Last month’s Coronavirus Open Thread did a fantastic job at being a place for coronavirus-related information and questions that didn’t merit a top level post, but at almost 400 comments, many of which were great at the time but are now obsolete, it’s getting a little creaky. So for the next month (probably. Who knows what’s going to happen in that month) this is the new spot for comments and questions about coronavirus that don’t fit anywhere else and aren’t worth a top level post.
Wondering what happened in last month’s thread? Here are the timeless and not-yet-eclipsed-by-events highlights:
Spiracular on why SARS-Cov-2 is unlikely to be lab-created.
Twodocuments collating estimates of basic epidemiological parameters, in response to this thread
Discussion on whether the tuberculosis vaccine provides protection against COVID-19.
The pool of people who 1. received a test while asymptomatic 2. tested positive and 3. are updating the public about their condition through mass media seems very small to me. The fact that two of them are turning out to remain fully asymptomatic seems to indicate that this is in fact likely to be a common thing. Somewhat surprising imo.
Interesting. I suppose another possibility is that both tests were false positives. Unlikely assuming that false positives are independent - but is that a reasonable assumption here? It seems possible they'd be correlated - e.g. if the tests were picking up some other infection.
Does anyone have a good understanding of this (in general, needn't be SARS-cov-2 specific)?
Under what circumstances is it (un)reasonable to assume that false positives are independent?
Sensitivity and specificity of the test. an image here
sensitivity = number of true positives / number of true positives + number of false negatives (true positives that test negative)
specificity = number of true negatives / number of true negatives + number of false positives (cross-reactions, other infections giving positive result)
Some info. I found here about covid19 PCR test. (It might not be the test that was was used but as far as I'm aware all current covid virus testing is via PCR so the tests should be of a very high spec... (read more)
Last month’s Coronavirus Open Thread did a fantastic job at being a place for coronavirus-related information and questions that didn’t merit a top level post, but at almost 400 comments, many of which were great at the time but are now obsolete, it’s getting a little creaky. So for the next month (probably. Who knows what’s going to happen in that month) this is the new spot for comments and questions about coronavirus that don’t fit anywhere else and aren’t worth a top level post.
Wondering what happened in last month’s thread? Here are the timeless and not-yet-eclipsed-by-events highlights:
Want to know what’s coming up in the future? Check out the Coronavirus Research Agenda and its related questions.
Wondering why the April thread is going up on 3/31? Because everything’s a little more confusing on 4/1 and I didn’t want the extra hassle.