Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA Profile picture
Nov 15, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I've yet to see a well-designed study showing that #COVID #RapidTests are no longer efficacious.

This one is no exception. Why?
5 reasons.

clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-… Image
1. They compare same-day PCR against self-administered/interpreted rapid tests.

For most ppl, that's not reality. It's RAT today or PCR result in 1-3 days (or do both).

A fairer comparison would be a RAT today versus a PCR yesterday (since you'd have to wait for results).
2. They excluded 13% of the sample who were "confirmatory testers" (weird term) -- basically, people who had just tested RAT+ and were coming in for a PCR.

Basically, they excluded the people for whom the test easily worked. Drug trialists pull this stuff all the time.
3. The study excluded ppl with symptoms. Some people use RATs before socializing to reduce risk (hopefully with other Swiss Cheese slices). BUT many use RATs when symptomatic. I don't think the study fairly represents how RATs are being used. Image
4. As RATs became more common, many novices started using them without following instructions well. It would have been helpful if the researchers also administered and interpreted a RAT. I suspect the diminished utility is more "user error" than a property of the test. Fixable.
5. RATs detect most closely the infectious window. A PCR will flip positive a litter earlier & stay positive longer. If a goal is to prevent forward transmission, rather than merely diagnosis, then studies like this are not testing hypotheses with real-world significance.

Mina: Image
Overall, I see RATs as an important piece of mitigation. Even in this anti-RAT study, positive & negative predictive values were 85%-98% across tests (Table S2).

That's about as efficacious an N95 among a novice wearer. All of our shields have holes, so we combine them. Image
RAT efficacy estimates are much higher than many "too good to be true" interventions you see pushed heavily: SSRIs, enovid, nasal sprays. 🤣🤣🤣

The evidence that those protect against COVID is so poor as to harm by distraction. Go buy some bittrex.

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More from @michael_hoerger

Jul 25
U.S. CDC numbers just released. Good news (for those not in Louisiana). "Only" a 5% national increase.

2025 has closely tracked with summer 2023 transmission. A 12-13% increase would have been expected based on those numbers. That said... Up: Midwest, Northeast Down: West, South
real-time data have been prone to retroactive corrections. This is frustrating, of course, because it leaves people making decisions based on data that are only of good quality when 2 weeks old.

If we saw a 12% increase this week, I'd say look at 2023 for a glimpse...
at the future. Instead, I would consider these plausible scenarios:
🔹Wave still similar to 2023
🔹Later wave with schools more implicated
🔹Something temporarily much better

Of course, temporarily better often means...
Read 6 tweets
Jul 21
1. PMC COVlD Dashboard, July 21, 2025 (U.S.)

COVlD is surging in 7 states, according to the CDC.
🔹Hawai'i (Very High)
🔹California (High)
🔹Nevada (High)
🔹Texas (High)
🔹Louisiana (High)
🔹Florida (High)
🔹South Carolina (High) Heat map, summarized in post
2. PMC COVlD Dashboard, July 21, 2025 (U.S.)

Western surge:
🔹California: 1 in 63 actively infectious, much higher in LA & Bay areas
🔹Hawai'i: 1 in 35 actively infectious
🔹Nevada: 1 in 63 actively infectious

These are wastewater derived estimates, not from individual tests CA map with stat summarized in post
NV  map with stat summarized in post
HI  map with stat summarized in post
3. PMC COVlD Dashboard, July 21, 2025 (U.S.)

Southern surge:

🔹Texas: 1 in 56
🔹Louisiana (New Orleans): 1 in 65
🔹Florida: 1 in 66
🔹South Carolina: 1 in 71

Again, wastewater estimates (wise indicator), not individual testing (low-quality data). SC map and stat noted in post
LA map and stat noted in post
FL map and stat noted in post
TX map and stat noted in post
Read 12 tweets
Jul 15
1) PMC COVlD Dashboard, July 14, 2025 (U.S.) 🧵

We estimate 1 in 148 Americans are actively infectious. This equates to 2.3 million infections/week, expected to result in >100,000 new #LongCOVID conditions & >800 deaths.

A room of 100 people is a coin toss of an exposure. Figure shows each wave of the pandemic.   Tables: Current Levels for Jul 14, 2025	 % of the Population Infectious	 0.7% (1 in 148)	 New Daily Infections	 324000	 New Weekly Infections	 2268000	 Resulting Weekly Long COVID Cases	 113,000 to 454,000	 Resulting Weekly Excess Deaths	 800 to 1,300	 	 Monthly Forecast	 Average % of the Population Infectious	 1.3% (1 in 80)	 Average New Daily Infections	 598766.6667	 New Infections During the Next Month	 17963000	 Resulting Monthly Long COVID Cases	 898,000 to 3,593,000	 Resulting Monthly Excess Deaths	 6,400 to 10,700	 	 Running Totals	 Infection...
2) PMC COVlD Dashboard, July 14, 2025 (U.S.) 🧵

Transmission (red) is closely tracking the path of 2 years ago (yellow). However, the incoming data are spotty. >20% of CDC states have limited/no data, & Biobot hasn't reported in weeks.

Could be MUCH worse or slightly better. Graph of year over year transmission. The current year (red) is tracking the path of two years ago (yellow) extremely closely. Two years ago, the peak was around September 1, at about 1 million daily estimated infections, and significantly higher than the Delta wave (blue).
3) PMC COVlD Dashboard, July 14, 2025 (U.S.) 🧵

Our model formalizes the mathematical assumptions in those predictions. If transmission follows what we know in terms of how waves grow or slow generally and historical patterns, this is what we'd expect.

