Social media posts/memes reveal widespread ignorance about Covid-19 and pandemic policies

Social media posts/memes reveal widespread ignorance about Covid-19 and pandemic policies

I did some scanning of social media for “test positive” and found numerous cases of people testing positive for stupidity.

Quite a few were sharing a meme that a doctor or group of nurses had sent in a batch of unused Covid-19 tests to a lab and all came back as having tested positive. Obviously, that is a social media meme – there is never any provenance to the story, no details to check it out. Clearly, a fake meme suited for social mania sharing.

Another one that is more prevalent is people saying their wearing a cloth face mask prevented them from catching Covid-19; however, the official statements from the CDC are that, except for certified masks like N95 respirators, face masks DO NOT PROTECT YOU from others, they PROTECT OTHERS FROM YOU by reducing (not eliminating) droplet outflow during breathing, talking or coughing. All of the research papers say the same thing; a few based on computer models assert that you may get some limited inbound protection but this has not been verified with any real world data. From social media it is apparent that most do not understand this simple concept as expressed by government officials.

There is a belief that diagnostic tests are 100% accurate “or nearly 100% accurate”. Some, like RT-PCR, are said to be “nearly 100%” accurate (reality is “above 95%“). Others, like rapid-tests, may be in the 95-98% accurate range. That sounds very accurate – until you understand how collection, handling and lab procedures interfere with good intentions, and how statistics work and how a test like that can produce many more false positives than true positives when used to screen a large population sample where the prevalence is low. It seems that no one on social media understands this problem. As best I can tell, the false positive problem is a genuine problem when testing large groups of asymptomatic people who are very unlikely to be carriers of the disease (no symptoms, no contacts with sick people). Related oddity: An RT-PCR test costs $125 and has fairly high accuracy. A $5 rapid test that has a 30% false negative rate sounds like a disaster. But if you give the $5 test 3 times, the accuracy climbs to 97%. And costs just $15.

On Twitter an MD claims that the RT-PCR test has at least a 50% FP rate. That is certainly not what official sources are saying. Now, some think it is too sensitive in that the cycles in the chain reaction are set too high and as a result, the test finds a positive result for viral levels so low they are of no threat. But she did not cite a source for that claim. Always be careful of bold claims that do not cite sources.

Some post on social media that Covid-19 is not real, or that all of the tests are false positives. Neither of those claims are true. Further, many of those being tested are not randomly selected – they have symptoms or have been in known contact with a confirmed case. This completely changes the statistical false positive problem (See link above) in away that greatly reduces the FPs.

Another meme says that hospitals get reimbursed extra when a patient tests positive. Turns out this is true: Medicare provides a higher reimbursement for patients who test positive for Covid-19.

Many make accusations about someone who tested positive – many weeks ago – and since recovered – and imply they are a spreader. There is no evidence this is true – there is evidence that the period of being contagious is early in the disease progression and then the risk goes away.

A very common meme is that someone who caught the disease blames others – and they assert that they caught the disease because, obviously, one person, somewhere, was not wearing a face covering. Ironically, those saying this also assert that they always wear a mask – which indicates that wearing a mask did not protect inbound transmission, of course, but they still believe that wearing a mask is protective – even though they caught Covid-19. The logic escapes them.

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