Home rapid testing

[jeezifonly]

As we approach the end of year two of COVID…

Are you making use of home rapid-test kits?
Before news of exposure?
Only after symptoms crop up? 

Been living in a “mixed sero-status” home forever, but not something this 🦠 contagious. Huzz hazzit (cold like symptoms) and I don’t, so we’re distancing and I will keep testing until I either test positive, or after he’s recovered and testing neg. We had Christmas dinner here w family and that was likely the exposure point. All present were triple vaxxed and tested neg in the am…

I’m finding more COVID rapid tests available online - still none on shelves at stores. They’re easy to use, and I hope they’re available for you too if you need them.

Do you think they are a good tool for you to make informed decisions about socializing, etc?  
Hoping to test negative tmw so I can go to Trader Joe’s… 

Fuck the N-95 mask. Switching to the 9500 

Edited January 3, 2022 by jeezifonly

[+ Tygerscent]

Use it every three days while traveling on tour. Use it before each Appointment. Offer them to Clients upon meeting if they have not been tested. 
 After each tour, I test every third day for ten days while I self isolate. 

 Order them by the case on line~
 Am laying low and not taking appointments until mid/late January when the omicron surge has passed~ Try to travel only during “safety bubble periods”. 
  I consider it a work tool~ 

 I don’t use them casually as a social tool because I don’t socialize publicly~ 

 I don’t socialize publicly because if I do and get sick with anything, it means that not only have I spent money, but now can’t work for two weeks or more because I’m sick~ It’s just easier to not do things socially like that~ 

 My social contact is with my Clients and I cherish them and that~ 

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by Tygerscent

[rvwnsd]

I have three two-packs in my bathroom vanity that I bought at CVS before the holidays. Just returned from vacation and took two flights, so will be testing myself tomorrow.

[+ nycman]

21 hours ago, jeezifonly said:

We had Christmas dinner here w family and that was likely the exposure point. All present were triple vaxxed and tested neg in the am…

What did we learn?

All this insane testing of asymptomatic people is misguided and useless.
Negative tests are especially useless.
Yes, a positive test means you should isolate.
Unfortunately, as is often the case in medicine, the inverse is not also true.
A negative test does not mean it’s ok to mass socialize. 

Massive amounts of testing at the boarders did nothing to slow Omicron from circling the globe in under 2 weeks.

Think about that for a minute.

Do you really think your "cocktail party swab protocol" stands a snowball’s chance in hell?

I hear you….."it’s better than nothing".
I’m not so sure it is. It’s giving people a false sense of security that clearly isn’t real.
They are blissfully running to social gatherings with the fixed delusion that they are somehow "safe".
We need to get back to just testing sick people and a blanket toning down of our social interactions.
That will do more (and cost billions less) than the enormous trash heap of swabs we are creating daily. 

[jeezifonly]

My situation is not proof of anything, it is strictly anecdotal. Know your own risks, take your own actions. 

[mike carey]

From the commentary here among usually reliable suspects, I mean sources, RATs are useful, less expensive but less reliable than PCRs. They are useful for targeted testing of cohorts of people who are likely or known to be contacts and for surveillance testing in vulnerable groups or groups of people who would pose a particular risk if they were unknowingly infectious. They are not all that much use to test someone at a single point in time but are useful to chart the emergence of disease in a cohort by testing them frequently. So, for example a single positive or a single negative doesn't say much (although depending who it was it may be advisable for a single positive result to be referred for a PCR test). Two negative tests followed by a third that is positive is a more reliable indicator of an actual positive case.

One thing that's come out here in the last couple of days is that there are indications that Omicron is more concentrated in the throat, so using just a swab of the nose for the RAT sample is likely to be far less reliable, and both the nose and the back of the throat should be swabbed.

There are certainly times when a negative RAT delivers false reassurance to the person and those they plan to meet. Perhaps if you are told you need an RAT to attend a social function deciding not to attend might be the wisest course of action. You may not have Covid, but you cannot be reasonably sure that some random who tested negative and goes doesn't have it anyway. This concern too will pass as people become more confident of their triple (or more?) vaccinations, but there's a way to go.

 

[Guest]

Fact check. This virus is less dangerous to a fully vaccinated person than the common cold. I can only think of two reasons to get tested:

(1) You're about to travel to a country which requires it, or

(2) You're about to meet someone in extremely frail health (taking cancer chemotherapy, transplant-rejection meds, or other immune-suppressing medications).

