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Comment by xyzzy123 | Hacker News Reader

Picture frazzled parents with a 5yo, 4yo and 2yo trying to administer RAT tests in morning, everyone is getting increasingly late, 2yo is screaming and fighting with whole body, because he knows the drill and really, really dislikes it.

It's not that easy to mix the things, find the missing shoes, time it all right, pack the bags and also keep everything perfectly out of reach.

TBH I had not thought very hard about the toxicity of the reagents. Some places ask that you place the completed test for that day in the child's bag.

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> TBH I had not thought very hard about the toxicity of the reagents.

Forcing parents and children to endure a situation such as the one you depict should have also been thought about a lot harder than it was.

Who cares about the reagent toxicity when this very process is riddled with psychological warfare, the denial of what humans need to feel safe and comforted in a group, and explicit scapegoating of swathes of people?

Even when doing it "right," these rapid at-home tests instill horror, social and mental problems, and all sorts of insane power hierarchies that confuse young, growing minds. The testing itself is toxic.

> Even when doing it "right," these rapid at-home tests instill horror, social and mental problems, and all sorts of insane power hierarchies that confuse young, growing minds. The testing itself is toxic.

Kids, it turns out, are hugely resilient. I reckon the covid generation kids are going to be much better at dealing with the anxieties of medicine.

"We're off to visit grandma, I'm gonna q-tip your nostril for ten seconds" has not induced much horror in my children. In fact, they're significantly more upset when I tell them they have to go back and wash the soap out of their hair after showering when I can still see suds in it. That produces a full-on tantrum.

The only way kids are likely to see the occasional nose swab as toxic and horrifying is if the parents are priming them for that with their own histrionics.

> these rapid at-home tests instill horror, social and mental problems, and all sorts of insane power hierarchies that confuse young, growing minds.

Clipping my kids’ fingernails is far more dramatic than swizzling a swab in their nostrils for 10 seconds.

If your kids are experiencing horror and mental problems from an antigen test, you’re the one causing it.

The level of drama from people arguing against COVID prevention measures is absurd. “Kids are being tortured with these tests!” “Oh my god, I cannot breath with a mask on!” I’m sick of this stuff, too, but the teenage-level angst is not helpful. No one takes criticism seriously when it’s wrapped in so much dishonest hyperbole.

> If your kids are experiencing horror and mental problems from an antigen test, you’re the one causing it.

This, though, is a crude overgeneralisation. Swizzling a swab in their nostrils (or around the back of their throat) could well cause instant, significant distress if they have a hypersensitivity disorder or other trauma.

It's necessary, it's appropriate, it's the right thing to do, and parents should try to do it.

But you're making a crude assumption about the difficulty of something that some very good parents of children with a variety of challenges will tell you may not be possible, especially with a very young child.

I am pro-vaccination, pro-testing, pro- whatever sane measures the appropriate health authority deem necessary. But just because they are necessary and appropriate in the aggregate does not make them easy and breezy at the individual level.

I am amazed at what some parents have stoically put up with and what kids will adapt to -- they are as I say, astonishingly resilient in general -- but not all kids can adapt and not all parents necessarily find it easy to medicalise the relationship with their children.

> Swizzling a swab in their nostrils (…) could well cause instant, significant distress if they have a hypersensitivity disorder or other trauma.

This is like saying that it’s absolute torture to make kids walk up two flights of stairs, and then when rebutted by someone else saying the kids will be fine, trotting out that some kids are in wheelchairs.

Yeah, some kids are special needs. It is intellectually dishonest to trot that out as an opposition to a general thing. Some kids legitimately cannot wear masks for various reasons. Some kids probably can’t handle being swabbed nasally. And some kids can’t walk up stairs. This is why we have accommodations while general guidelines apply to kids who do not have these uncommon issues. We still expect kids to learn math and to run around in PE even though some kids unfortunately can’t do either of those things.

> or around the back of their throat

I don’t know anyone who has ever swabbed their kid’s throat for COVID. Maybe that’s a thing some places. Sounds unpleasant although most kids would survive that just fine, too.

