#covid test

[foone]

You've tested positive for everything.

Source: @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social

[covid-safer-hotties]

Reference saved on our archive

By Amanda Blum

PCR tests are far superior to rapid antigen tests—and now you can get them for home use.

Last week, I was about to go on a date, and because I'm severely immunocompromised, we agreed he would take a COVID test using one of my rapid home PCR tests. It was a courtesy—he felt perfectly fine— but he tested positive. By the next day, he was sick as a dog. And, by the way, the rapid antigen test he took when he got home that night was negative.

Regardless of how you much of a health risk you see in COVID, it is still, at best, an inconvenience that costs you days off work. A simple home PCR test saved me from that inconvenience (and worse), and if I'd relied on the common rapid antigen test or done nothing at all, I would probably be sick right now.

While the world has desperately attempted to move on from COVID, this summer saw the highest case loads since 2022, with a winter surge just around the corner. Almost 300,000 people died from COVID in the US over the last three months alone, so while the pandemic has transitioned into endemic, according to the CDC, there are still risks to be aware of. Around 400 million people worldwide have long COVID, where symptoms can range from annoying to absolutely debilitating, regardless of your age, pre-COVID health, or fitness levels. Cases of long COVID are crushing our medical system, too. The two best tools to avoid getting COVID continue to be masking and testing. Unfortunately, the PCR testing centers that used to be available in each city have long closed, and obtaining a PCR has become expensive and hard to locate. This is why home testing kits are so important.

While you may be used to thinking of COVID tests as interchangeable, there’s a big difference between the standard at-home antigen test and a PCR (molecular) test. Almost five years in, it’s important to understand why PCR tests are the ones you want when accurate testing is important.

The difference between a PCR and a Rapid Antigen Test What you normally think of as a home COVID test—like the kind you can order for free from the government—is a rapid antigen test. When these at-home COVID tests became available, they were a powerful tool to help people know they were positive so they could isolate themselves from others. Almost all at-home tests were lateral flow tests, also known as rapid antigen tests (RATs). They measure for proteins on the outside of SARS-C0V-2, but they have a major flaw: They can only detect active virus. If you’re asymptomatic or don’t have a high viral load yet, the RAT may show negative results while you have an active and contagious infection.

This is why, if you already have symptoms, a negative antigen test isn't conclusive. You may need to test a number of times to confirm you have COVID. When you first get sick, you may go a number of days (as many as five) without enough virus to set off a positive RAT test. RATs were designed to be taken multiple times in sequence.

A PCR, also known as a NAAT or molecular test, measures RNA and can detect even small amounts of the virus. This is why it has always been considered the “gold standard” of COVID testing. These tests are generally considered accurate starting one to three days before you experience symptoms. Until last year, you needed to get a PCR from a testing center, but home tests have evolved and there are now four rapid, at-home molecular COVID tests, meaning you test and get a result within 30 minutes.

Why we still need COVID testing The world is now divided into people who view COVID as part of regular life and those who, due to chronic illness, immune issues, previous infections, or age, cannot afford to get infected. For a long time, we viewed COVID testing as something you do for your own health, but home PCR testing represents a way you can easily protect those vulnerable people in your life without cutting them off from society.

But even if you're not concerned about others, you should still care about protecting yourself from multiple infections. While the likelihood you will die of COVID has gone down dramatically due to vaccines, medical interventions, and natural immunity from infection, the news has not done a great job talking about long COVID. As people get infected two, three, four, and more times, they are playing against the odds. It’s estimated that one in 10—or even as many as one in five—infections leads to long COVID, and to explain how much it’s not “just the flu,” COVID is now considered to be a vascular illness. That means it affects the blood vessels in your body, which go everywhere. Thinking of COVID as a vascular illness helps explain why long COVID is everything from extreme fatigue to migraines to numbness in your extremities, loss of smell and taste, extreme fatigue, and neurological and cardiovascular conditions.

While lots of people no longer even test to see if they have COVID, there are a few reasons to get a definitive answer. First, you can only get the intervention Paxlovid within the first five days of symptoms. Anti-virals like Paxlovid knock down your viral load, one of the things we think helps prevent long COVID. Second, no one knows who will get long COVID, and you might need proof of that positive test in the future for insurance or benefits or even to justify sick days.

Lastly, you need to get tested because it is hard to know when you have COVID. Symptoms of COVID include headache, body ache, fever, sniffles, congestion, fatigue, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of smell or taste. In other words, absolutely anything out of the ordinary. While a RAT is unreliable for safe socializing with people for the reasons explained above, a molecular test can pretty reliably clear someone to come in your house that day, or be in close proximity. In that way, these molecular tests can be a tool to help immunocompromised people back into the world and make multigenerational celebrations safer.

