Wildlandfirefighter wrote:
Actually it is fairly widely known and reported that there are more false negatives than false positives, most of the false positives come from the antibody test and yes that is because if you had been previously infected with another strain of coronavirus and have antibodies, the rapid antibody test can pick it up. The PCR test however is specific only to Covid-19 and false positives are very uncommon, but false negatives are very common.
I believe you actually have it backwards.
"Even when a sample test is undertaken to identify C19, questions remain. The RT-PCR test commonly used to test for C19 does not appear to be very reliable, nor is it designed as a diagnostic tool for identifying viruses.
A study from the Department of Microbiology, Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong found wild variations in RT-PCR accuracy. It was found to be between 22% – 80% reliable depending on how it was applied. This general unreliability has been confirmed by other studies. Further studies show clear discrepancies between RT-PCR test results and clinical indication from CT scans.
Most of these studies indicate RT-PCR failure to detect C19 in symptomatic patients, so-called “false negative” tests. When Chinese researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics School of Public Health conducted data analysis of the RT-PCR tests of asymptomatic patients they also found an 80% false positive rate."
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/20/coronavirus-lockdown-and-what-you-are-not-being-told-part-2/Rapid Test Is Less Sensitive and May Be Better for MostTo address some of the shortcomings in PCR testing, most notably the time it takes to get the result, rapid tests have been developed that can provide an answer in minutes. These tests also appear to be less sensitive, which is actually a good thing. One such rapid test, called the Sofia by Quidel, looks for the presence of antigens (coronavirus proteins) rather than RNA.
In a recent comparison of PCR and the Quidel rapid test, University of Arizona researchers discovered that while the rapid test can detect more than 80% of the infections found by slower PCR tests, when used on asymptomatic individuals, that rate dropped to just 32%. (The study has not been published yet but was reviewed by experts solicited by The New York Times.15,16)
While a 32% detection rate may sound terrible, appearances can be deceiving. Remember, if labs are using a cycle threshold (CT) of, say, 40 cycles, the number of positive PCR results will be vastly exaggerated.
According to The New York Times,17 researchers have been “unable to grow the coronavirus out of samples from volunteers whose PCR tests had CT values above 27.” If the virus cannot replicate, you will not get ill and are not infectious, so you cannot spread it to others.
When all PCR tests with a CT value over 30 were excluded from the comparison, the rapid test was found to detect more than 85% of the SARS-CoV-2 infections detected by the PCR tests, and this held true whether the individual had symptoms or not.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/11/19/covid-testing-fraud-fuels-casedemic.aspx?ui=0b7483587eabb187df52f7c1dc5fa5501e815a97b9f533f43cacc6655f9bbd9e&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20201119_HL2&mid=DM723904&rid=1014906348