> This is like saying that it’s absolute torture to make kids walk up two flights of stairs, and then when rebutted by someone else saying the kids will be fine, trotting out that some kids are in wheelchairs.

No, it's not, because you're talking about an unusual and gross medical test. A literal, very personal intrusion, poking something far up where kids are told not to poke things. Not walking upstairs.

> I don’t know anyone who has ever swabbed their kid’s throat for COVID. Maybe that’s a thing some places. Sounds unpleasant although most kids would survive that just fine, too.

Most test kits don't require it; it's still the best way to get an accurate result, though (and it's very definitely part of the adult routine that they may have witnessed). Kids may have experienced the throat swab in a medical situation and be very resistant to the swab full stop.

> Yeah, some kids are special needs. It is intellectually dishonest to trot that out as an opposition to a general thing.

But it's intellectually honest to generalise saying "if your kids experience trauma, you caused it"?

You're proud of this argument so I'll leave it at that.

> No, it's not, because you're talking about an unusual and gross medical test. A literal, very personal intrusion, poking something far up where kids are told not to poke things. Not walking upstairs.

The same is true when I clean my kids' ears.

> Most test kits don't require it; it's still the best way to get an accurate result, though...

It is explicitly recommended against by the FDA. https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1479548116684709890

It's explicitly part of the instructions in the UK tests.

That's an argument for changing which tests are being bought, then.

Why, in particular?

You could argue that the UK test that gives one level of accuracy with a throat swab and a nose swab is not statistically better than the US test that only uses a nose swab (though most health advisers here will say kids can just have their nostrils swabbed if the throat swab causes distress).

But the USA does not proportionately have the mass home testing data set to make that comparison with. It's silly to make the argument.

> Why, in particular?

Because you're asserting a risk of "instant, significant distress" from them?

Seems like an easy fix to that concern.

Except that I said that about swabbing the nostrils, did I not?

Look, I think the tests are essential. I also think that people judging their neighbours parenting or their kids or completely ignoring the difference in people's circumstances when the outcome is distressing or difficult are wrong to do so, especially when it is the result of actually trying to comply with advice.

Being superior about parenting in this context strikes me as bad manners.

> Except that I said that about swabbing the nostrils, did I not?

Sure, and I pointed out that's not a big deal, and then you said the UK tests require a throat swab and asserted that's a bigger deal, to which I pointed out switching to the nasal swabs might be appropriate. Pick one to discuss, please, so I can respond to the option you're currently thinking about.

> No, it's not, because you're talking about an unusual and gross medical test. A literal, very personal intrusion, poking something far up where kids are told not to poke things. Not walking upstairs.

You went from claiming you’re “pro-testing” to claiming that the test is “unusual”, “gross”, and “intrusive”. Also suddenly your concern for kids with sensitivity disorders is nowhere to be found and you’re speaking in general terms again.

This is exactly why I said the argument about special needs kids is dishonest. Because the argument isn’t about them. It’s about kids in general but you want to feign outrage on behalf of a population because it’s conveniently emotional.

Anti maskers do the same and is interesting to see people with legitimate respiratory diseases and parents of actual disabled children plea for people to put their masks on to protect that exact population. It’s utterly gross to invoke a disadvantaged population dishonestly.

> Most test kits don't require it; it's still the best way to get an accurate result, though

You’re really trying to blame others for the fact that some parents might choose to do a throat swab when they are not obligated to? That’s literally on the parents for making that choice.

> But it's intellectually honest to generalise saying "if your kids experience trauma, you caused it"?

Yeah. If your kid doesn’t have some special need or sensitivity and getting a nasal swab is that traumatic for them, that sounds like you’re doing it wrong. Maybe you’re being too rough with the swab. Maybe you’re screaming at them because they won’t sit still. I don’t know. But I’ve seen dozens of kids line up for swabs and be just fine. When there’s a problem with a kid, it’s generally appropriate to look to the parents first. Child psychologists say this consistently. The problem is virtually always the parents.

