Last review and update: June 29, 2020.
A Test of Physiological Literacy on COVID-19.
1. Based on the data in the screenshot below, estimate the sensitivity and specificity of the presence of fever as a test for the detection of COVID-19.
2. What is higher in this case, sensitivity or specificity?
How to use this test?
Self-education.
Sensitivity and specificity of a test are important characteristics of a test or of a symptom. Understanding these two notions is helpful to interpret any medical test and symptom.
Testing medical practitioners.
This test can also be used to assess a medical practitioner. If a medical practitioner is intimidated by tests, or if he or she gives a reply that is too far away from the context, it is a medical practitioner to avoid.
Several comments on specificity and sensitivity.
A PhD unfamiliar with sensitivity and specificity.
A social network account with a PhD in the title attempts to evaluate a test’s accuracy. But the person behind the account is not familiar with the terms specificity and sensitivity.
Our response:
Not good yet, PhD. A test has sensitivity and specificity. And in your analysis, you declare a value for specificity and you use the value for both sensitivity and specificity. It is incorrect. Sensitivity and specificity are rarely the same.
A highly touted for his COVID-19 models account cites a nonsensical phrase written by a dumb propaganda troll from the CNN.
Our comment:
Highly touted for his COVID-19 models Ethical Skeptic cites a nonsensical phrase written by a dumb propaganda troll from CNN: “90% test accuracy”. Analysis: There is no “accuracy”. There is sensitivity and specificity. If sensitivity is 90%, only 10% of the positives are missed.
Serology tests for COVID-19 by Quest Diagnostics in early May 2020: “sensitivity is unknown”.
A note: the comments below reflected the situation on May 11, 2020. Since then, things changed and the comments do not necessarily apply to the current situation.
Our comments and supporting screenshots:
Serology tests for COVID-19. Do not rush yet to do serology tests and do not overestimate the results. Abbott: “The absolute sensitivity of the SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay (by Abbott) is unknown.”
Abbott safely writes that “sensitivity is unknown” and the word “specificity” is absent in the insert.
Conclusions.
If you need help with selecting and interpreting a medical test, with selecting and testing medical practitioners, or other help, do not hesitate to get in contact with us.
Also, if you are a medical practitioner and want us to direct potential patients to you, or want to benefit from our research or engage in other types of collaboration, do not hesitate to get in contact with us. Sending your answer to the test in this post will be helpful.