The spottiness of the current real-time data reduce precision substantially. Retroactive corrections can make the forecast jump around from better to worse from one week to the next. Expect the worst. Hope for the best.Graph shows national transmission expected to increase the next several weeks.
Read 11 tweets
Jul 2
🌍Want to track COVID transmission accurately worldwide?

This PMC thread walks you through leading dashboards with information more up to date than WHO & EU directories.

🧵 1/ World map, countries with high-quality up-to-date surveillance systems shown in blue.
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) Dashboard provides weekly COVID updates for the U.S., using wastewater surveillance derived case estimation models and analytic forecasting.

We have added a list of international dashboards:
🧵 2/
pmc19.com/data/index.php…Australia: NSW Health Australia Department of Health, Western Australia Austria: Federal Government of Austria City of Vienna - Regional Coron-A Consortium Austria Czech Republic: State Health Institute Czech Republic Belgium: Belgian Institute for Health Canada: Government of Canada Andrew Young's Canada Visualization C19 Resources Canada * World Health Network (WHN) Canada **
Denmark: Statens Serum Institut Denmark Europe (multi-national): EU Wastewater Observatory Finland: National Institute for Health and Welfare Finland WHN Finland ** France: French Republic Data Airborne Risk Reduction Association (ARRA) France Zan Armstrong's France Visualization COVID Weather App France (Android, IOS, or Web) Thomas Delattre's France Visualization Germany: Infection Radar Germany Bay-VOC Bavaria Region Berlin Waterworks WHN Germany **
Hong Kong: Centre for Health Protection, Hong Kong Hungary: National Center for Public Health and Pharmacy of Hungary India: Pune Knowledge Cluster of India Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre of India Ireland: Health Protection Surveillance Centre Ireland Japan: Japan Institute for Health Security Latvia: Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment Latvia Lithuania: National Public Health Centre of Luthuania Luxembourg: Microbs Luxembourg Netherlands: National Institute for Public Health and the Environment Netherlands WHN Netherlands ** New Zealand: New Zealand Institute for...
Slovenia: National Institute of Public Health Slovenia Spain: Government of Catalonia - Regional South Africa: National Institute for Communicable Diseases of South Africa South Korea: Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency Sweden: Pathogens Sweden Switzerland: Swiss Confederation Federal Office of Public Health ETH Zurich Switzerland WISE Dashboard U.K.: Public Health Scotland Buckinghamshire Disability Service (BuDS) U.K.  *See the numbers 1-21 along the lower left. Click on 3-6 for national and regional data. ** Click on the dropdown menu. May need to try a different web browser.
Our international directory includes official government dashboards & those developed by citizen scientists.

We exclude countries that have stopped reporting in the past 2-12 months even if on EU or WHO lists. We also exclude low-quality data from opt-in testing programs.
🧵 3/
Read 43 tweets
Jun 24
PMC COVlD Dashboard, Jun 23, 2025 (U.S.)

🔥Biggest uptick since Jan
🔥1 in 167 actively infectious
🔥>2 million weekly infections
🔥700-1,200 resulting excess deaths from weekly infections

Track transmission closer to home w/our new state & international resources 👇

🧵1/6
PMC COVlD Dashboard, Jun 23, 2025 (U.S.)

🔹With >90% probability, we have entered the 11th COVlD wave.
🔹In a room of 50 people, there is already a 1 in 4 chance of an exposure.
🔹We expect nearly 15 million infections in the next month, and rising.

🧵2/6Current Levels for Jun 23, 2025	 % of the Population Infectious	 0.6% (1 in 167)	 New Daily Infections	 287000	 New Weekly Infections	 2009000	 Resulting Weekly Long COVID Cases	 100,000 to 402,000	 Resulting Weekly Excess Deaths	 700 to 1,200	 	 Monthly Forecast	 Average % of the Population Infectious	 1.0% (1 in 97)	 Average New Daily Infections	 493300	 New Infections During the Next Month	 14799000	 Resulting Monthly Long COVID Cases	 740,000 to 2,960,000	 Resulting Monthly Excess Deaths	 5,300 to 8,800	 	 Running Totals	 Infections Nationwide in 2025	 74869000	 Average Number of Infect...
PMC COVlD Dashboard, Jun 23, 2025 (U.S.)

We continue to expect transmission to break 500,000 daily infections in the U.S. around July 9th.

This is the same prediction as last week, as the forecast was dead on. Yet, there is considerably uncertainty around this timing.

🧵3/6Longitudinal transmission, past 12 months and 1-month forecast
Read 6 tweets
Jun 17
1) PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 16, 2025 (U.S.)

Current transmission (red line) closely tracks that of summer 2023 (yellow line).

We expect to break 500k daily infections between July 9 and the end of July. Our current forecast...Year over year graph of tranmission
2) PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 16, 2025 (U.S.)

Our current forecast is a bit more aggressive, predicting breaking 500k daily infections by July 9. The 2023 trend suggests end of July.

The 95% confidence interval shows large variation. Note that...Past 12 months of transmission (U.S.) and forecast
3) PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 16, 2025 (U.S.)

Note that CDC and Biobot both had retroactive corrections to last week's data, meaning the relative "lull" will last a little longer than the uncorrected data suggested. No big news on NB.1.8.1.

All good news, but...10 pandemic waves. Soon 11
Read 7 tweets

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