Both my kids and my wife have had to do mandatory PCR testing every week for the last year for school, and the kids also do a weekly instant test. Now that work is making me go back in, I also will be testing regularly again. It's a lot more common than you think.
It's getting a bit tiring hearing a certain corner of society complaining how minor inconveniences are oppressing them.
If I wanted that sort of career, I would have gone into medicine or some such.
There is very little benefit to anyone for children under 15 to get vaxed or be tested. The disease works on the ace2 receptors, which are activated at puberty. The observational data bears this out.
The number one cause of death for adults 18-45 in the US during the pandemic was opiod/drug overdoses. You wouldn't know it from the public health response.
We aren't paying for the tests, so WTF do I care? I've had jobs where I had to clean the toilets, you might walk away from a good salary and good WLB just because they ask you to stick a q-tip up your nose once a day, but it just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.
Funny you ask, I took one this morning and tested positive. First time testing positive. I’ll admit I thought Covid was over at least until the fall. But I was feeling off and didn’t want coffee. Since we had a bunch of extra tests I said why not. Was kinda shocked. Now I am stuck in bed reading HN.
This is not a bad time to catch it anyway. We're all going to get it many times and right now there's plenty of care available for those who get really sick.
That’s been my position for a while. I’m pro-vaccine, and pro-initial lockdown (only), and lived in London during the first years of the pandemic. At some point we just have to get on with our lives, we need to stop living in fear. We need to stop the them vs us divide.
For me, testing before I visit my elderly parents isn't a decision made of fear - it's a basic precaution I can take, causes me no more than 5-10 mins of extra effort, and costs nothing to me (a privileged position provided by employer-subsidized insurance, of course). Is this fear making decisions on my behalf? Is this pragmatism prompted by fear?
For example, a local singing event was held last month, a dearly treasured annual event. They took precautions as if it were summer 2020, doing as much as possible outdoors, masking indoors, not letting people get food together, requiring vaccinations, and so on. As the event drew near, though, the people asking for those things largely backed out anyway, citing concern about COVID. I found it terribly sad that they couldn’t bring themselves to do this favorite activity despite receiving so many accommodations. I see that sort of behavior as succumbing to fear in a way that doesn’t benefit them.
I never needed to take a test to know to stay away from people if I felt sick (family or work colleagues).
I guess if I knew it wasn’t a transmittable sickness (which is normally quite obvious, eg headache, sunburn, hungover, muscle pain, etc) then I would still visit. Coughing, sneezing, etc anything involving fluids I’d probably just stay away. No test needed. Just common sense, same as before covid.
What if you're asymptomatic?
Why it's so hard to spend 5 min taking a test before situations where you'll be with a bunch of people (airplane, large meeting, event, etc)?
It's like an Intro to Ethics problem...and as I observed in that class during undergrad, the answer is not obvious.
And for what? Covid is no longer the covid of 2019. It’s not the same threat.
This isn’t about theoreticals, this is about getting back to normal. Which is not testing for relatively harmless things like covid (now we have vaccines and other meds being developed to help with the symptoms), cold, flu, etc, especially when vaccines exist. Just use your common sense.