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my elderly mother (70 yrs) who was visiting, came down with very bad flu symptoms. Having a newborn at home I took her to urgent care to get Tamiflu. They did the rapid test that came negative so they sent her off with nothing.

Considering her age, the fact that I had a newborn and that rapid testing has a high false negative rate, I was pretty upset that they didn't give her tamiflu as a precaution. Maybe reports that it was in low supply are true

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We used to give antibiotics "just in case", because of reasons like this and we now have antibiotic resistant bacteria. We've seen the same thing with antiviral drugs. Shortage or not, giving antivirals to make a caregiver feel better seems like a dangerous way to make people in the future sicker. It really would have been more prudent to put one or both of them in the hospital for observation, and it is awful that we don't have such wards available (I imagine they wouldn't need staffing greater than a nursing home because most are simply there just in case).

The test having a high false negative rate isn't actually a good enough reason to treat folks, rather a reason to develop a better test.

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