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Children are spoofing Covid-19 tests with soft drinks
- tester34 5y agococa cola and similar should be 18+ just like alcohol anyway
- ackbar03 5y agoyou must be fun at parties
- blamazon 5y agoI’ll go one step further—-all beverages with the sugar:water ratio of Coca Cola should be summarily banned. Diet soda, dunno what to do with that one.
- dogma1138 5y agoSo all juices and smoothies? many of them have more sugar than Coke.... Even juices without any added sugar will have a ton of sugar in them if they come from sugar rich fruits.
- cogman10 5y agoApple juice is about 100% sugar which is why you'll see it in so many "100% juice" products.
- k3liutZu 5y agoI think sugar is 100% sugar, hence "apple juice" can't be "100% sugar" since it has to have some water in it
- taylorius 5y agoI thought that apple juice was a bit dry and grainy.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoApple juice is about 10% sugar, I don't know why you're mentioning an improbable number. And here's the thing: Sugar is not a bad thing per se. It's overconsumption of it that's the issue. I'd rather have someone drink fruit juice than soda, but all in moderation.
- bena 5y agoThat's because a glass of juice isn't the equivalent of eating an orange, it's the equivalent of eating an orchard. An exaggeration, obviously, but it is really bad. The number of fruits you have to eat to equal a glass of juice is significant.
- scandinavian 5y agoWhat's wrong with diet soda?
- axiosgunnar 5y agoPossibly carcinogenic, but that's a big possibly, compared to the blatantly obvious harm caused by high-fructose corn syrup.
- scandinavian 5y agoThat's news to me. Wikipedia also notes that Aspartame which is the sweetener used in most diet soda, has not been found to be carcinogenic with a bunch of citations. Or are you talking about other ingredients?
- bena 5y agoHe's not. Artificial sweeteners are one of the most demonized additives on the planet despite being one of the most studied. Because people are so often looking for a reason to get rid of them. Even the studies of them being bad for "getting used to sweetness" and thus making people more obese through compensatory over-eating are studies that rely on self-reporting and polling. When properly controlled, physics works as it always has and you can't magic mass or energy out of thin air.
- valvar 5y agoIf you're talking about aspartame it's about as possibly carcinogenic as the moon landing was possibly faked.
- petercooper 5y agoAs part of improving my health, I came off of drinking sugary sodas a few years back and went sugar free. My dentist remained unimpressed saying that the sugar is only a small part of the story and really it's the acid in soda that will cause me problems. I now drink a lot more water around any soda consumption to mitigate it slightly, but I gotta have some bad habits..
- petercooper 5y agoHere in the UK a lot of stores no longer sell caffeinated drinks to under 16s (it's not a law, but it's a common practice) so Red Bull et al. are out. I guess such a thing could be extended to sugary soda in general eventually. It's annoying, though, because if I want to buy one, I have to be "challenge 25" checked, but I guess it reduces my consumption as well!
- dcolkitt 5y agoThere’s zero evidence whatsoever that caffeine is unhealthy for children. And given what we know about the health benefits in adult, coffee is most likely health promoting for children.
- viraptor 5y agoIt's not just the caffeine itself - that's one aspect. It's promoting the "use this to not sleep" recurring lifestyle choice, which some kids do come to rely on. This gets worse with Monster and others pushing the caffeine limits. (I remember a free Monster giveaway at uni - could not sleep for close to 30h - that stuff is not healthy)
- valvar 5y agoWell, that's you. Everyone drank Monster at my uni and I don't think there were any reports of sleep issues. Of course it depends on your existing caffeine tolerance, and I guess most students consume quite a lot of caffeinated beverages, but if it was a common issue for those with low tolerance I'm sure we'd have noticed.
- fjtktkgnfnr 5y agoWhat do you think about narcotics, should they be legal or not? One thing I noticed is that people who are for banning soda or alcohol are surprisingly for legalization of soft and hard drugs.
- hasmolo 5y agocomparing addictions serves no meaningful purpose. people who want legal drugs still believe in a minimum age. i think that sugar should be seen as addictive as other drugs and the users must be old enough to be able to understand the risk of consuming.
- patentatt 5y agoBanning is different from criminalization. So to make both legal but not easily obtainable seems consistent. Throwing someone in jail for life for possessing a 2-liter of coke seems wrong.
- sterlind 5y agoanyone possessing 2-liters of coke is obviously a dealer. I'm all for decriminalizing the travel size cans, but we need party-size felonies for party-size containers.
- eplanit 5y ago"Diet soda, dunno what to do with that one." Let people decide for themselves? Alcohol is unhealthy, so it should be banned. Hamburgers are high fat and environmentally impactful, so those should be banned, too. Let's not forget cigarettes.... Yes people should opt to not consume unhealthy stuff, but how much authoritarianism do you really want?
