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Comment by nikolay | Hacker News Reader

Useless tests - PCR only works for the new variants. Even Lucira [0], which got acquired by Pfizer and kinda discontinued, is still useless.

[0]: https://www.lucirapfizer.com/

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Nonsense. I am currently positive as a result of a lateral flow test. It was a useful means of confirming what I had was indeed Covid (the dry cough was pretty tell-take) and so to take appropriate actions.

They are absolutely not without significant fault and there doubtlessly countless false negatives giving people ideas they can go out when sick (stay home, Covid or not!). However it’s not fair to say that “PCR only works”.

May I ask, what are the appropriate actions which would be different or not appropriate at presence of the same symptoms sans positive test result?

I did what CDC and the tests mandates - 3 consecutive days of tests. We had 1 person, got 3 negative tests, then other people got it from her relying on the triple-negative result. We thought she had tonsillitis as she had no other symptoms, but then after she infected 2 other older people, their symptoms were worse. A couple weeks later, the antibody tests showed BAUs up to the roof!

So, yeah, if you really want a meaningful and actionable test, which can limit the spread, it's the PCR. The rest could work after the fact being spread to everybody around you already. At the end of the day, this is the most contagious virus known to science!

I have several coworkers sick with Covid who showed positive on the at-home tests, this is simply false.

Which brands? You can't put all tests in one bucket. I'm talking about Lucira and the one supplied by the government. We had 3 people in the family with COVID this summer, later proven by an antibody test showing 9,000 BAUs, all tests during first, second, and third day of symptoms were negative and, trust me, we get very good samples, so, it can't be blamed on poor sample-taking!

Lucira used to work on first day of symptoms with Delta and the first Omicron variant. After that, it stopped working! For Omicron, I was doing a PCR test for my wife every other day. And daily antibody test. Her antibody test was positive on a the third day of symptoms for just 1 day!!! Useless crap! When you're symptomatic, and recovered, what's the point of this test?! You've already spread the virus to everybody around you!

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