Current Events > Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine faces backlash over conflicting virus test results

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https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/08/09/covid-19-ohio-gov-dewine-conflicting-test-results/3330825001/

So my question is, are the tests even accurate? How many false positives have there been?

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in february, when trump realized that he'd shit the bed by spending a month denying covid, he forced the CDC to get rid of any checks and limits on companies looking to put testing kits onto the market. without those limits, and the strict oversights enforced by them, dozens of companies put out a metric fuckton of antigen test kits; and many of them were complete and total bullshit. often reporting false negatives and false positives, the majority of the tests were crap.

the nature of an antigen test is very hit or miss by itself. antigen tests look at proteins expressed by the virus, and since they are often some form of buccal swab, they're only going to work when the virus is found on the surface that is swabbed.

the testing data that's released, the confirmed numbers via tests, those are based off of PCR tests. PCR tests have a much higher and far more consistent accuracy compared to antigen or antibody tests, but their turn-around time is much longer since there are a limited number of sites that can actually process the samples collected.

as for your final question. i always find it hilarious to see skeptics screaming about all the false positives, yet i never see anyone even bring up the fact that false negatives for these antigen tests were/are a major issue. i know several people that likely had covid a few months back, but because of the severe limit on PCR tests and the fact that access to those tests has often been gated behind a positive result from an antigen test, they never actually got confirmed as covid positive.

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