Quote Originally Posted by basschick
the thing that bothers me is a fair chunk of people have false positives, yet the news is announcing this like it's a miracle.
That's what bugs me too. Whereas on the one hand it's obviously important for people to have faith in the tests and the system behind them, it's also key to point out that false positives are not unheard of. The tests are unspecific. Almost all viral infection tests are (as Rocky pointed out with his hep tests). The HIV test looks for the antibody, not the virus itself. Cross reactivity is a reality of the tests.

This isn't to say people should run around ignoring test results. But they're not 100% guaranteed, either. Close, but not 100%.

What kinda bugged me in that article was the person saying "Well we should really make sure that the samples tested were truly his and not mixed up at the lab" and the people saying "Well he should be retested again and again to make sure he's really neg" when you don't hear them saying "Well maybe his initial positive results were a lab mixup and it was someone else's sample" or that his initial positive shoulda been followed up by retest after retest after retest to be sure he really was positive.