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To Test or Not To Test
Who thought that testing for COVID could be so frustrating? I guess I’m just lucky …
My adventure started with what I thought was an allergy attack. I almost never catch colds or viruses, and rarely have allergic reactions to pollen. But I figured I’d pop a 24-hour allergy pill, and I’d be fine. And I was for a little while. Or so I thought …
But on Tuesday, my “allergies” were worse. And by this morning, I sounded like a sick sea lion and had to cancel a breakfast with a friend. And then I thought the worst—
Maybe it’s COVID.
So, I’m not so much worried about me catching COVID, but I live in a 55+ community, and we have our share of nonvaccinated folks, with many people who are terrified of COVID, overweight, diabetic, and suffering from various other maladies. So, I figured I’d be a good citizen and get tested. Simple, right?
Wrong.
Tests were not available in the local pharmacies without signing your life away with application forms. Most locations had no testing slots available today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, my nose is still stuffed up, and my cough won’t quit.
So, I finally called my doctor’s office to see if they could refer me to somewhere — anywhere — in central Florida. Instead, they asked us which symptoms we were experiencing and said if we could come to their office, they’d test us.
Just like that. Almost.
So, we drove to the office and waited in our car outside, and we got a rapid test from the nurse. If we tested positive, we’d get a call on my cellphone. A part of me wanted to get that call just to get the whole thing over with! But instead of calling, she came down to plunge the swab up into our brains again and said we’d hear something in a couple of days. She suspected we had some run-of-the-mill virus, and we should avoid people until it was gone, get lots of rest, and drink liquids. Naturally, we were thrilled with the customer service, given the extra trouble they’d had to go to.
Here’s the interesting part for me: A part of me wanted to test positive, since I’m twice shot and boosted, and at least I’d have better protection. Another part of me wants to test negative from the second time she swabbed so that I don’t have the virus and don’t have to quarantine for umpteen days. A part of me wishes I’d assumed that I’d caught the rare cold and stayed away from people, and forgot about testing.
So, we’ll wait for the final results. Should I hope for positive results? Negative results? Or be smart, and forget the whole thing for now? That gets my vote.
I hate this COVID stuff.
Published in Healthcare
Caveat. No test s perfect.
Also I you test too early you increase the risk of a false negative.
Since you mentioned the “squash addiction” yourself, maybe I didn’t need to self-redact in your other post.
That’s true, but this was about 20 hours after she first reported symptoms. And if you think it’s too early, you can do the 2nd test as Abbott recommends.
Nasal Saline spray and saltwater gargle help with Covid and other colds. Quite a lot, actually.
So does aspirin. If you have a cold I recommend both, Covid or no.
Papers available on both upon request.
This mass hysteria will never end until everyone stops getting worthless, meaningless tests.
Why should I get tested? I don’t get tested for a cold or the flu?
That makes two of us . . .
And what is so worthless and meaningless about them? Knowing what you have helps you know how to treat it and what to do. I would have bet a ton of money that I just had a cold–it started like every other cold I’ve ever had. But the test came back positive for COVID and the symptoms got progressively worse. Much worse than the typical cold or flu. I realize everyone’s risk tolerance is different, and that not everyone has the same experience with COVID, but it can be quite serious and getting tested means you can take precautions to avoid exposing others to the virus. That’s why Susan’s jumping through the hoops to test. We all hate it and want it to end, but that doesn’t mean you should act irresponsibly. That isn’t hysteria, but being a decent human being. I presume that when you have the flu you take basic precautions to not get others sick, right? Why would COVID be any different?
I hope that Susan gets better soon. The waiting stinks.
Thanks, @mdhahn. So far my limited misery is acting like a virus and hasn’t worsened. Fingers crossed.
I’m glad to hear that! I hope it stays that way.
Sure. Test yourself if you and your doc think it will help in treatment, although starting with simple treatment for whatever virus it might be right away is maybe even more sensible since there are harmless protocols that appear to help viruses in general. The main problems with the tests have been their poor quality, and more important, their connection to contact tracing and the whole lockdown disaster. Those links need to be broken. If you feel ill, stay home and take care of yourself has always been good advice.
If you were in northern Australia you would already have been placed in a camp for suspicion of infection.
I don’t understand why it’s taking so long. I got tested at the doctor’s office in under 30 minutes. I did a drug store test myself in a short time and once by the DC government with a 24-hour response time–all of that in the same week when I had a spate of really annoying routine flu symptoms.
Just for fun Percival could download a recording of an epic coughing fit on his phone. Play it every once and awhile in the lab. Sit back and enjoy.
When I get a cold I just stay home and keep from spreading it. That was a little harder to do before I retired. But if I had a cheap home test to know when I was infectious, I would use it to help me know when I was infectious, and to know just when it was safe to go out again.
Tests are good. A PSA test revealed that I had prostate cancer when I was in my early 50s, an age when they tend to be more aggressive. I would be dead by now if I hadn’t done that test. (It was my first visit to a doctor in a few years, so could have been caught earlier.) But you don’t have to be young to want to know. At the time I got mine, there was controversy because some researchers were recommending against routine testing, saying it wasn’t cost-effective on a population level. That was one of the things that made me realize what a danger to individual health the CDC can be–if they look only at population level effects. A friend of mine is now in a bad way with prostate cancer, because his doctor is one of those who bought into those recommendations and didn’t do annual PSA tests.
