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I think the point is that rapid tests are performing significantly worse now on Omicron than they were for prior variants.
by h2hq 5y ago
I think the point is that rapid tests are performing significantly worse now on Omicron than they were for prior variants.
- dragontamer 5y agoI'm going to "vouch" your post, because its a fine point even if I disagree with it. Rapid tests _always_ had bad sensitivity. Its gotten worse for Omicron, but going from "bad" to "worse" isn't really a big deal, because you never should have been relying upon negative test results anyway. That's my point. The "use" of rapid tests was their "rapid" nature, coming back with a result in 15 minutes is way better than waiting for 3 days. The PCR is needed if you want to truly rely upon the result (well, kinda sorta. PCR got better sensitivity / specificity but its still not perfect).
- h2hq 5y agoThis comment misses that false-positive and false-negative rates are wildly different. The rapid tests are still quite useful because a positive test is very reliable and saves you several days of waiting for PCR results. Perhaps the test results should be labeled "Yes, you have covid", and "meh, not sure".