Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was overrun by the most disruptive and extensive of an increasing number of pseudo-epidemics caused by faith in rapid screening tests that ultimately turn out to be false positives — sensitive but not particularly specific.
“Many of the new molecular tests are quick but technically demanding, and each laboratory may do them in its own way. These tests, called “home brews,” are not commercially available, and there are no good estimates of their error rates. But their very sensitivity makes false positives likely, and when hundreds or thousands of people are tested, as occurred at Dartmouth, false positives can make it seem like there is an epidemic.” (New York Times )
The so-called epidemic of pertussis at Dartmouth turned out to be a spate of run-of-the-mill respiratory infections. Specific, but slower, tests failed to find any pertussis in any of the affected individuals. Proponents of the rapid tests argue that there is no way to be prepared for a potentially devastating pandemic without the risk of false positives from the rapid tests.