My wife and I used the antigen tests before visiting an elderly uncle last September, to make sure we weren’t bringing covid with us. (And not knowing that he already had had covid and got over it. He has since died of other causes, and no, his death wasn’t recorded as due to covid.) The tests aren’t perfect, but they reduce the risk to a level that was acceptable to us. You can’t bring the world to a halt just because your knowledge is imperfect.
One of the good thing about some, though not all, of the antigen tests is that you don’t have to report anything to the local health authorities. I figure I can make my own decisions based on the tests, and don’t need the government to swoop in, snoop, and supervise. In some countries the same Abbott test is packaged and administered in a way that you have to get your local health authorities involved. No, thank you.
I stated earlier that the doc’s office rapid test came out negative. We did a follow-up PCR that went to a lab. That could come in today or later. Labs are flooded and there’s only so much you can try to do to hurry things along.
Sorry, an indeterminate outcome means it’s the camp for you.
If you’re vaccinated why worry about me? If you’re not, like me you’re not afraid if you get the Wuflu or any other flu.
There is no vaccine against a cold. In the case of the covid vaccines, although they do a good job protecting you from severe illness in the 2nd stage of the disease, they aren’t so good at protecting you from the upper respiratory infection that initially makes you infectious. They help, but don’t provide anything close to the “sterilizing immunity” that may of us had hoped for. (I thought that was common knowledge by now, but I don’t know what consumers of television are hearing.) We knew from the time the vaccines were approved that they didn’t provide sterilizing immunity, but still, some of us hoped for better at that stage of the disease than we seem to be getting now.
It’s another reason to be skeptical of the value of vaccine mandates (never mind the social and political dangers of mandates) in places where testing will do even better at protecting the vulnerable.
There is some protection from infection from vaccines. How long it lasts is inversely proportional to age. Since COVID will never go away completely (and we will need to increase testing to make sure we get big numbers so we know that) and Anthony Fauci will thus still be in charge of our lives with the flying monkeys in the MSM and social media as his enforcers, the only way for vaccines to (allegedly) stop infection is to mandate quarterly boosters for everybody under 50 and every 60 days for anyone older and for all who are deemed vulnerable. The subdermal tracking chips will make enforcement vastly easier than armbands or tags on neck halyards.
or yellow Stars of David?
Isn’t it breathtaking how fast “Health care is a human right!” morphed into “If you’re not vaxxed, no health care for you!”
1. They’re inaccurate.
2. Inaccurate results contribute to inaccurate statistics.
3. Inaccurate (some would argue fabricated) statistics have lead to ever more draconian responses by leaders and bureaucrats, the dismantling of freedoms and the stifling academic and scientific debate.
4. Continual testing is traumatizing to children.
5. Continual testing is psychological harming adults (and children) by fostering a spirit of fear over every little cough and eradicating common sense about healthy living.
6. Continual testing has led to segregation.
7. The notion that getting tested makes you a decent person is mere virtue signaling. Anything that contributes to a society full of self-righteous people celebrating their personal health decisions as bettering society is a worse plague than a simple, treatable, highly survivable virus, or any other disease.
8. The medical establishment isn’t interested in treating Covid. If it was, they wouldn’t have banned the most effective, low-cost, readily available treatments for it.
For all of these (and many other) reasons, getting tested for Covid is both worthless and unnecessary. I could also add: detrimental. In fact, I think I will.
That sounds like the government control-freak objection to rapid home tests that we’ve been hearing from the usual suspects for almost two years: People will take them without supervision and without reporting, and won’t report their data to us.
Only in those circumstances, and that by itself leads to the inaccuracy factor.
That’s because the vaccine is the first health care human right, and if you refuse that one, you don’t deserve the rest.
Do not give any child aspirin for a cold or other virus infection.
The tests are not that inaccurate. We’ve checked the accuracy of the rapid tests using a second method. Certainly better then nothing. Particularly for people at higher risk.
I agree we have to move on from our earlier methods. This is now endemic, it’s not going away. So we need to use reasonable, common sense methods to diagnose and treat.
I know nothing’s perfect, and I know the only certainties are death and taxes – but, thanks!
Haven’t read up on all the comments, but this just further impresses me with Colorado’s COVID response. You’re in Florida, right? I mean, Florida is run by Republicans!
We have drive through testing. It’s incredibly efficient. Make an appointment. Show up in the 15 minute window (I was early). Spend 5 – 10 minutes in line, max, and never get out of your car. They don’t get anywhere near your brain with the swab. It’s not necessary (and not even desirable). A little tickle and it’s over. I had my results in 24 hours by email. Easy peasy.
Colorado has done the oddball thing again when electing Democrats. We’ve managed to get a governor who isn’t hysteric and acts almost like a Republican, but apparently with even better processes in place than DeSantis!
That used to be my philosophy, it always bothered me to see someone with a bad cold coming to work and sharing: Seemed to me to be a form of theft.