Mass testing in schools as children returned this week is resulting in hundreds of positives – but viral prevalence is now so low that the large majority of them are wrong and result in children and their contacts isolating needlessly. Sarah Knapton in the Telegraph explains.
Biostaticians are concerned that infections in the community are now so low, that false positives and negatives are vastly outnumbering true cases, leading to real cases being missed and families needlessly being asked to isolate.
Pupils are currently being tested twice a week for coronavirus using lateral flow devices, but real-world data has shown they miss positive cases around 50% of the time.
Similarly, although they pick up 99.9% of negative cases, meaning fewer than 0.1% will be false positives, the prevalence rate is now low enough that false positives will be making a significant contribution to the overall figure.
Previously, positive tests were confirmed using a more accurate polymerase chain reaction (PCR) lab test, but this week the Government admitted it had quietly scrapped the process at the end of January.
It means that thousands of pupils and their families are having to isolate needlessly, and missing more school after months away from classrooms.
The latest figures from NHS Test and Trace in secondary schools found 328 positives out of 663,332 tests between February 25th and March 5th. That’s 1 in 2,000 pupils, which is far lower than the 1 in 270 that the latest ONS survey suggests is the current community prevalence. Some are concerned this means large numbers of cases are being missed, though the PCR-based ONS survey picks up many of the non-infectious cold positives which the less sensitive lateral flow tests (LFTs) do not. There is no reason to regard missing cold positives as a problem, particularly given the personal and economic cost of isolating positive cases.
In primary schools, 613 positives were found from 721,546 tests, or about 85 in 100,000. This gives an overall school prevalence rate of about 0.067%.
At this rate (if it were the true prevalence), out of a million tests 670 should come back as true positives. However, with a 0.1% false positive rate (a conservative estimate for LFTs, which were found in a report to have a 0.32% false positive rate) there would also be 1,000 false positives. That means 1,000 out of 1,670 positives, or around 60%, would be false. Of course, the 670 positives per million from the last couple of weeks of testing include the false positives, so the actual proportion of false positives will be higher.
Professor Jon Deeks, a biostatistician from the University of Birmingham, told the Telegraph:
We would expect far more false positives than true positives amongst those testing positives in schools. There are many uncertainties but given the DHSC data it seems likely that over 70% of positive test results are false positives, potentially many more. Addition of a confirmatory PCR would add little cost and would most likely reduce false positives to 1 in 1,000,000. The refusal to confirm lateral flow results with PCR is at best perplexing, will make testing less attractive, and create harm by wrongly isolating individuals, families and other close contacts.
Confirmatory PCR testing for LFT positives is unlikely to help, however, in terms of weeding out cold positives, as the PCR tests are much more sensitive than the LFTs (picking up many more cold positives) and so are unlikely to give a negative where an LFT has come out as a cold positive.
There is also the question of how many of the tests have been incorrectly carried out, perhaps on purpose, if self-administered, to avoid having to isolate?
Mass testing in schools was always a bad idea – cruel, intrusive, pointless. The high proportion of false positives, with their needless and disruptive requirement to self-isolate, only underlines that fact.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Once again the green blob is shown up as utterly incompetent, it’s either that or their loathing for humanity is causing the pursuit of planetary depopulation.
“the pursuit of planetary depopulation.”
Welcome aboard.
Could I (naively, probably) ask how the pursuit of net-zero assists with depopulation? What is the mechanism? Is it through people freezing to death as a result of fuel poverty? Or is it simply based on reducing life expectancies by increasing poverty?
Do you not know any history?
Why do you ask? Remind me, please. Are you one of these guys who answers a question with a question?
closing 3000 farms in the Netherlands. If you want to eat it will have to be insects and it won’t be unconditional. Use your imagination.
And using over 40 years of my car windscreen as a guage, insect numbers are considerably depleted as well. No meat, no insects, no crops because we’ve acheived net zero carbon dioxide (an important plant food I understand). I reckon that leaves all us plebs pretty much screwed.
“Net zero CO2” does not mean that there is no CO2 in the atmosphere, it means that CO2 is not increasing. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased over the last century.
I know this.I take it you’re not an an admirer of Chris Morrisons numerous features discussing this topic on this platform. I find them quite informative personally.
Sorry if I misinterpreted your post Ian (I too am vax-free, but that’s another story).
No, I’m not fan of Chris Morrison, I think he is tarnishing the Daily Sceptics’ brand. As I’ve said elsewhere here, this is a classic straw man argument – nobody is saying that batteries could or should replace gas power stations, yet CM has written a lengthy article as if they have.
The DS coverage of COVID and free speech has been fair, intelligent and well researched. This and other articles by CM do not meet their standards and he should be given the boot.
