Originally Posted by
jfsully
When a doctor says “case,” the meaning depends on context. Most physicians see patients who are ill, so if they saw 10 “cases” of something, it would generally mean 10 people with illness. This would be the meaning 90% of the time.
Covid is an unusual situation because we test asymptomatic people, which we don’t generally do for other illnesses. So I have seen “cases” applied to positive PCR tests, meaning that someone testing positive is actively infected, regardless if they have symptoms. So our hospital has seen several hundred “cases” but many were not symptomatic and so wouldn’t be a “case” in epidemiology parlance. Most doctors caring for patients don’t talk about IFR or CFR. Thats for epidemiologists and public health researchers.
In terms of the media and covid, the cats out of the bag, and to expect precision of medical jargon is just unrealistic, unfortunately, so you have to just pay attention to what people are talking about. I’m pretty careful to be precise, and mixed up apples and oranges myself, so I can’t drag anyone else too hard for making that error.
If you have antibodies from a previous infection, say Hep B antibodies from a vaccine, we would not call a positive antibody test a “case” in the clinic. This is probably a poor example because people with antibodies from a vaccination most likely never had the illness, but even if you had, nobody would say “I saw a case of hep B today” just from seeing someone with a positive antibody test.
In terms of depression, since you mentioned it, the diagnosis is always and only made based on symptoms reported and observed, not on a physiologic test.