
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Tests Positive, Then Negative for Covid-19 - lordvon
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/08/06/899798411/ohio-gov-mike-dewine-tests-positive-for-the-coronavirus
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chx
[https://blog.plan99.net/pseudo-
epidemics-7603b2da839](https://blog.plan99.net/pseudo-epidemics-7603b2da839)
...

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systemsdude
The false positive test was for antigens. Tests like that are known to be less
accurate: [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/coronavirus-
antigen-...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/coronavirus-antigen-
tests-quick-and-cheap-too-often-wrong)

The two negatives were PCR tests. Those are different from antigen tests. The
blog post you've linked says there is a problem with false positives with PCR
tests, but that doesn't seem to be relevant here, given that both of those
results are negative.

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maskedinvader
Curious why this is interesting and upvoted so much here on HN. False positive
tests or false negative tests both could explain what happened.

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mc32
Because antigen are cheaper but have higher error rates, PCR tests are more
expensive but more accurate. Some people, I think B Gates among them, are
proposing making antigen available to everyone and expanding capacity to
30MM/week.

So this could illustrate some issues that people should bear in mind when
considering the antigen policy.

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losvedir
Errors in which sense? False positives like here, which can then be resolved
with the better PCR test, are much less of a concern than false negatives.

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babesh
The concern is whether the elevated positive tests that we are seeing is due
to false positives. This is probably the case if it is the antigen tests that
were administered.

Thus there was/is an emphasis on positive test rates rather than number of
positive tests. However this distinction probably has been hard to get across
to the public at large.

