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Old Posted Jan 19, 2022, 7:22 PM
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someone123 someone123 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Vancouver
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
Yeah I had two negative antigens before a positive PCR.
This scenario is expected. The perceived accuracy of the tests depends on interpretation. This is tricky and has been obscured somewhat by science-y coverage. If you define "false positive" as "negative when I turned out to have covid" the antigen tests look terrible, but if they are taken to be indicators of a narrower window of infectiousness they might be better (at least, this is what the proponents say). I don't have a strong opinion on any of this and I think the information from all tests can be used correctly or incorrectly. I believe that had there been boring open conversation about these tests we would have settled on a slightly better outcome a year ago or longer and improved by the pandemic by 5% or whatever.

The wider phenomenon I notice is the debate about them around here has been, well, a bit unhinged. The other day there was a bunch of noise about the province (BC) hoarding tests and a debate over whether 1.5 million antigen tests locked up in a warehouse was "millions" or not. A lot of people who likely would have argued in mid-2021 that antigen tests are bad because they're less accurate are now freaking out about the desperate need to get them into the hands of the public. I doubt the tests have changed much and the potential upside has dropped a lot since the pre-vaccine days.

We still have people here screaming about how the government has thrown them to the wolves by only somewhat delaying school openings (maybe to add air filters in early 2022?) because their triple vaxxed 9 year olds might get omicron.
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