"It depends on the setting, but (antigen tests) can be as high as a 50% false negative," said Engel, meaning that it will miss a lot of infected patients.
However, it has a much better reliability when an antigen test comes back positive.
Antigen tests don't find tiny amounts; that's why they are less reliable. However, if the test comes back negative, you just continue your regimen of testing yourself every day or two, because the virus expands exponentially but typically doesn't achieve full ability to spread until about day four or five. This way of testing only works if tests are cheap: the paper ones that the FDA has been reluctant to approve (because they are less than 98% accurate) are about $1 per test, done at home, with near-immediate results. I didn't see pricing information in the article linked, but it's key.
The whole point is to test often, and get results fast. Then you quarantine on a positive test, or get a 98% test for $$$ if you want. As the article doesn't quite say, but sort of admits, no one is doing the 98% accurate test because it's expensive and you get the result after it's too late.
But I also think the point is that there's a fairly large amount of known, possibly deliberate undercounting going on.
Also, from what I understand, the false-negative of both tests is specifically due to the patchiness and variability of where the virus sheds in the body. For antigen testing, this leads to such an easy improvement: just take 3 or 4 samples. Get both nostrils, and both cheeks. Or whatever.
I know of a study that showed differential false negatives by nostril of PCR testing, even though you're supposedly swabbing the cavern at the back. And that this accounted for a significant portion of the false-negatives. To me that means that swabs should be double-ended q-tips, and just swab the cavern from both nostrils. But no one listens to me.
On the veldt, people with small nostrils were attacked through their nose by predatory birds. So now testing is difficult.
In California there's a problem with our case count. Apparently the issue is our electronic data collection system, which separately from the antigen reporting issue, is causing a vast underreporting of disease spread in the state. So, even though it looks like our numbers are going down, no one really knows.
In California there's a problem with our case count. Apparently the issue is our electronic data collection system, which separately from the antigen reporting issue, is causing a vast underreporting of disease spread in the state. So, even though it looks like our numbers are going down, no one really knows.
If frequent testing is going to be integrated into regular life there will need to be a shitload of public education to go with it and based on how the mask education has gone I'm not terribly optimistic.
In the ancient world, the Mediterranean basis was the first area with widespread harvesting of birds for ritual sacrifice. Hence the birds were less predatory due to fear of humans and less evolutionary pressure lead to larger noses in Romans and the like.
That's not true, the Phoenicians had large scale sacrificial bird harvesting way before the Romans.
Then again, you actually specified Mediterraneans, not Romans so I guess its ok.
8 was me, in case people were wondering.
They just lost a whole port. Don't kick them while they are down.
They have just lost a whole port. Sorry.
Testing is another thing my state seems to be handling well, possibly due to our Dems in office + small population. Testing is free, easy to sign up for, and you perform your own mouth swab in your car. Results take 2-3 days. I've already been tested three times, and no one's suggested that I need do slow down or save them for others