Also “intellectually dishonest” doesn’t mean “incorrect” or “asshole”. Maybe I’m both of those things. But I’m not intellectually dishonest for calling out bullshit.

> You went from claiming you’re “pro-testing” to claiming that the test is “unusual”, “gross”, and “intrusive”.

I am pro testing. Are you suggesting that they are mutually exclusive ideas?

(Plus, that was meant to be from the kid's perspective, hence the bit about sticking things where they are told not to be sticking things; that might not have come across well, admittedly.)

I am not feigning outrage. I'm suggesting to you that you're being overbroad with your assertions in this context.

> virtually always

Sums it up.

I don’t think kids generally see the tests as particularly gross. (They like to put their fingers up there, remember?) And certainly not unusual, not now at least. Maybe intrusive, but kids put up with far more intrusive stuff all the time. I brush my kids’ teeth for them. That is way more intrusive than a nasal swab. It also takes way longer.

Kids are quite adept at accepting things if the parents are consistent and reasonable. I see lots of little kids wearing masks whenever they’re in public because their parents and caregivers expect it. I see other kids who don’t and some of their parents explain to me all about how their kids “can’t” (with no hint of why they can’t). No surprise. If you don’t expect something, you’ll find your kids don’t do it. (My kids are ridiculously picky eaters. I’m willing to accept that this is my fault.)

And yeah, some kids are special needs in some way. But most are not. I’ve also had parents tell me that the only way they can get their kids to ever calm down is to put them in front of the TV. Sure. That’s definitely your kid and not your fault.

> I am not feigning outrage. I'm suggesting to you that you're being overbroad with your assertions in this context.

I‘ve been pretty clear that I agree some kids have special needs and should get special accommodations.

My point was that in general kids are totally fine with being swabbed for tests. (At least in the US. Sounds like your UK kits maybe suck.) Claiming that in general kids are being traumatized by being swabbed is an outright lie. Kids adapt to all sorts of things they don’t actually like.

To be clear, I also did not actually attack any particular parents here. I responded to this originally:

“Even when doing it "right," these rapid at-home tests instill horror, social and mental problems, and all sorts of insane power hierarchies that confuse young, growing minds.”

This is incorrect, but regardless it doesn’t even say that he has kids. My statement (“You’re the one causing the problems”) was a rhetorical device to answer the general claim that kids are being traumatized, not a literal accusation of blame.

> (My kids are ridiculously picky eaters. I’m willing to accept that this is my fault.)

Just to say, out of an urge to find some common ground: I was a "picky eater" -- initially whimsically and then ultimately rather more seriously, until early adulthood (though never to feeding tube territory, I was definitely underweight).

My parents would want me to tell you that it almost certainly isn't your fault.

And I can tell you from thinking it through that it was never really about foods I did or did not like. It was always about disgust, and deep-seated, too.

As I've said before in comments, it's actually a diagnosable eating disorder (ARFID) even at the fussy/faddy stage, and can become problematic even when it initially manifests as quite a mild or simply defiant thing.

To keep it on topic, here's where you might find yourself at odds with your own position further up the thread: if they do have any psychological basis for why they are picky, then you trying to make them do better through assertive parenting is more or less guaranteed to make it worse. Most of your parental instincts will be at odds with the outcome you desire.

I could tell you what worked for me if it would help.

My kids were both excellent eaters until we began to indulge their pickiness too much. For both of them we chose “eat more of the stuff you like” over “eat more variety” because we were more concerned with weight gain (as in our kids are both at the bottom end of the weight charts). I’m pretty sure that we created much of the problem. Most kids go through some picky phases but parents can definitely magnify them.

And sure, there are kids who are perhaps picky to the point of disorder. I don’t think that’s my kids.

"Eat more of the stuff you like" is definitely strategy zero -- it will keep even the pickiest kids alive with less intervention.

It's also why parents get called bad parents who when their ARFID kids will only eat two kinds of potato chips and one kind of cheese.

Strategy one: baseline foods and well-liked gravies/sauces. Do they eat rice? If so, Asian food is an amazing way to extend taste and texture tolerance, because special fried rices (like Nasi Goreng etc.) allow you to experiment with the amount of a thing you can bear at any one time, and also to add small amounts of other dishes to the safe rice as they want to.