I really can't think of any other legitimate reason to get tested. If there's another good reason, I'd like to hear it. We really are in a different place than we were a year ago. We need to adjust our mindset to the new reality. We've been spreading respiratory viruses for centuries, and we now have safe and effective vaccines which mitigate the SARS-CoV-2 severity to less than that of a myriad of viruses we've been spreading around all of our lives. 

I will hear some say that they're afraid of infecting an anti-vaxxer, but those people have chosen the risk they're putting on themselves (and others). Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, have to bust my ass (let alone spend money) to ostensibly protect someone who is uninterested in such protection? 

One should be more interested in verifying vaccination status rather than antigen status. That being said, a rapid antigen test done immediately before a meeting is a reliable way to tell the person tested isn't contagious (not a test done a day before, much less 3 days before). The PCR's are rife with false positives, especially if you're looking for contagiousness. They will stay positive for weeks after a person is no longer contagious (the antigen tests for some time as well, but not weeks). PCR's can't be done on the spot, either, because part of the test is to amplify any specks of DNA found. 

[jeezifonly]

My husband tested neg on both PCR and Rapid Kit before testing positive twice on same kits. Timing, relative to the viral load, varied per individual? A well-intended crapshoot? I’m happy to test for folks with chemo or other immune issues. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, jeezifonly said:

My husband tested neg on both PCR and Rapid Kit before testing positive twice on same kits. Timing, relative to the viral load, varied per individual? A well-intended crapshoot? I’m happy to test for folks with chemo or other immune issues. 

The antigen levels rise extremely quickly once the incubation period (of a few days) is over. This is why any kind of antigen test (rapid or PCR) is only useful if done immediately before the appointment (or social encounter or whatever). Infectivity is highest right before and right after symptoms develop, then the infectivity drops off quickly. usually within a week unless there's immune suppression in the individual:

If you use the PCR, it will read positive weeks after the individual is no longer contagious (carrying live virus). 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Unicorn

[+ Pensant]

The tests are largely unavailable in the two places I live largely because of hoarding. I agree with @Unicorn on this topic. I’m triple vaxed and hiding on the island until the end of January, enjoying 9 hour deep sleeps, daily isolated workouts and the usual bonhomie with my neighbors. No alcohol, great reading and mediocre writing and listening to all of Bruckner’s symphonies. Nirvana. With the snow and towering Douglas firs, it resembles northern Sweden.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Pensant

[+ nycman]

19 hours ago, Unicorn said:

This is why any kind of antigen test (rapid or PCR)….

Minor semantics correction in an otherwise excellent post:

COVID tests are either “rapid antigen" or “PCR”.

The above wording makes it sound like there are two types of antigen tests, either "rapid" or "PCR".

That is incorrect. 

The PCR test looks for viral RNA. 

The antigen tests look for antigens that the virus presents and that you can make antibodies against.  

There are "rapid antigen" tests.
There are "PCR" tests.
There are no "antigen PCR" tests.

Excellent explanation for the science nerds out there…..

https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2021/11/whats-the-difference-between-a-pcr-and-antigen-covid-19-test/

Most importantly, you are infectious for 2-3 days before any test becomes positive.
And that’s why the swabbing insanity isn’t protecting us….at all. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by nycman

[Guest]

57 minutes ago, nycman said:

...Most importantly, you are infectious for 2-3 days before any test becomes positive.
...

Do  you have a reference for that? It is true that it takes a few days between contracting the virus and becoming contagious (having high enough live virus levels). However, my review of the literature (as shown in that graph from the journal Nature) indicates that while one is contagious a few days before becoming ill, the high virus levels should be detected by antigen tests (prior to feeling sick). That also makes intuitive sense. If the levels of live virus are high, the tests should be able to detect the infection. If you know of any studies which say otherwise, please provide the reference. If I'm wrong about that, I'm ready to learn something new, but I'd like to see the science. 

An antigen refers to any molecule in the virus, be it the surface protein (as in the rapid test) or the RNA (as in the PCR test). The technology is obviously different (a fluorescent antibody attaches to the protein directly in the rapid antigen test, and the RNA is amplified in the PCR test), but both tests ultimately look for antigens carried by the virus (albeit different antigens).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigen

" Antigens can be proteins, peptides (amino acid chains), polysaccharides (chains of monosaccharides/simple sugars), lipids, nucleic acids, or other biomolecules..." 

