In the Lateral Flow

A flawed comparison of testing statistics flows on social media.

The Brexit Party chairman had over 3,100 shares of his post asserting:

Lateral Flow Tests, agreed by PHE as 99.7% accurate, show 80% fewer cases in Liverpool v. Govt standard PCR tests.

The flawed comparison ignores that the tests are of different people. The post also mistakes the true-negative ratio for ‘accuracy’.

Measuring tests