How to get a molecular/PCR test Outside of your home, your main options now are urgent care clinics and places that do testing for travel. In both cases, they’ll be expensive. In the case of urgent care, they’ll put you in the same space as all the sick people, who are now no longer required to mask in healthcare settings, so if you don't already have COVID, you might pick it up there. Fortunately, there are molecular (PCR quality) tests you can take at home.

Rapid molecular tests require a similar effort on your part as a RAT test. You’ll swab yourself and then insert that swab into a machine that gives you a result. There are currently just four brands of these tests available: Lucira, Metrix, 3EO, and PlusLife. Unlike RAT tests, you have to order them, although Metrix and Lucira tests are available on Amazon, and Walgreens stocks Lucira tests in select stores. For a long time, they were just too expensive for most people, so they were relegated to the likes of movie sets, law firms, and Google employees. Prices have gone down, so now they’re more accessible—as low as $10 a test. Here are your options.

Follow the link to see the full review with relevant links!

[feminist-space]

"Boston COVID Action Winter Surge Hotline:

(617) 652-0022

What is the Surge Hotline? Who is it for?

The Surge Hotline is a temporary, volunteer-run text and voicemail-based hotline for people in the Boston area created to respond to the Winter 2023 COVID surge.

Please only contact the hotline if you are in emergency need of high-filtration masks and/or tests due to a COVID infection or exposure. All supplies will be provided for free as soon as possible. We ask those without an emergent need to use our standard Request Form in order to keep the hotline responsive to needs that can’t wait more than a few days.

*If you are unsure whether you should contact the hotline, contact us!*"

[daisiesonafield-blog]

Order your free at home Covid tests from USPS:

ORDER HERE

[themadcapmathematician]

At home Covid tests costing between $7-30 each in the US. The FDA recommending you use three tests if you test negative. The government offering sporadic handfuls of free home tests per household; each household is determined by address. Have roommates? Have a big family? Homeless? Fuck you. "Get free tests from Health Co. inc. (TM)!" with the fine print "we'll bill your insurance." Having to travel to get a PCR test; hope you don't have to take a crowded bus or train for 40+ min each way. Hope it doesn't cost a $40 ride share fare. Hope you can get there at all. A PCR test being free only if you have insurance in the state you're getting the test, otherwise it's $150 per test. Hope you didn't lose your job. Hope you still qualify for Medicaid. Hope there wasn't a filing error, a missed phone call, an unfair means test, a confusingly worded webpage or document. Hope your job offers health insurance and paid sick days to part time workers, to people who haven't worked there for more than 6 months. Hope you've worked enough days to earn a single sick day. Hope you can earn sick days at all.

[ivstudios]

So I was eating a banana, and it seemed oddly bland. Like it had no flavour. And as many people are no doubt aware, losing your sense of taste is a classic symptom of COVID, so I started to get a bit worried. But hey, maybe it was just a bad banana. No reason to panic.

This required further testing, so I went to my fridge and started eating random things to see how they taste. Pepperoni: bland. Lemonade: bland. Marinara sauce: bland.

Shit, that’s not good.

So I run to the bathroom and pull out a COVID test and do the nose swabbing and such and wait and think about how there is a lot of COVID going around lately even Biden has it shit I definitely have COVID.

And the test comes back negative. And it occurs to me that even though I can’t taste anything my sense of smell seems fine. Don’t you usually lose both when you get COVID?

And so anyway this is a really long way of saying that it turns out I ate so many wasabi peas from the gas station that I fucked up my tongue and now I can’t taste anything

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I woke up fatigued with a migraine and a really bad sore throat, so I went into my pantry and took a big whiff of black pepper, and I've lost my sense of smell...

Uh-oh.

Well, I went to CVS and got a covid test, but it came back negative. This same exact thing happened to me in early 2021; I got deathly sick for two weeks and lost my sense of smell, but every single test I took came back negative. Home test, negative. Pharmacy kiosk test, negative. Different pharmacy drive thru test, negative. I still have no clue what I had back then because I had no insurance and couldn't afford to go to the doctor. My mom thinks I have a sinus infection, but even though I have insurance this year, it's the cheapest plan on the market, covering next to nothing, so I still can't afford to get checked out. I wouldn't trust a doctor anyway because every single one I've seen in the last 10 years has been a quack who just wanted to wring money out of me; tests I didn't need, follow-up appointments that cost a hundred dollars just for them to tell me they weren't gonna do anything that day and I needed ANOTHER follow-up in a week, they would draw blood and then do nothing with it until it "expires" then ask to draw more, money money money money money- the United States healthcare system is a con, a racket, a scam, rotten to the very core by capitalism. Doctors don't want people to get better, they want people to keep coming back to give them more money! It's like tech companies making their products shitty in purpose so they break and you have to buy more, doctors give shitty care so you have to follow-up. There's no incentive for them to cure peoole, it's a subscription model!

