infection rate is definitely going up according to the ONS data (
link) What is less clear is how this equates to illness and death as there was no real community testing back in April/May time so we have nothing to compare it with really in the UK.