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czarina Has Achieved Nirvana |
I have never heard this. The reason people get negative results then test positive later is because the test is just a snapshot in time.
High risk to all attending except for folks who got the booster (3rd shot) at least two weeks earlier. Folks who had covid last year but are not vaccinated do not have immunity. They are at the highest risk for getting dangerously sick. Folks who have just had two shots but no booster could still get dangerously ill but less likely than the unvaccinated.
You'll have to decide what is acceptable risk and if it is worth it. Even if you don't get it,you could transmit it to others--we still don't know a lot about that. Is the risk worth it to you? I wouldn't go. I don't need to socialize that badly. But I know plenty of people who go ahead and the risk is worth it to them. And yes, they got sick...
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czarina Has Achieved Nirvana |
Thanks for the additional info. Not all communities have all these options. We are a very rural state with limited resources. Also, each county follows its own rules and protocol. YMMV.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
We're living in an extremely complicated public health crisis that's evolving at an incredible pace. Moving from theory, to data, to doing public health on worldwide, national, and local bases means a lot of assumptions and compromises are being made. Probably as a function of how my brain works and what I did for a living, I tend to zoom out and try to get as comprehensive an understanding of the big picture as I can before I drop down to the level of making specific decisions. My co-workers and friends kid me about my living at 50,000 feet a lot of the time. I did a version of that recently when I decided to get the antibody test to get an idea of what my immunity level is before deciding whether to get a booster or not. To say it's complicated is an understatement. But I got information that was personally relevant that I didn't get from conventional public health sources. It comes down to individual health care decisions vs health advice for the masses. Both valid, but sometimes different.
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czarina Has Achieved Nirvana |
I have a lot of friends taking your approach, WTG. The problem is, you can't know what you don't know. The thing is too big and complicated for anyone to get their arms around. Information changes swiftly. Any of the trusted sources could contradict themselves tomorrow. Plus, how do you know which sources to trust? That is a standard problem in my field, investigative reporting. When my life is on the line, the number of sources I'm willing to trust narrows considerably. I have friends who have spouted totally erroneous info to me based on their very intensive and broad reading and research. Guess what? They got Covid because they insisted they had an immunity they didn't have. Based on this or that thing they read. And so they took risks they didn't need to take. The one thing they didn't understand was how Covid was unfolding and manifesting in their specific community in real time. Who was getting it, and how they were getting it. By looking over this landscape, I personally have chosen to limit my exposure whenever I have a choice, and take every government endorsed vaccine offered, as soon as it is offered. Because what I'm seeing in real time is who gets it, and how they get it, and how they are exposing others in the community. My position is that it's impossible to know everything I need to know, so I act on what can't be researched away--isolation works, and the vaccines mostly prevent death. And the folks I have weekly contact with in this job are getting covid if they didn't get the booster.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Thank you, pique.
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(self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
In response to Pique's responses to my questions above (re types of tests, diff b/w PCR and antigen tests etc.) I googled around and found more info about my university's covid test and so on, including this:
So our spit tests are still PCR tests. Also, pique, you mentioned the length of time it takes to get test results back, but I don't think that's a good gauge since time to results will be heavily influenced by local/environmental details. Our uni conducts tests on campus and processes results on campus. Total turn around time, from when I submit my sample to when I get the automated test results via cellphone app, is almost always less than 24 hours, sometimes more like 4 hours. I doubt other places have this kind of turn around time. But also, the fact that we have this fast turn around is not an indication of a low quality test. It's an indication of a system that works really, really well, on a population that is constant in terms of numbers -- iow, the university testing center only tests the university population (all students, faculty, staff and employees of any type). That's a pretty big number, since this is a big school, but it's a fixed number that never changes. Once you run the numbers, you figure out how many tests you need to process per week, per day, then you put the system in place and let it run. I saw that at the beginning of the semester when the turnaround time for results sped up after maybe the second or third week. Since then it's been mostly the same. Also, btw, every step of the testing process here has been designed by uni employees and researchers, even including the cellphone app we use to sign up for a test slot and receive test results. And the testing center is staff by university researchers and grad students as well. 100% in-house, as it were. Oh and btw, this is a *massive* testing operation. All students are required to be tested once a week, and faculty and staff are required to be tested once every two weeks. No exceptions. Regardless of vaccination status, regardless of having no symptoms etc. Everyone connected to the university has to be up to date on their covid testing in order to be cleared to be physically on campus. If your "testing clearance" expires, you lose access to all campus buildings (which have card readers at ever door, you have to use your campus ID with the card reader to get in). Apparently they did a bunch of modeling over the summer and their models showed that this set up (students once a week, faculty/staff once every two weeks) hit the sweet spot in terms of effectively using tests for preventive measures while not being overly burdensome in terms of time and money. As an aside, when I go to the test center, I walk in, get my QR code scanned (in the cellphone app), someone scans the sample tube (to connect my code to the code/number on the sample tube), I step outside to spit in the tube. When I'm done, I put the tube in a collect box (when that box is full, it gets taken for processing). Faculty have a separate line from students, so there is *never* any waiting in the faculty line. But even in the student line, I've only ever seen an actual line a few times (like after fall break when they imposed a rule about everyone getting tested twice). The whole testing process takes barely five minutes to complete. Pique said
From what I can tell, both from reading and from being here on campus all semester, I think our uni tests are as reliable as any of the other highly reliable tests that are being used. And I agree, the brain swab is horrible. I can remember early on (once our uni start the spit test) talking to someone at another university and being super surprised that they didn't have access to a spit test. I cannot imagine having to do the nasal swab every week. OMG. In any case, as I compare and read around, I think our uni is actually doing an amazing job. Way way better than I think I was giving credit for. Oh, the other thing they're doing is a partnership with the city where they analyze wastewater/sewage every week to see what neighborhoods have a high rate of infection (viral load) in waste water. The city releases that data every week.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Definitely the case. Those considerations come into play when doing public health in the real world as you are. I was just trying to provide a broad understanding of the technology that anyone could use in their individual situation. Or that might be helpful to you in the future if your local parameters change.