Cold, hungry people often die earlier than the warm and well fed. Death from cold causes up to 100x the deaths from high temperatures. Giving many people a toxic mRNA concoction also makes death more likely. There are quite a few very rich people who are behind these sorts of organisations including the green blob which has worked its way into governments and NGOs worldwide.
They do not have our welfare at heart.
I can give you one way it helps, and infact it is already occurring. Couples in the UK are increasingly deciding NOT to have children because of the energy and cost of living crisis.
The problem is that the Net Zero cabal lives in its own ‘maths is racist’ bubble, and that it now has the power and nothing to fear from the brainwashed plebs until the bills actually become due and unpayable.
Though I also think that many of them do know this. These people are not trying to stop it, but are instead working towards bringing about the total collapse of economies and currencies by other means, like plandemics, to fill up their and their sponsors own pockets a bit more along that way.
Don’t forget the depopulation element JayBee.
The people need to beg for the communist take over. To get to that stage things will have to be very bad, before they get even worse.
I can only presume since we’ve reached peak oil and realised we need fundamental change in how we go about energy generation, those who are in control of the levers are undoubtedly setting up a system to covet the remaining resources for themselves (is that stating the obvious?).
I suppose all is fair in love and war but what they’re fundamentally forgetting from their ivory towers is an ignorance for where the tech, breakthroughs and comforts they now enjoy and want to use in their dystopian future came from – bustling economies across the world reliant on fossil fuels. With their declaration of a [supposed] transition – a plan without a plan, they seem to think they’ve all the innovation they need to go further and beyond – a naive perspective if ever I realised one, because a few (even billions) of windmills and solar panels just ain’t gonna cut it.
If we were serious about net zero nuclear power would be top of a very short list – but it isn’t so I can only assume they’re manufacturing a collapse with the hope of some miraculous innovation coming along. But where will that breakthrough come from without the bustling economies and the next bright spark to create the innovation?
Journos looking for a crisis and the left who want to neuter the west have claimed we are running out of oil and gas for decades. Available oil is a function of price and technology as well as, ultimately, geology.
there are huge unexploited known reserves at todays prices. At the price of renewables today there is a vast additional reserve.
if only politicians would reverse their policy of closing down hydrocarbons and as a consequence, the economy.
Fair insight on the peak oil, or if we’re anywhere near that peak, but still even if we’re close I understand why the debate should shift.
Still, even if we are, who’s to say the current system isn’t our best bet to surpass any roadblocks. The purveying suggestion and the direction within the narrative looks to want to restrict everything, put a halt to life (slow it down). It’s a bite your nose to spite your face approach. What’s the system that’s got us to where we are, why would we want to hold that back, even when there are limited resources. We still need to innovate our way through it and for that you need the free exchange of ideas (not doing too well on that) and affordable power to function. Seems quite simple and those are the things in short supply (some of it manufactured).
Alternative theories on the origin of fossil fuels suggests that the earth replenishes its oil reserves through an abiotic process rather than the established theory that oil is the result of biodegraded plants and plankton. If this is true it pokes a hole in the sustainability argument.
and that abiotic approach replenishes quicker than the decomposition?
abiotic process* I meant
I believe this theory originated from Russia. The Western oil companies did not want any research that showed that oil was plentiful therefore cheap, and there is nobody with the financial incentive to carry it out. Which on its own is a good indicator that there is something in the abiotic theory.
So the Earth creates fossil fuels as fast as we use them. This is great news! Can you post a link so that I can explore this is more detail? Thanks.
‘I can only presume since we’ve reached peak oil…’
Have we? Again.
That would be the sixth time we’ve reached it in my lifetime so far.
So why is it necessary for Biden to ban further exploration and extraction in the USA, why moves to stop investment in future exploration and extraction elsewhere, why is fracking banned in UK and Europe?
Explain how it can be, if we have reached peak oil, that there is now far more oil available than ever before with estimates of enough known reserves for two to three centuries at projected increased use?
We are absoutely nowhere near peak oil.
I have no doubt that we all have a minimum of 100 years of “fossil” fuels that can be used affordably and efficiently. Plenty of time to construct enough nuclear at a much lower cost and infinitely less environmental damage than ruinables.
Peak Oil? Where do get that idea? There are 20 times more deposits of fossil fuels in the ground than we have actually used up until now.——- Remember that “deposits” are not the same thing as “reserves”
Looks like I need to do more research on the peak oil, or if we’re anywhere near it. Appreciate the responses.
Nettards all. They know that the true costs are beyond feasibility but want to keep this hidden from us.I am really thinking that the only action we can take collectively to stop this madness is a revolt . When this happens I think a few heads on spikes will be in order .I have a list of suitable candidates to hand ..lol
Who’d have thought it?