[+ nycman]

Potato, Pot-ah-toe.

But, I see your points.

In practical terms though, people rarely get tested 10 minutes before their planned exposure to others.
And as we both know, antigen testing sucks (maybe 80% sensitive?) and extremely few people have 
access to rapid PCR testing. And no one is doing PCR testing 10 minutes before their cocktail parties. 

3 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Do  you have a reference for that?

From the BMJ:

As you can see, yes there is the potential for detention by PCR prior to being infectious,
but the "lateral flow test" (aka antigen testing) misses the beginning of the infectious phase. 

Not to mention, it misses 20% (this article suggests up to 40%) of all PCR proven COVID 
infections. So yeah, not worthless. But damn close. And as the real world example of Omicron
has proven, swabbing isn’t useful for stopping spread or containment. 

For the nerds…..https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n208

Edited January 5, 2022 by nycman

[Guest]

3 hours ago, nycman said:

Potato, Pot-ah-toe.

But, I see your points.

In practical terms though, people rarely get tested 10 minutes before their planned exposure to others.
And as we both know, antigen testing sucks (maybe 80% sensitive?) and extremely few people have 
access to rapid PCR testing. And no one is doing PCR testing 10 minutes before their cocktail parties. 

From the BMJ:

As you can see, yes there is the potential for detention by PCR prior to being infectious,
but the "lateral flow test" (aka antigen testing) misses the beginning of the infectious phase. 

Not to mention, it misses 20% (this article suggests up to 40%) of all PCR proven COVID 
infections. So yeah, not worthless. But damn close. And as the real world example of Omicron
has proven, swabbing isn’t useful for stopping spread or containment. 

For the nerds…..https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n208

Well, your graph is rather vague as to whether than blue area (which is 1 day, per the graph) would correspond with the red dot or the white dot, since it's in between the two. But the ironic part is the PCR test takes time, since the RNA must be amplified, so whatever theoretical hours might be gained by the amplification is lost in the longer test result time needed. The line of the direct antigen test does seem to coincide quite nicely with the infectious period, while the PCR turns positive before and stays positive for up to months later, as it amplifies tiny, innocuous pieces of RNA. 

I heard on the news today that one lab was saying test results take 2 days, and it was taking longer in other labs. Well, results which take that long are useless. 

[mike carey]

26 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

I heard on the news today that one lab was saying test results take 2 days, and it was taking longer in other labs. Well, results which take that long are useless. 

One reason for the recent slowing of results for PCR tests being cited here is that in the past they would batch test four samples together and only test them individually if a batch returned a positive result, and few did. Now, almost every batch would contain at least one positive sample so they have to test every sample separately at the outset.

[+ nycman]

5 hours ago, Unicorn said:

The line of the direct antigen test does seem to coincide quite nicely with the infectious period…

It looks like it’s positive sooner than I thought, but the 20%-40% false negative rate makes it pretty much useless for containment or stopping spread, especially for a variant that is so highly transmissible. My main point is that I believe the tests are giving people a false sense of security, and that is paradoxically causing the tests to do more harm than good at this point.

We should return to using the tests to test sick people.
Which is what they are good at. 

Not screening the masses so they can go to cocktail parties.
Which is not what they were designed for, and for which they suck. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, nycman said:

It looks like it’s positive sooner than I thought, but the 20%-40% false negative rate makes it pretty much useless for containment or stopping spread, especially for a variant that is so highly transmissible. My main point is that I believe the tests are giving people a false sense of security, and that is paradoxically causing the tests to do more harm than good at this point.

We should return to using the tests to test sick people.
Which is what they are good at. 

Not screening the masses so they can go to cocktail parties.
Which is not what they were designed for, and for which they suck. 

I mostly agree with you, except that you have to define what you mean by "20 to 40% false negative." If by that what you mean (as most people mean when they use that terminology) is that the rapid antigen will give a negative result when the PCR gives a positive result, then the part of the statement about the high degree of false negatives is mostly true (I'm not sure 40%, but it depends what you're measuring), but the part where it states "mostly useless" is not correct. 

