It's true that site is highly selective and limited to examples in support of its arguments, judiciously omitting any evidence which might paint the contrary or doubt.
But to be fair to the OP, *that is exactly what this LS site does*.
That's the real world.
(the false positive argument is actually explained there quite well).
It's true, it was the one thing that stood out.Show it is a weak spot for them. They could not talk around it so they told the truth.
The false positive argument although not relevant now due to the prevalence will become VERY prominent again by Easter when cases are low.
Especially if they want this rumoured "under 1000 cases a day" for release of people.
I had a quick look at the other site and whilst it does not give anything like a full picture either, I did not see any blatant factual errors (the false positive argument is actually explained there quite well in relation to accuracy of case numbers versus specificity of any test).
I had seen the False Positive "explanation" before. But done much better. On the Norwegian FHI website.
But the explanation missed several important points. All numbers quoted for sensitivity / specificity are all from calibration tests done in very controlled circumstances with very high grade reference samples. Not some swap stuck up someones nose..
When it comes to just how accurate general clinical tests are in day to day use, not even high volume high stress situations like COVID testing, the results are not encouraging.
Here is a pretty good survey paper on the subject..
https://academic.oup.com/labmed/article/43/2/41/2505001
Then there are the problems peculiar to screening tests in general..
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4389712/
Thats why I think a 3% to 5% process error rate quiet separate from all the other problems is a very good starting point for the much bigger mathematical problem with low prevalence value mass screening testing.
Think of it as the equivalent of the car manufacturers quoted MPG for your car. You might get that value on a rare occasion but in the real world it will always be lower. Sometimes a lot lower. Because operating in the real world never gives you the perfect conditions of the manufacturers test rig. Its no different with any clinical screening test. The process error rates alone are gong to be a lot higher than the ones quoted by the manufacturer of the RT/PCR machines or those who did single point process calibration tests.
The false positive argument although not relevant now due to the prevalence will become VERY prominent again by Easter when cases are low.
Especially if they want this rumoured "under 1000 cases a day" for release of people.
The False positive rate (wrt tests) is less that 0.5% (evidenced by the fact that PCR positivity rates were at this level in July). Actually likely to be much lower since all positives were unlikely to have been false.
So when PCR positivity rates fall close to this then there is an issue to consider.
No true sceptics responded so far, just the "opposed to" clinging to the set of ridiculous arguments that are not convincing anyone, other than each other.
I am actually sceptical that lockdown has been the correct approach and I am certainly critical of implementation. However I am not buying the vast majority of the stuff that is written here. I had hoped to see people suggesting practical and thought out approaches to how it could have been done differently... or should be done in the future.
I am not seeing any of this at all. Instead, there is an endless repeating of dubious arguments and encouraging people not to get vaccinated.
You might as well write "I hate lockdown or anything else that the establishment suggests"
If well thought out approaches ever did come from all of this, it would be hard for them to be heard amongst all this noise.