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoBanning all of those won't work - remember the Prohibition? - but there's plenty of discouragement things going on, at least on this side of the pond. Alcohol and tobacco are heavily taxed, tobacco can no longer be advertised for, displayed, or be in any kind interesting (bland packaging), and that's after they had to have big warnings about the health risks of smoking. And there's plans to introduce sugar taxes - which I would be more on board with if those taxes were used to subsidize and lower the price of 'good' food / essentials.
- boring_twenties 5y agoIn the US, we might not even need to tax sugar. We could try just ending the massive subsidies for it (and corn).
- briandear 5y agoWhy can’t government just stay out of it? I don’t recall electing a government to be my parents. Government should build roads and have a Navy but why should a government “encourage” healthy behaviors, etc. Are people unable to be adults on their own?
- handrous 5y agoOTOH I'm not sure casting people into the wild to deal, all on their own, with megacorps employing hundreds or thousands dedicated to convincing people to make bad choices is a great idea, either. I'm not convinced Rugged Individualism and anything like the modern economy are compatible, in any kind of way in which the outcome of trying to have both is pleasant. It may be a "choose one" kind of situation.
- handrous 5y agoI dunno about banned. Not practical, for one thing. Although... I dunno, I don't see bootlegging being as successful or widespread with soda as it was with alcohol. Regardless, probably not practical. But the state of things in which unlimited free refills of soda is the norm, 64+oz fountain soda servings are common, and 300+ calories of soda are often added on to "combo meals" for effectively just ¢20-¢30 over the cost of the food as a "sweetener" (ha) to get people to choose a combo over a single item, is clearly not great. Something's out-of-whack.
- gala8y 5y agoThat's a joke that should be reality.
- Aachen 5y agoI heard of someone whose parents just didn't give them sweet candies as a child and they never developed the craving. This is just a "I heard of one person ever" but since it's so rare, it's all I have to go on. I wonder if this would be reproducible.
- Yoric 5y agoI know a 9yo who never got candies from their parents and doesn't seem to like them so far.
- viraptor 5y agoThere's also a doesn't-like vs doesn't-like-the-quantity question. I could easily eat a whole chocolate bar in one go some time ago. Since then I reduced my sugar intake a lot. Now I feel like one row is overwhelming - 1-2 pieces is just fine.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoIt's one outcome, the other is that the child feels like they've been repressed all their life and go on a sugar binge. I've heard similar stories about kids raised vegetarian discovering bacon and hamburgers for the first time.
- Aachen 5y agoI know only one person who was raised vegetarian (most people in Europe are fervent meat eaters) and this didn't happen to my friend at all, but yeah I can totally see that happening to many on a broader population.
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- EugeneOZ 5y agoTo resurrect the bootleggers!
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- fjtktkgnfnr 5y agoThe only thing legal for kids to eat should be spinach and brocolli. Parents should be jailed if they fed them cakes.
- TroisM 5y agoI think we should only be allowed a slurpie issued by the government that contains everything we need... no other food or drinks, except water.
- ufo 5y agoThe method also works with other accidic drinks, such as lemonade.
- swasheck 5y agoHave an upvote for your tongue-in-cheek social commentary. Sugar is more addicting than alcohol and it definitely is mood-altering, though it seems the effects are more subtle and less severe than alcohol
- dang 5y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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- dijksterhuis 5y agoKudos to whichever kid discovered this. They're a damn industrious lot when it comes to avoiding school work.
- petercooper 5y agoYou may also like this story where a young girl figured out a way to trick everyone into thinking Zoom was broken so she didn't have to attend online lessons: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/eight-year-old-girl-branded-23543224 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/eight-year-old-girl...
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoTL;DR of that one: she activated a login lock by filling in the wrong password a couple of times. Zoom support should have been able to see "this account has been locked out due to too many login attempts" though, so that's a bit of a fail. And of course the login error should say as much. My job here is done; Captain Hindsight, away!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Confiks 5y agotl;dr: The test can only be spoofed if it isn't conducted properly, by not doing the step with the buffer solution [1] [2]. You may even be able to unspoof the test by applying the buffer solution after the fact. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMcUzvrn75E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMcUzvrn75E [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coca-cola-positive-covid-te-idUSKBN28W20Q https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coca-cola-posit...
- mannykannot 5y agoFor completeness with regard to unspoofing, it should be demonstrated that post-test application of the buffer does not reverse a truly positive test.