Strategy two: comparable foods. Choose a restaurant not always because it has the thing they like, but sometimes because it has a different kind of meal that is extremely similar. Again, Asian food is amazing for this -- chicken katsu curry, if I'd known that was a thing when I was nine...

Strategy three: outsourcing. Your kids friends' parents are likely to get them to eat things you cannot. Because eating the thing at home, disappointing you by not being able to eat it, etc., is different.

Strategy four: participation. Cook the thing they'll eat but ask them to them stir it/help prepare it/be responsible for it.

Strategy five: cookery. Get them to choose a thing from a recipe book and be involved with it to the point that they are doing all the non-dangerous bits themselves quite young.

Strategy six: send them off to uni/college. I came back from uni in my second term largely cured, though I was never able to (and I am still unable to) eat breakfast with anyone else.

FWIW my ARFID was almost certainly triggered by an emotionally stressful environment and childhood illness.

I don't remember, but apparently I pretty much just catastrophically stopped eating most things; within a matter of weeks. I am one of three siblings and the other two are fine.

My issues with food had/have not very much to do with food itself. It's an eating disorder, and eating disorders are weirdly not much to do with food.

Do you have a camera in my home? This is eerily accurate.

Again wishing there was some nuanced way I could upvote your comments but simultaneously fervently downvote-to-the-universe the crap you both had to soldier through.

As a person with small children who does have to do this, it actually is easy. We need to stop normalizing "frazzled parents can't handle their kids", because I see a lot of parents around in my neighborhood who do use it as an excuse to not handle their kids.

There are good mornings and there are bad mornings, depends what's going on in everyone's lives.

Your children are not your peers. Consensus and compromise are highly overrated. When you give up on the bad days, you're guaranteeing the next day will be worse.

> Your children are not your peers. Consensus and compromise are highly overrated

Again. I am not a parent, but isn't this a completely unwarranted, assumptive over-reading of what xyzzy123 said?

Your family is not every family. Your definition of handle is not everyone else's definition of handle. Your kids are not everyone else's kids. "Frazzled" is normal because the past few years have been completely batshit. Your community's response is not everyone else's community's response, nor are the stresses and behavioral side effects.

I cannot imagine my parents ever being able to manage to do the nose swab on me, let alone a tonsil swab.

Even now the nose test triggers enough sensitivity for me that I cannot go anywhere for an hour after I administer it because of the sneezing.

At seven or eight years old? No way. I would have been unmanageable. So I guess my parents would have been breezily looked down upon too. Which is ironic considering that were they still working now, one of them would have been designing or scrutinising such tests and another checking large numbers of them on a daily basis.

I'm sick of seeing parents digitally drug their kids with iPads and NetFlix. I'm sick of seeing parents let their kids roleplay Lord of The Flies on the playground. And I'm sick of people talking about the pandemic like it's some insurmountable challenge.

Yes, people have lost jobs and partners and other terrible tragedies. The people I see complaining the most have had none of that happen to them. They're complaining about having to cancel a trip to Disney World. They're complaining about the state mandating masks, or not mandating masks, or suggesting that maybe wearing masks might be a good idea, or not mentioning masks at all. They're complaining about something about football--I don't know what exactly, there can't possibly be anything of consequence once the subject turns to professional sports, so I start tuning out.

As a parent, you have a whole person's life in your hands. You have a moral (and if it goes far enough, legal) responsibility to not screw it up. "But I'm tired" is just "excuses, excuses, excuses".

> I'm sick of seeing parents digitally drug their kids with iPads and NetFlix. I'm sick of seeing parents let their kids roleplay Lord of The Flies on the playground. And I'm sick of people talking about the pandemic like it's some insurmountable challenge.

IMO you should a) be aware that you have directed this rant at people who are responsibly testing their kids at home and b) consider whether all of this is therefore just rude, patronising assumptions about what has and hasn't happened to them.

