[lbj]

In Denmark we increased our testing 10-fold and found 300% more people infected. Our response to that increase has been to shut down the country completely for 2 weeks and expand our governments right to act: Forced entry into private property, forced isolation and treatment, forced testing. If this is all because of an error in the test kit I'm going to be super ticked off.

[mempko]

Or think about it this way, this means as a percentage of real people infected, the mortality rate of COVID-19 is higher than thought. This false-positive rate means that the number of real cases is lower than reported and therefore mortality rate is higher. In other words, COVID-19 is more dangerous than thought if you catch it. Then again, I'm sure the actual cases dwarfs those reported since not everyone has been tested.

[glofish]

Mortality is almost always much lower than the initially reported and observed numbers.

There could be many more people that never even get to the testing phase.

[gpderetta]

AFAIK, that wasn't the case with SARS.

[ineedasername]

The same would be true of things like the Flu then too. Which means the true mortality rate of Flu is much lower, so even if COVID-19 is lower than current estimates for the same reason, it is still an order of magnitude higher than something like the Flu.

[AnthonyMouse]

It's possible to get more accurate numbers for the flu because it's so prevalent, which makes it possible to do random sampling of the general population. If you did random sampling of the general population for this coronavirus right now, ~100% of the positive results would be erroneous because probably less than 0.01% of the population actually has it.

[ineedasername]

That's an excellent point! Thank you!

[dnautics]

Yes, and that's why absolute population normalized mortality rate is the only really comparable thing across populations.

[lbj]

The mortality rate in Denmark is still a flat 0.0

[jmartinpetersen]

This is somewhat misleading information.

First, the country has NOT been completely shut down. I went shopping today and bought milk, yeast and flour. We didn't need toilet paper, but the store had plenty. All schools and most of the public sector closes down for two weeks on Monday. Some business (like restaurants, movie theaters and fitness gyms) are closing down on their own accord. But you can - if you will - still go shopping for clothes, gardening stuff, electronics and most importantly food.

Second, although the right to forced entry into private property was in the original draft it was removed before vote. Entry still follows the known rules of needing approval by a judge.

You are right, however, that forced testing, forced treatment, forced vaccination (if/when possible) and forced quarantine is mandated as per discretion of the public health authorities.

[hanche]

The situation is similar in Norway. We're a bit more strict, as parts of the private sector is also forcibly shut down: Gyms, pubs, hairdressers, movie theaters are all closed.

Our infection rate has grown dramatically in the past few days, and not as a result of increased testing AFAIK. Testing capacity has been limited, but is being drastically increased as of today. So maybe the already high growth rate will increase further as a result.

[lbj]

You are correct on all points, thanks for letting me know about the changed proposal.