The idea that windmills and solar panels will ever create enough energy in the first place to warrant all this battery storage capacity is in itself laughable.
“In 2020 renewables accounted for more than 43.1% of the UK’s total of 312 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity generated. This outstripped fossil fuels over the course of a year”
– https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable
43.1% is laughable?
Check the latest definition of “renewables”.
The reason the batteries are needed is because wind and solar are not continuous and not dispatchable… thus unreliable.
Therefore there is no reliable way charge up these batteries so that they can supply electricity when wind/solar power fails, so power from them will be just as unreliable as the primary sources.
Storage falls foul of the very problem they are supposed to solve.
You have to be mentally subnormal not to see and understand this or if you do, just malicious.
Have no fear, sand batteries are here!
https://www.iflscience.com/gigantic-sand-battery-could-provide-a-cheap-solution-for-storing-renewable-energy-66243
Bunk
There is no shortage of magical thinking that yet another fancy scheme using sand or unicorn farts or whatever will save the day.
Let’s turn the clock back. Where was the properly conducted small scale trial WITH THOROUGH COST BENEFIT STUDY for closing coal mines, blowing up power stations and erecting giant whirligigs?
Answer – there never has been!
The parts of COVID which weren’t about imitating China were mostly huge government subsidies for hitherto unprofitable gene engineering technology. Likewise, the brains behind Nut Zero don’t want to save a planet or ever reach Net Zero. What they want is huge government subsidies for otherwise unviable alt tech like electric cars, solar installations on roof tops and giant wind mills on otherwise useless (ie, unprofitable) land.
How ridiculous. How many serfs would have access to private transport ?
Net Zero Promoters “Have No Idea What They Are Doing”……………….
Only they know EXACTLY what they are doing.
Do you know what they are doing? If so, what is it?
No wonder NET ZERO was simply waved through parliament with not a single question asked as to the cost/benefit of this absurdity. ———Blaming Tories for this is daft as all of the political class are in on this total scam. —–Who do these people really work for? It is isn’t you and it isn’t me . So who?——————-Or perhaps the idea is to head in the direction of NET ZERO knowing full well it can never happen, but achieve a lot of the wealth redistribution and lowering of living standards in the process but pull back ultimately from going all the way. Because going all the way is IMPOSSIBLE. The heating aspect of Net Zero alone is impossible as there are 22 million gas boilers in the UK and apart from building some wind turbines and looking a little into hydrogen, the government isn’t doing much to change that situation despite only having 29 years left. Successive governments have committed themselves to something that they have no idea how to achieve? ———Who in their right mind does this? Politics works best when politicians disagree and debate and discuss things, we should be very wary that something about this stinks since all politicians of all major parties all AGREE on Net Zero despite the cost and impossibility. ———-A cautionary tale
I have been getting and reading Francis Menton’s blog, the Manhattan Contrarion, for 2 years. It comes about 3 times a week and is always excellent in its content. I would recommend that all Daily Sceptic supporters read it.
He is one of the very few who has majored on the single biggest problem of the Net Zero policy, the storage of renewables. It has never been even looked at. I have been ‘educating’ my young Tory MP for the last 2 years – complete waste of time – thick as mince!
“Evidence grows by the day that the Net Zero fantasy is a societal and economic disaster waiting to happen.”
Chris, *nobody* could be that stupid and they’re not. They WANT you to die.
Who are “they” and why do they want us to die?
How are net zero policies going to make us die?
Is it possible they could have come up with a more efficient way to make us die?
Mineral oil (not ‘fossil fuels’) is the ‘greenest’ energy source. The whole net zero is all about control. It has zero to do with greeinie-ism
So you don’t believe that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has any effect on the amount of the Sun’s energy that is retained by the Earth. Interesting.
‘Germany, fully replacing natural gas back-up with battery storage “is a multi-trillion dollar project, likely costing a multiple of the country’s GDP, and thus completely infeasible”’
Chris Morrison has fabricated a classic straw man argument. No-one who has authority in these matters is suggesting that batteries be used to replace gas power stations. The idea is ludicrous.
Batteries are used for very short term storage to avoid the use of expensive “peaker plants”. Their advantage over peaker plants is that they can respond to changes in supply/demand in milliseconds, thus making the grid more robust.
Before anyone’s blood pressure gets too high, the 200MWh battery being installed near Hull by Harmony Energy is not subsidised and is a purely commercial undertaking [https://www.harmonyenergy.co.uk/general/harmony-energy-income-trust-brings-europes-largest-battery-energy-storage-system-online/].
Perhaps we can all agree that the price of gas is currently very high, most of it is imported, and supply may become restricted even at any price.
Is it not therefore logical to replace as much gas as possible with home grown wind and solar, the price of which is low, constant, predictable and not subject to conflicts abroad?