Perhaps a better way to say it would be it's not necessarily easy, but it's doable and necessary.

The "necessary" part is the real political bone of contention. The "doable" part is where the argument shifts to "parenting isn't about doing what's easy", and the "easy" part is where it varies by individual.

Are there requirements somewhere for people to do at home tests?

Kid complains stomach or anything hurts at school. We are required to get a test. Kids are also required to be tested weekly.

Don't know about the USA, but yeah, in the UK parents were routinely asked to administer tests for their kids; there's a specific page in the instructions for it.

I've done only six of these (on myself) but I know parents who've administered more than a dozen to each child.

I would rather receive vaccines via a harpoon than do the test on myself -- it's uncomfortable.

Most kids are braver than I am though.

I took one of the tests from the article and it merely required you to swab the inside of the nostril, NOT the thing where you shove a Q-tip into your brain stem. It was less uncomfortable than picking your nose.

As a huge nerd, it was also really cool to watch the reagent wick up the test strip and react.

Are you talking about the nasopharyngeal swabbing? I’m not aware of anyone doing that anymore for COVID. And for kids they stopped doing it pretty early on because, yeah, it’s fucking awful.

I’d wait out the 10 day quarantine rather than jam a 4” swab into the back of my kid’s nose. But I’ve given my kids tests a half dozen times each now and it’s a nonevent. Just swirl the swirl around the nostril about half an inch inside.

> Are you talking about the nasopharyngeal swabbing? I’m not aware of anyone doing that anymore for COVID. And for kids they stopped doing it pretty early on because, yeah, it’s fucking awful.

The test in the UK says you have to insert the thing and push it up the nose until it meets resistance. And then twirl it around like ten times or something.

By the third or fourth twirl, I personally want to tear my nose off my face, and my sensitivity issues have reduced over time. As a kid I would not have been able to tolerate that, and I do not have special needs, or a known hypersensitivity disorder. It's just shockingly unpleasant for me.

For kids they have at various times recommended doing this in both nostrils so as not to need to swab the throat. Ain't no way you'd have got it up my second nostril as a kid.

What is wrong with the kits in the UK? US kits don’t say anything like that. The swab only goes in about half an inch now.

Yeah, that sounds really shitty.

To clarify -- I looked at the leaflet again -- it says "meets slight resistance" and "about 2.5cm".

The leaflet -- includes the instructions for swabbing children:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

This one is slightly different to mine. It's obviously been revised somewhat since I got my kit; mine dates to the 15th of January last year, whereas the PDF dates from December.

Mine says, for example, "firm contact" instead of "good contact" for the throat swab. And "roll the swab firmly around the inside of the nostril", and definitely not "no force is needed". No "gently" in it. The "firm" wording is there for the "testing a child" section, too.

So it's not quite brain-ticklingly bad (the PCR tests used to be apparently) but for me at least, the discomfort is intense once the swab is twirled... it just gets worse and worse. By the time of the tenth (!) rotation I am ready to murder.

If it said half an inch, it'd be totally another matter.

And this is after you've swabbed your tonsils (or where your tonsils were if they were removed!) several times, so, you know... your senses are already on full alert.

I am definitely over-sensitive on these things, to be sure (and that fits with the sort of person I am on other levels -- sensitive skin, anxiety, etc.; like generalised sensitivity). And maybe you do get used to them.

And I have never tested positive despite symptoms. But the tests themselves seem to be very accurate judging by what I have read. Still, I'd rather be hit with a spear gun than do this more than absolutely necessary.

I'm not convinced they were any use against Omicron mind you, and I think the jury is still out on that.

I'm in Australia. Here if your child is a "close contact" (say someone in class is +ve) you have to do RATs for 5-7 days to keep sending them to school or care. It happened a lot for a while but is quieter now.

Any slight symptom (spend a lot of time judging how runny noses are) also = take a RAT.

The rules change a lot and are slightly different in every state.

The worst part was the rules started while RATs were very hard to get, people were paying $10 - $30 a test because the alternative was take a day of carer's leave. The costs added up very quickly with x kids by y days.

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