I've become concerned about two things:
- We are not getting enough information about the diagnostic sensitivity & specificity of the tests being used. The experts & commentators are only just starting to talk about these terms, but there is little discussion about the potential numbers of false negatives (important for the virus test) and false positives (important for the antibody test). I've included on our COVID-19 page links to a Wikipedia entry and a very nice Kennis Research applet that allows different values to be tried out
- There is no discussion about potential pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical errors with mass testing, especially with the home tests. Mario Plebani has just published a paper on this, which I've listed as no. 17 on our COVID-19 page
Maybe the Government/experts feel these concepts are too difficult and challenging for the general public to understand or needs to know. However, our PM promised greater openness & transparency in his latest announcement.
All the best
JGM