Because the PCR amplifies even specks of RNA material, it identifies readily both dead virus (the very long post-infectious period) as well as in the pre-infectious incubation period. So if one is looking for infectivity, the rapid antigen test is quite useful (although the results rapidly become less useful--within a matter of hours). If one is looking for any evidence of recent infection, then PCR is better--with the proviso that most people who test positive on PCR aren't contagious (though some are, of course). 

I agree that testing the day before going to a cocktail party can give a false sense of security. What's much more important is to know that everyone at the party is immunized, and, hopefully, no one went who has a highly compromised immune system or very frail health. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Unicorn

[NJF]

A new study suggests that rapid antigen tests may miss the early days of omicron infection and documented real world transmission of omicron by rapid antigen negative but PCR-positive people.

Here is the link to it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.04.22268770v1

[+ tassojunior]

NYT yesterday had a long piece (a bit confusing) that generally said a rapid test won't detect Omicron for at least a few first days and, that as far as PCRs, while Delta is detected best in nasal swabs, Omicron is detected best in cheek or throat swabs. I have "several" PCR and RT tests (my local library gives them out in handfuls) but now I don't know whether to follow instructions and swab my nose or to look for Omicron and swab my throat.

I've decided since Delta seems more deadly and there's still a lot of it around, to continue the nose-swab weekly PCRs. I'll save the rapid tests for confirmation of any positive or other as-needed uses. Is it polite to ask a sex partner to take a RT? With some of the crowded places I go in DC with just cheap blue masks (Trader Joe's at rush, WalMart in the projects, lines at Costco, etc) I'm amazed I keep testing negative but cautious it doesn't make me too bold. 

Edited January 6, 2022 by tassojunior

[+ José Soplanucas]

19 minutes ago, tassojunior said:

NYT yesterday had a long piece (a bit confusing) that generally said a rapid test won't detect Omicron for at least a few first days and, that as far as PCRs, while Delta is detected best in nasal swabs, Omicron is detected best in cheek or throat swabs. I have "several" PCR and RT tests (my local library gives them out in handfuls) but now I don't know whether to follow instructions and swab my nose or to look for Omicron and swab my throat.

I've decided since Delta seems more deadly and there's still a lot of it around, to continue the nose-swab weekly PCRs. I'll save the rapid tests for confirmation of any positive or other as-needed uses. Is it polite to ask a sex partner to take a RT? With some of the crowded places I go in DC with just cheap blue masks (Trader Joe's at rush, WalMart in the projects, lines at Costco, etc) I'm amazed I keep testing negative but cautious it doesn't make me too bold. 

I heard that in China they swab your ass. Not a joke. I did not research it, but a friend who visited China in 2020 told me that is/was the standard over there. 

[+ tassojunior]

9 hours ago, latbear4blk said:

I heard that in China they swab your ass. Not a joke. I did not research it, but a friend who visited China in 2020 told me that is/was the standard over there. 

Well we have that "quick self test" here.  ie: You stick your finger in your butt and if you can't smell it you have covid.

I have heard China swabs ass in tests. If we can't get people to take vaccines here I'd hate to see Americans' reaction to butthole testing. And then there's some who would insist on daily testing. 

Edited January 7, 2022 by tassojunior

[Luv2play]

4 hours ago, tassojunior said:

Well we have that "quick self test" here.  ie: You stick your finger in your butt and if you can't smell it you have covid.

I have heard China swabs ass in tests. If we can't people to take vaccines here I'd hate to see Americans' reaction to that.

It makes sense since the virus is detected in feces and wastewater of municipalities. So why not test the ass!

On 1/5/2022 at 12:37 PM, topunderachiever said:

The exhaustive data and information around Covid has been endless and voluminous among virtually every news outlet, health and medical organization, along with every federal, state and local governmental agency for almost 2 years.  Now more than ever.   

I'm amused by those on this board who bicker back and forth attempting to educate us with some "knowledge" they've acquired from those exact sources mentioned above.  Who exactly are you trying to impress with such regurgitation? 

What a waste of time.   For pete's sake, go plant a tree.  

 

[mike carey]

On the issue of nose or throat/cheek swabs, I had posted somewhere in the forum that a medical expert here had commented that Omicron is more strongly present in the throat and far less prevalent in the nasal passage than earlier variants. That appears to be becoming the accepted medical opinion. The instructions with the kits are likely to take some time to catch up with this, so it makes sense to swab both. (I wouldn't advocate adding an arse swab, but maybe that's just me.)

