Reply To: masks and antibodies

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#1873552
cent_cent
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Not sure about the whole mask thing to begin with but just a word on antibody testing.
Many of the tests (especially the earlier ones) had very high false positive rates. They were in the 5%-10% range. That doesnt sound high but in terms of false positives that can be very significant. Not sure where you live but if you dont live in NYC area, then the percent of population that had Covid is probably about 3% or so. If you assume that, then a test with a 10% false positive rate means that if you come back positive you have less than 25% chance (3/13) of actually having it. So the test is almost meaningless.
Even with a 5% false positive rate, with a 3% population rate you would have 3/8 chance of having it (37.5%) if you came back positive.
If you live in NYC where the population rate is about 25%, then it is much more meaningful even with 5-10% false positives.