- Zachsa999 5y ago++
- dahfizz 5y ago> Fact check: Coca-Cola does not cause a positive COVID-19 test I find it very difficult to agree with that headline. We have lots of proof that putting coke on a covid test makes the test positive. Coca Cola unequivocally causes a positive result. That's like saying " X vulnerability in our software doesn't actually exist, because if any would-be hackers just followed the rules then they wouldn't be able to exploit the vuln".
- RandallBrown 5y ago"Coca-Cola causes positive COVID-19 test" would be a headline that to many would imply that simply drinking a coke is enough to cause you to get a positive test. I don't think that's what's happening.
- guywhocodes 5y agoIt's almost like a world wide professional word-smith company should be capable of constructing an accurate and true headline. Otherwise why are you considering any of their other texts worth reading?
- basisword 5y agoAmazing how determined kids can be at trying to get off school! The downside to this is that it deprives their classmates as entire bubbles get sent home I think.
- the-dude 5y agoEverybody happy! I bet you would get mighty popular.
- nanis 5y ago> The downside to this is that it deprives their classmates Assume probability of false positive is 1%. If you are tested weekly, there is a 41% chance you'll falsely test positive at least once in a year. If you are tested every workday, 93% chance. This is assuming there is no malfeasance. If you assume a false positive probability of 5%, the probabilities go up to 93% and 100%. The negative effects of false positives are the same whether kids are using soda or something else is causing them. At some point, the costs have to be weighed against the benefits. Here is a false positive/false negative simulator I put together last year (thrice silently banned -- so I stopped trying to do more after restoring it one last time) helps you explore what happens with various scenarios of infection rates and false positive/negative probabilities. Linking to the discussion to provide context for the app: https://www.covid2020.icu/false-positive-false-negative-simulator/ https://www.covid2020.icu/false-positive-false-negative-simu...
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoMy workspace immediately retests if you get a positive. While you wait.
- nanis 5y agoPCR or something else? If PCR, is the number of cycles pre-set or is that a choice variable?
- dtech 5y agoThat seems like a good way to miss infections (and get people back to work, which is probably the point). The tests seem to have a high false-negative rate. Assuming independence and 25% FN rate, a second test will miss an additional 20% of infections of all people tested.
- sschueller 5y agoInteresting how one group (children in school) are trying to fake a positive result while at the same time another group (club and party goers) are faking negative tests.
- ethbr0 5y agoAs the saying goes, most children under 18 would test as sociopaths. Apparently that includes older club and party goers as well.
- DangitBobby 5y agoSome teenagers have to go to pretty absurd lengths to escape the "structure" that has been imposed upon them. I'm sure that's where some of the "sociopathy" comes from. In my experience, though, adults are much less cooperative or agreeable in just about every scenario when compared to youngsters when it comes to not getting their way.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoThere is nothing sociopathic in wanting to end the abuse that mandatory education system is
- BoxOfRain 5y agoTo be fair given how miserable the education system often makes kids I think it’s a bit harsh describing them as sociopaths for wanting to avoid it. The fact literal retirees are known to still have occasional nightmares about exams goes to show there’s something deeply psychologically taxing about our schools that I think we’ll look back upon in a hundred year’s time as fairly barbaric, just as we look at corporal punishment in schools of the past as barbarism today.
- danillonunes 5y agoHere is the opportunity for someone to create some sort of marketplace where those two groups can sell tests to each other.
- drno123 5y agoCan official PCR test be somehow spoofed so I get Covid pass for the next 6 months?
- PenguinCoder 5y agoI hope you're making a bad joke. Go get the vaccines to get the proof of vaccination cards.
- rgbbtc4life 5y agoWhy would anyone voluntarily get the clot shot which doesn't even work?
- CountDrewku 5y agoThe vaccine doesn't get you out of the tests everywhere yet. There are still places that require tests regardless of whether you've been vaccinated.
- 8note 5y agoThose also don't care if you've had it before either
- walshemj 5y agoSo suck it up I was tested regularly in hospital and then weekly at home for 3 months.
- CountDrewku 5y agoThat has nothing to do with the comment I responded to. Move along if you're just here to post useless responses.
- throwawy6969 5y ago> There are still places that require tests regardless of whether you've been vaccinated. Which places? This makes sense when you're crossing a border, they (in an ideal/logical world) really don't care about your personal health, just that you're not bringing the disease du-jour in with you. You can still carry it and infect people, even with a vaccine record. That's one of the problems with something that grows exponentially, you have to hack at the root for your efforts to be effective.
- flemhans 5y agoCan be easily detected by licking the test hole to check if it tastes like coke / juice. Public officials can easily do this in order to bust the kids.
- ethbr0 5y ago> Can be easily detected by licking the test hole Can't tell if you're serious or not, about licking a positive-indicating lateral flow test with potentially hot nasal mucus...