A comment on the wider discussion of the efficacy of RATs. There are two separate questions, how effective they are at detecting the disease accurately, and whether the testing being done with them is necessary or even useful. The former is purely one of the statistics for how well they work, the latter is one of whether you need to find out if a particular person has the disease. Opinions differ on which people you need to know that about.

If the aim of the testing is to exclude people known to be positive then the value is clearer than if the aim it so determine that people don't have the disease. We know that a negative test is only good for the five minutes after it is taken (hyperbolic exaggeration), so their benefit is in winnowing out some of the positive cases not in identifying those who are not. Public health officials know this so they will likely only mandate them as a gate-keeper test (as opposed to other reasons) when they see a benefit in excluding the proportion of population that return a positive test. One of the unstated reasons for testing more widely than is necessary is to reassure the wider community. The merits of this are at best debatable. Case in point is South Australia that as it was opening up the the eastern states required a RAT for the couple of weeks when their case load was negligible but scrapped it when their numbers started to rise and they had had time to explain to the SA public why they weren't needed. (I mean to explain why the tests were not needed, not to explain why the SA public was not needed. I make no comment on the latter.)

In Australia, not requiring a test is not a free-for-all. People who test positive must  isolate for usually seven days so they are taken out of circulation once they are known to have the disease. Testing is only required in limited specific circumstances. Surveillance testing is now a thing of the past. Public health policy has moved from aggressively looking for as many cases as can be found, to isolating known cases. Mandatory testing of all the household contacts of a known case is a completely different thing to testing everyone that was in a shopping centre the hour after a known case visited it.

[+ tassojunior]

2 minutes ago, mike carey said:

On the issue of nose or throat/cheek swabs, I had posted somewhere in the forum that a medical expert here had commented that Omicron is more strongly present in the throat and far less prevalent in the nasal passage than earlier variants. That appears to be becoming the accepted medical opinion. The instructions with the kits are likely to take some time to catch up with this, so it makes sense to swab both. (I wouldn't advocate adding an arse swab, but maybe that's just me.)

A comment on the wider discussion of the efficacy of RATs. There are two separate questions, how effective they are at detecting the disease accurately, and whether the testing being done with them is necessary or even useful. The former is purely one of the statistics for how well they work, the latter is one of whether you need to find out if a particular person has the disease. Opinions differ on which people you need to know that about.

If the aim of the testing is to exclude people known to be positive then the value is clearer than if the aim it so determine that people don't have the disease. We know that a negative test is only good for the five minutes after it is taken (hyperbolic exaggeration), so their benefit is in winnowing out some of the positive cases not in identifying those who are not. Public health officials know this so they will likely only mandate them as a gate-keeper test (as opposed to other reasons) when they see a benefit in excluding the proportion of population that return a positive test. One of the unstated reasons for testing more widely than is necessary is to reassure the wider community. The merits of this are at best debatable. Case in point is South Australia that as it was opening up the the eastern states required a RAT for the couple of weeks when their case load was negligible but scrapped it when their numbers started to rise and they had had time to explain to the SA public why they weren't needed. (I mean to explain why the tests were not needed, not to explain why the SA public was not needed. I make no comment on the latter.)

In Australia, not requiring a test is not a free-for-all. People who test positive must  isolate for usually seven days so they are taken out of circulation once they are known to have the disease. Testing is only required in limited specific circumstances. Surveillance testing is now a thing of the past. Public health policy has moved from aggressively looking for as many cases as can be found, to isolating known cases. Mandatory testing of all the household contacts of a known case is a completely different thing to testing everyone that was in a shopping centre the hour after a known case visited it.

I've thought of swabbing both my throat and nose to cover both variants (but only in that order !) Anal I plan to leave to the morning potty rapid smell test.

[mike carey]

2 minutes ago, tassojunior said:

I've thought of swabbing both my throat and nose to cover both variants (but only in that order !) Anal I plan to leave to the morning potty rapid smell test.

Agree on both counts, although I'm due to do an anal test, but bowel cancer screening (which is free here).

Earlier in the pandemic I recall seeing vision of PCR test stations where both were swabbed.