3 ms·

how does this help? if you can test at home, so what? how does that change anything? it's not being tracked, can you trust results, etc.

SkyPuncher 6y ago
It won't do much for most people - which is why healthcare workers and first responders are being prioritized. My wife is a doctor and cared for our county's first COVID-positive patient before he was formally diagnosed (took 11 days to get test results). She was on self-isolation for 3 weeks for late March/early April. Two weeks for the initial exposure, 1 more week because of a low-grade fever. We're still not certain if she had it (I got symptoms about 5 days after she did) because it was extremely difficult to get her tested. The challenge now is monitoring her with likely exposure when she'll be working in-patient for the month of June. While these tests aren't perfect, they can give us some direction on how we need handle things at home. The price is reasonable enough that we can simply order the test for her directly without having to call 20 different people across 3 different hospital systems to get the sign-off on testing. A negative doesn't tell us much (as she could still have it), but a positive is a strong indication that she should be avoiding patient interactions and likely self-isolating at home.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  > A negative doesn't tell us much (as she could still have it), but a positive is a strong indication that she should be avoiding patient interactions and likely self-isolating at home. Doesn't it only tell you if you should now be immune once your sickness is over? Otherwise you have to act like you have it if you have the symptoms regardless of the test. Avoiding patient interactions and self isolating should happen regardless, shouldn't it?
  - SkyPuncher 6y ago
    In theory, yes. Sensitivity and Specificity should be considered. In practice, there's a lot of BS going on in the healthcare system right now - these tests are often taken at face value. It's unfortunate, but somewhat understandable given the extreme circumstances of our health care environment. If everyone with mild symptoms (likely not COVID related) had to self-isolate for two weeks, we wouldn't have any healthcare workers left to care for people. This seems to be a "good enough" approach for most healthcare systems.
gweinberg 6y ago
Saves the risk of infecting someone or being infected at a testing center. You don't want to be going near a hospital these days if you don't have to.
KaiserPro 6y ago
Isn't it a notifiable disease? Wouldn't that put the onus on the testing company to report a positive test? I'm not sure how that works in the states.
JshWright 6y ago
> it's not being tracked Why wouldn't it be tracked?

SkyPuncher 6y ago

It won't do much for most people - which is why healthcare workers and first responders are being prioritized. My wife is a doctor and cared for our county's first COVID-positive patient before he was formally diagnosed (took 11 days to get test results). She was on self-isolation for 3 weeks for late March/early April. Two weeks for the initial exposure, 1 more week because of a low-grade fever. We're still not certain if she had it (I got symptoms about 5 days after she did) because it was extremely difficult to get her tested. The challenge now is monitoring her with likely exposure when she'll be working in-patient for the month of June. While these tests aren't perfect, they can give us some direction on how we need handle things at home. The price is reasonable enough that we can simply order the test for her directly without having to call 20 different people across 3 different hospital systems to get the sign-off on testing. A negative doesn't tell us much (as she could still have it), but a positive is a strong indication that she should be avoiding patient interactions and likely self-isolating at home.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
> A negative doesn't tell us much (as she could still have it), but a positive is a strong indication that she should be avoiding patient interactions and likely self-isolating at home. Doesn't it only tell you if you should now be immune once your sickness is over? Otherwise you have to act like you have it if you have the symptoms regardless of the test. Avoiding patient interactions and self isolating should happen regardless, shouldn't it?
- SkyPuncher 6y ago
  In theory, yes. Sensitivity and Specificity should be considered. In practice, there's a lot of BS going on in the healthcare system right now - these tests are often taken at face value. It's unfortunate, but somewhat understandable given the extreme circumstances of our health care environment. If everyone with mild symptoms (likely not COVID related) had to self-isolate for two weeks, we wouldn't have any healthcare workers left to care for people. This seems to be a "good enough" approach for most healthcare systems.

gweinberg 6y ago

Saves the risk of infecting someone or being infected at a testing center. You don't want to be going near a hospital these days if you don't have to.

KaiserPro 6y ago

Isn't it a notifiable disease? Wouldn't that put the onus on the testing company to report a positive test? I'm not sure how that works in the states.

JshWright 6y ago

> it's not being tracked Why wouldn't it be tracked?