So... Friday afternoon, my daughter comes ill with all the symptoms of stomach flu; in the process she managed to barf all over daddy.
After getting her cleaned up, that evening I started to feel crunky, so sent mommy for COVID home tests for the lot of us. The pharmacist advises her that "You'll get best results if you wait a couple days after seeing symptoms to take the test." So we wait til Sunday evening to take them.
Part of the process is a app that gives you pretty explicit instructions (I expect it is actually more a data collection tool than anything); but the thing is... it is all full of disclaimers that you never see until you are actually
in the process of taking the test. It warns you that if you take a B-vitamin supplement (we all do), it can cause false-positive. If you don't get enough sample, it can cause a false-negative, but if there's too much mucus it can cause a false positive.
And of course, all the usual weasel-word BS about how if you're in doubt, get a test administered by a qualified lab.
So I go through the whole process... the app has timers and little flash-oid videos showing how to swab the insides of both nostrils... and timers built in so you have to do for it a specific time (15 seconds per nose-hole), not a specific sample size.
By this time, the girl and I are both in full-blown flu symptoms (I feel exactly like the usual mid-winter flu that kicks my ass almost every year around this time; including no lost sense of taste... yuck), and even the boi has scratchy throat and sniffles. When I administer our tests, there's lots of sample on all our swabs; all of us show a positive like within a couple minutes. Come around to my wife's test, and she's the only one of us not showing symptoms (she's also the only one fully vaccinated
and booster); her sample, done for exactly the same time in exactly the same swabbing technique as the others, makes the swab damp but not covered in mucus like the rest of us.
And shockingly... her test is a hard, clear negative. Control stripe comes up in a minute... nothing at all on the test stripe, even at the 10 minute and 15 minute marks as per instructions.
So after considering these results and the visible difference in the samples... I have to question the validity of the test in any way. As there is no mechanism to make a specific sample size, yet the results are stated to be at least somewhat dependent on sample size, how in the hell does it really test for anything more than "
your nose is full of boogers and virus-related proteins; you have a sinus infection"...?
But here's where things turn really pear-shaped:
Wifey makes all the requisite emails to her school and the kids' schools; the response back is all of us sicklings have to self-isolate for
the next 5 days, and that these 5 days and no longer will be considered excused absences for the kids. What the actual fuck...? A serious flu can easily take 10 days to clear up; and the state/school boards only "allow" 5 days for a "confirmed" case of COVID?
And the final
: Since wifey tested negative, and is exhibiting no flu-like symptoms,
she is expected to show up at work and teach school kids like nothing has happened. They aren't even requiring a lab test to confirm the negative results of a home test; if she wants that she has to take the day off with no pay, and pay for the test herself.mnem