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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

From my anecdotal experience these tests are no better than guessing. Plenty of people around me got sick and thought they have cold. Testing every day always negative. One person got considerably worse and had to go to hospital, rapid test still negative at hospital. The PCR however came positive. Now, because the hospital gets paid extra for treatment of Covid patients, we still don't know if that person really had Covid and hospital just faked the result to collect money. Apart from that one person, everyone got better after a couple of days. The unlucky person needed few more days but is fine as well now. Hospital discharged him and said to come back if he gets considerably worse and was told to take acetaminophen. Total joke.

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a friend who lives in Seattle visited over the holidays and then spent Christmas with his family in Minneapolis. everyone in the family tested every single day and suddenly almost everyone went from negative to positive... but only a couple had the mildest symptoms possible, the rest were entirely without symptoms. nobody got even as sick as I did the last time I caught a cold a few months ago! nevertheless my friend said they "all got covid," which is hard to square with seeing my multiple-comorbidities-having mother be the sickest she's been in the thirty years I've been alive, from having covid for ten miserable days straight back in 2020. obviously this is going to be an unpopular opinion but the cynic in me can't help but think that controlling the supply chain of tests (going from them being available everywhere to suddenly in-demand and available nowhere to now suddenly easy to obtain again) is being used as a means of controlling the current number of "cases" reported, making the pandemic seem like it's still ongoing and deadly and terrible when it's kind of pretty much over in reality, and has been for awhile now, at least out here (maybe major population centers are different, I have no idea).

I tested positive over the Christmas break via PCR with basically zero noticeable symptoms (I had a headache and a runny nose for half a day.) I only got tested out of a sense of due diligence for upcoming family visits.

I suspect that numbers in this wave are being VASTLY underreported not through any malfeasance, but by the fact that omicron has already run through a huge swath of the population more or less asymptomatically.

what's the point of reporting asymptomatic cases, especially when there doesn't seem to be any distinction between symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, just a total "cases" count? what are we missing out on by not knowing that thousands or millions of people would test positive, while not exhibiting any symptoms?

Well, I actually think it helps indicate how much a lower risk this variant is, for starters.

but if this clearly demonstrates that the risk is significantly reduced, then why test for it? I don't understand.

> the cynic in me can't help but think [...] the supply chain of tests [...] is being used as a means of controlling the current number of "cases" reported.

Check the dashboard for your county to see if the PERCENT of tests coming back positive has increased. Where I live the % positive rate spiked to 20%, twice has high as the last surge.

i have to agree, testing is pointless. When the omicron wave washes out of the hospitals and the available bed count goes back up then the pandemic is over.

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