Comment by maxsilver | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxsilver | Hacker News Reader

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> Any line at all is a positive test.

It's not obvious what counts as a "faint line" -- is this too faint? Is it not really there? Am I misreading natural variations in the colour of the test strip?

It's not a matter of reading instructions -- even intelligent adults who have followed the directions 100% correctly can still struggle with knowing what counts.

Anyone who has ever taken a pregnancy test (or seen someone else take a pregnancy test), can tell you about the major amounts of stress possible attempting to read a "simple faint line" -- see https://www.reddit.com/r/TFABLinePorn/ for one example.

I'm not saying that every test strip needs $20 of Bluetooth gizmos and e-waste. Just that normal, intelligent, fully-instruction-following adults can reasonably be expected to not always know how to read "any faint lines" accurately.

> It's not obvious what counts as a "faint line" -- is this too faint? Is it not really there? Am I misreading natural variations in the colour of the test strip?

If you think of how the test works, then it is obvious that if you can spot the line it is positive.

I have literally no idea how the test works; I'm a software engineer.

They're supposed to be similar to pregnancy tests right? But those detect hormones afaik, not viruses (or antibodies).

The test contains antibodies for the virus, so if they react in any way (assuming you weren't tampering with it[1]) then you have the virus. Those tests are considered unreliable, because the false negative is high (i.e. not enough of the virus to register).

I don't know enough about pregnancy test, but I assume the hormone is always present, it's just certain level of it signals pregnancy.

[1] there were videos where people where testing juices and soft drinks and that was messing up the test.

Not to mention motivated reasoning/perception. Is this positive test going to mean you’re going to cancel your holiday plans and lose thousands of dollars?

On the contrary, it is extremely clear what counts as a faint line. If its different from the white background, in any way or shape, the test is positive. Simple as that. It couldn't actually be more simple, but someone had to over-engineer and forget about security during the process.

Example here [1] (as linked elsewhere throughout this thread)

[1] https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1471493781073530882

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