- Aditya_Garg 5y agoHe's definitely joking
- notduncansmith 5y agoI lost it at the quoted text, haven’t laughed this much in days. Classic HN sentence fragment of middlebrow dismissal with just enough obliviousness to social norms that it might be satire, but with such deadpan delivery you just don’t know. Pure gold.
- 271828182846 5y agoIt is obviously a joke ... and that's about as obvious as it gets.
- Wheaties466 5y agoOnly slightly related. But I went to the bahamas about a month ago. One of the "hooks" they used to make tourists feel comfortable with coming to their resorts was that if you got COVID ( tested positive on the way home test). They would either pay for a hotel and accommodations for a 10 day quarantine or fly you back in a private jet. All that being said when they administered the covid test on the way back to the US. I'm not even sure they stuck the Q-tip, what should qualify as, in my nose. Point is, its not just children trying to spoof covid tests.
- layoric 5y agoThat’s … so wrong but also doesn’t surprise me at all. When the incentives don’t align, I assume these hacks will be the default.
- Fjolsvith 5y agoOnly slightly related. 10 times more people died from the jab than the virus in Scotland: https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/07/18/5522-people-have-died-within-28-days-of-having-a-covid-19-vaccine-in-scotland-according-to-public-health-scotland/ https://dailyexpose.co.uk/2021/07/18/5522-people-have-died-w...
- shadowgovt 5y agoThat's not what "died within 28 days" means; correlation does not imply causation. In fact, the data linked lacks any cause of death; without that column, we should assume these numbers are all cause of death, from respiratory failure to blunt-force trauma.
- swiley 5y agoChildren should be able to learn remotely at will if for nothing more than safety and teaching them not to put up with arbitrary BS.
- hulitu 5y agoDo you have children ? When there is no teacher ( or the teacher is online) the parent becomes the teacher. Learning from home - at least in Germany - is a mess.
- 1-more 5y ago>Absorbed on the red pad are antibodies that bind to the Covid-19 virus. They are also attached to gold nanoparticles (tiny particles of gold actually appear red), which allow us to see where the antibodies are on the device. Gold appearing red when in small-enough particles is used to make stained glass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stained_glass#Red_glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stained_glass#Red_glass
- disabled 5y agoNot surprising. I have type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin dependent). I added a drop of coke/sugar to my blood drop as a way to get out of school, as the blood sugar result would appear very high! If I wanted it to appear low, I diluted my blood with an alcohol swab (used when testing your blood) or with a drop of water.
- TheDudeMan 5y ago< Pedanti-sense tingling > They are not spoofing the test -- the test is real. They are spoofing the positive result.
- ghego1 5y ago</ Pedanti-sense tingling >
- temp0826 5y agoAnd I thought I was clever by editing the PDF results from someone else's test
- hatware 5y agoDoes everyone in this thread blindly believe that the PCR tests were handled _ethically_? It's pretty widely known that the cycle number was cranked to an insane value, so there were tons of false positives from the beginning. Hilariously, the cycle count was recommended to be reduced in lockstep with Biden taking office: https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users-2020-05 https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-not... CoViD iSnT pOLiTiCaL
- vmception 5y agothis article isn't about PCR tests which would be unaffected by children's drinks yes, we are aware of the filter bubble where people find the WHO's clarification of an existing prior policy as evidence of a PCR test sensitivity issue timed to make Biden in the US look better. there is a website where you can take a peak of various filter bubbles to see how strong the reinforcing information is for any particular rabbit hole. yours just happens to be hilarious. everything is open now, in the US, and you are stuck on that, something that is both inconsequential and will never be revisited. the awareness might seem like activism but it really is the bread and circuses, for you.
- hatware 5y agoWhat does having concern with the PCR test sensitivity driving much of the cases (and thus fear) have to do with filter bubbles? Are you really saying that the high cycle counts did not significantly effect the number of cases...? How ironic to call me out for intellectual isolationism, you barely know what you're talking about bud.
- vmception 5y agoI'm saying it doesn't matter, didn't affect support for the US President, unlikely to be related to one country's administration, and actually was not timed with Biden taking office because the circular is about an earlier circular a few weeks earlier which itself was about an earlier circular dating back to September 2020 So spending energy pondering on one of many quantum realities, especially the one where its "timed with the change of administration, rhetorical hmmmmmmmm", is the intellectual isolationism because the only cycle being wasted is your own thought processes. > Are you really saying that the high cycle counts did not significantly effect the number of cases...? Whoosh, I'm saying I didn't comment on that at all.
- nazrulmum10 5y agoHow does it work?
- bladefire 5y agoAnd no one has stood up in America to say... Maybe all these positive tests are false because of how much soft drinks people consume?
- bladefire 5y agoHilarious if it's glyphosate.