I bought a bag of cough drops for my throat and some painkillers for my head, and I'm just gonna have to wait it out, same as 2021...

[itsdetachable]

Beginning September 25, every U.S. household can again place an order to receive four more free COVID-19 rapid tests delivered directly to their home. Before You Throw Out "Expired" Tests: Check to see if your COVID-19 tests' expiration dates have been extended.

Click for the Covid dot Gov website

[leaf-me-in-the-woods]

Fml I have “rebound covid” … tested positive and sinus & cough symptoms returned. Thankfully (sort of) I work in a hospital and they are still requiring 5 days of isolation (which is insufficient, 10 days is best acccording to the science) but like sheesh. I have tested negative every month for the past four years and have not had any physical illness symptomatically either. The second largest wave of this pandemic finally hit me and I get to be the lucky 1 in 5 that gets the rebound crap. WEAR A DAMN MASK, test, isolate when sick, vaccinate, and fight for clean air y’all like fuck this shit!!!

[covid-safer-hotties]

Correlation of patient symptoms with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant viral loads in nasopharyngeal and saliva samples and their influence on the performance of rapid antigen testing - Published Oct 9, 2024

Study showing 1. The one-and-done method of rapid testing used by many is not good enough to prove covid negativity because rapid test were desined for serial testing 2. saliva swabs increase the accuracy of Rapid Antigen Tests.

ABSTRACT Evaluating SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in nasopharyngeal (NP) and saliva samples, factors affecting viral loads, and the performance of rapid antigen testing (RAT) have not been comprehensively conducted during SARS-CoV-2 Omicron epidemic. This prospective study included outpatients enrolled during Omicron variant period in Japan. Paired NP swab and saliva samples were collected to measure viral loads by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). The correlation between viral loads and clinical symptoms was examined. The performance of an immunochromatography-based RAT kit was also assessed. A total of 153 patients tested within 3 days of symptom onset were included. The mean viral load was 5.60 log10 copies/test and 3.65 log10 copies/test in NP and saliva samples, respectively, resulting in a significant difference (P < 0.0001). Fever over 37°C (axillary temperature) and total number of symptoms other than fever were identified as independent factors positively correlated with the viral loads in both NP and saliva samples. RAT sensitivity using NP and saliva samples was 92% and 68%, respectively, using positive RT-qPCR results as the reference. The sensitivity of RAT using NP and saliva samples was significantly higher in patients with fever ≥37°C and/or at least one symptom than in those with fever <37°C and/or no symptoms (97% vs 83% in NP swabs; 80% vs 50% in saliva). Distinct symptoms, including fever ≥37°C, may reflect high Omicron variant viral loads. Rapid antigen testing, not only using nasopharyngeal swabs but also using saliva, would be useful for COVID-19 diagnosis as point-of-care testing, particularly for symptomatic patients.

IMPORTANCE We examined nasopharyngeal and salivary viral loads using samples collected from outpatients with SARS-CoV-2 infection during the Omicron epidemic in Japan and explored the outpatient factors correlated with viral loads. In addition, we evaluated the performance of an authorized rapid antigen testing (RAT) kit using nasopharyngeal and saliva samples with RT-PCR testing as the reference. Intriguingly, a correlation between fever and other symptoms and SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in nasopharyngeal and saliva samples was observed based on one COVID-19 outpatient visit. RAT sensitivity was influenced by viral loads. Nevertheless, nasopharyngeal RAT is considered useful for SARS-CoV-2 point-of-care diagnosis. In patients with distinct symptoms, including high-grade fever, salivary RAT could be a practical diagnostic tool because of the higher estimated viral loads. After the Omicron epidemic, outpatients with mild COVID-19 have become the main focus of diagnosis and treatment. Our study provides valuable information regarding the point-of-care diagnosis of these patients.

[genekies]

wait so I might have covid, this birthday might end up terrible after all

taking a test right now that'll be done in a couple minutes but then I got scared so I did a second one that'll be done in 10 minutes

[comicdiaries]

We COVID tested with Raina Telgemeier at comics camp, no big deal.

[chaneajoyyy]

I just took another Covid test and it says your girl is NEGATIVE!! But i will take another one in 2 days to be on the safe side.

[rainbowdoggieunicorn]

So I got COVID... And that's just nice...