Faulty testing may entirely account for "asymptomatic cases".
Some highlights from the NYTimes article on the project's results:
- Of the 14 tests, only three delivered consistently reliable results. Even the best had some flaws.
...
In the new research, researchers found that only one of the tests never delivered a so-called false positive — that is, it never mistakenly signaled antibodies in people who did not have them.
Two other tests did not deliver false-positive results 99 percent of the time.
But the converse was not true. Even these three tests detected antibodies in infected people only 90 percent of the time, at best.
...
The proportion of people in the United States who have been exposed to the coronavirus is likely to be 5 percent or less, Dr. Hensley said. “If your kit has a 3 percent false-positive, how do you interpret that? It’s basically impossible,” he said. “If your kit has 14 percent false positive, it’s useless.”
So maybe... maybe we would want to perform multiple types of tests after collecting a single specimen? What an absolutely bonkers idea, thank god we have so many tests just lying around!
No but seriously, it's hard to have much chill when I feel like we could've known this a month ago if we had an executive branch that wasn't somehow still being run as Trump's PR firm, primarily.
b_b mk kleinbl00 Devac (...any other masochists out there wanna be on this list?? just let me know. edit: or if you love yourself too much to stay on this list, that is also acceptable)