The "False Hope" is actually true and important

If the prevalence of disease in your area is low, it is actually more likely to be a false positive than a true positive. So if you test positive, you might have "false hope" that you've actually had it and then not take the appropriate precautions.

This gets into the geekiness of medical statistics, but sensitivity and specificity are specific to the test, but if you really want to know what matters to the patient, it's positive and negative predictive value. Positive predictive value is if the test is positive, what is the likelihood that it is a true positive. This is significantly impacted by prevalence...when a disease prevalence is low, than for all but the most sensitive tests, a positive test is actually more likely to be a false positive than a true positive. As prevalence goes higher (ie more people are infected) than the accuracy improves. So the likelihood that positive antibody tests are "true positives" will increase the further along we get into this disease.

Here is a link to my discussion, with another link within it to a good explanation

Click here for link at https://ndnation.com/boards/showpost.php?b=backroom;pid=7771