COVID Test False Positives

Do you know what the false positive rates of these tests are ?

If 3% test positive and 0.5% are infected, then most of the positives are false, right?

Exactly! For any medical tests, there are 2 measurements: sensitivity and specificity, one to judge false positive and another judge the false negatives.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity

the article claims a 0% false negative rate. This is a MUCH more important claim. False positives are fine, if scary, you go and get a proper test the next day.

There are 50% false positive, and there are some false negative. And some more not exactly false negative, but simply got sick after the test. And you tell them: we tested everyone, all negatives can just resume normal life. What could go wrong?

What is the false positive rate for these tests?

The key point is in “basically” its a metaphor. The test kits have a 40% false positive and alternative test kits which may test using an entirely different method may improve this. If you think a 40% false positive is good I urge you to actually read the who guidelines which both state this information and recommend testing people multiple times over two weeks. Source is who technical guidelines for testing on their site.

With a 50% false positive rate, most of your positives are false positive. You might as well just tell everyone who asks for a test that they're infected.

Depending on the test used, there might be >50% false negatives in there.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this but a 0.5% false positive rate and a 51% positive rate means that you still get a 50% TRUE positive rate instead of the current rate, which is 0%. And then after you can follow up with a test that is more accurate. Everything has an error rate, even pregnancy tests do, and nobody argues that we should not use pregnancy tests.