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(self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
Oh one more thing. Our uni requires masks indoors. At the beginning of the semester, it was masks indoors everywhere (except cafeterias, which I never go into). Now they've dialed that back a bit because of low levels of infection, but masks are still required in classrooms. Tests and masks, I think it's made a huge difference here.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
SK, your analysis totally tracks with what I've found.
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czarina Has Achieved Nirvana |
That's great. Like I said, we don't have spit tests here so I don't know anything about them. But I never said the short turnaround is what makes the rapid tests unreliable. I'm sure it's what they are measuring--or how they are measuring--that is the reason. We also have the wastewater tested here. It indicates that viral load is far higher than test results would suggest. Lots of people aren't getting tested. They don't want to get an isolation order so they just do what they *think* they are supposed to do. Or not.
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(self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
I didn't mean to imply that. I thought you were saying that the turnaround time was one way to tell which kind of test it was. And I would guess that's often the case, at local levels.
I have been following our wastewater data ever since they started posting it. It's an amazing tool, and I've been thinking lately that they should start doing that for the flu, and maybe norovirus as well! For the last month IIRC, our wastewater levels have been going done. And I also started to notice that I hadn't had students in quarantine as often either. All very good signs! Esp. since in the first half of the semester, my biggest class was just rolling rounds of quarantine for students. I was calling that my superspreader class. But fortunately, none of them ended up seriously ill. I don't know how many were vaccinated, and I don't ask, but several of them would tell me when we emailed about them being in quarantine. What a time to live in. I cannot tell you how fortunate I feel to have gotten through this semester, with in-person classes, and not gotten covid and not brought it home or given it to Mr. SK. I have no doubt that is due completely to the university's testing requirement and mask requirement, well and my own rigid adherence to masking and the complete lack of socializing or dining out that Mr. SK and I continue to follow.
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czarina Has Achieved Nirvana |
Sk, it sounds like your university is doing an amazing job. So relieved for you. No question the level of risk is community specific. I think the wastewater tests are a more reliable indicator than the covid tests, so sounds like your whole community is doing an excellent job.
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(self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
Yes, I agree! And I realize I need to give them more credit! Re masks, they added mask rule adherence to the students' code of conduct. Early in the semester, when I would spot students in the hallways without a mask, I would remind them that 1) they needed to wear a mask and 2) not wearing one was a violation of the student code of conduct. (Yes, that makes me a mask cop. I'm ok with that). Anyway, the point is, little details like that also made a huge difference, and helped faculty a lot IMO. This is a pretty conservative area (duh) and they have done an amazing job really, esp. looking back on the semester as a whole.
Well, the campus community yes. The rest of the state.... um, no comment.
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Does This Avatar Make My Butt Look Big? Minor Deity |
I don’t doubt your experience, but in Maryland, we have it on lock. We have mask mandates, people are educated about COVID, and people comply. When my test came back positive from urgent care, they explained what I should do about how to isolate and for how long, and they gave me a handful of instructions, which I read and followed. I work from home, and I am not in contact with people indoors often. I fail to see why the county needs to know that I went to the grocery store masked 10 days earlier. I knew I had only spent time unmasked in proximity to two people, both of whom tested negative. The CDC will somehow have to get by without talking to me. And any random person who calls me up and isn’t in my caller ID is not getting my birthdate, nor will I believe they are legitimate just because they can tell me my birthdate. | |||
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