General Politics Discussion (IX) [ARCHIVED] • Page 922

There was a guy waiting at the testing center yesterday who already spoke very loudly but yet insisted on pulling down his mask every time he spoke. I'm pretty sure anyone who was negative in that room is now positive.

 

I've always just done the CVS drive thru testing whenever I needed to get tested, that's the safest way. Though you need to schedule an appointment for that and I am sure they are booked up for days

 

If Trump were still president everyone would be talking about how this is gross incompetence from the federal government. Just absolutely pathetic that two years into the pandemic and one year into this administration that access to testing is a concern. We can't even get the common sense stuff right

 

My CVS drive thru has a drawer for prescriptions, and yet they still open the window to talk to you for no apparent reason, during a pandemic lol.

 

The test: you don’t have it!

the testing procedure and location:….yet!

 

I also can't believe that there hasn't been messaging on what types of masks work, whenever you see the government people in a mask it's a basic cloth or surgical mask which isn't ideal

 

Oh my, Florida. Putting even us in the northeast to shame

 

Hearing these testing horror stories, I feel incredibly lucky for how well our City has handled this whole thing. Helps that we have our own health department, but my girlfriend and I have been tested a dozen times and never had to wait more than a day for an appointment and all the testing sites are drive thru. I guess when your Mayor's parents both die from COVID they stop fucking around.

 

We did drive through testing at a county testing facility, with an appointment, but the lines were so long we didn't get our tests until more than an hour after our scheduled appointment time, plus the time it takes to test 5 people (including 3 kids under the age of 6).

 

i'm so sad about the grindcore goat dying

 

We DID have drive through testing, very early on in the pandemic even, but they let it go this past June when the numbers crashed and there was very little demand. Now we just have 3 dedicated testing centers run by the state, and the one near us has you going inside and going into the same room as everyone ahead of and behind you to do it. So fucking dumb.

 

Not trying to be anti, but I feel like at-home testing would be even safer ideally, with drive thru testing coming in second place safety wise.

I was able to have a drive thru test done on my daughter a while back, but when I needed to get tested and it wasn't at my work I was unable to get one and had to go sit in a waiting room with sick people for about 2 hours and pay a co-pay for the visit and/or test.

* Edited to add that also, I was wearing an N95 and a surgical mask over it when I went in, and they told me I had to take them both off and put on a surgical mask that they would give me. I refused and told them I'd take the surgical mask I had on over my N95 off and put their surgical mask over it instead, but that I wouldn't take my N95 off in the waiting room.

 

Kim Potter guilty on two counts

 

Oh yeah at home would definitely be the safest, I was more talking about the lab tests since people here were talking about having to wait in rooms or lines with other people to get a test.

Part of me still is wondering how accurate at-home tests are compared to the lab tests. I haven't seen a whole lot of info regarding the accuracy between the two but obviously the lab testing is more accurate so wish there was more studies or something to show for it. I realize this is just one situation and shouldn't be used as a basis for accuracy but my sister told me she knows someone that did 3 at-home tests, 2 were negative and 1 was positive which is interesting. Not sure if it was the same day (I think it was), and if it was, wonder if it is more likely that 2/3 gave false negatives or 1/3 gave a false positive

 

My flight to Oslo leaves at 3:40pm on Tuesday, so I scheduled a rapid covid test at a CVS community center place on Monday at like 4:30pm. It's free, so hopefully the results don't take too long to get back. I found a drive through backup place I can do the next morning, but it'll be $90. It would be nice if at-home tests would be acceptable proof, but that doesn't seem to be the case

 

at home tests can probably just be faked though

 

I can't find exact data on how accurate the Binax tests are, but I had thought I remembered reading they were around 85% effective, more effective with symptomatic people and less with asymptomatic people.

If you start having symptoms and want to test yourself, I feel like they're decently reliable for checking whether your symptoms are being caused by covid. If you're getting tested to make sure you don't have it before travelling or mingling or something, PCR seems like the better option to me.

I really wanted to pay an obscene amount of money to get some Binax tests so I could test my kids without bringing them out, but I do think ultimately my wife was right - if they're symptomatic at all, we're just gonna keep them home from everything. If they get bad enough that we need to go in somewhere, they will test them at that point and find out.

I think spending money on shit like that makes me feel a little better psychologically, like I did something helpful versus just sitting on my hands bitching about the government and how the US response has been amateur hour fucking clownshow for two years running now.

 

Most of the time I self-test by noting whether my symptoms include sneezing because sneezing is not a symptom of covid.

 

I tested negative yesterday after hanging with some friends this past weekend. Going to test again tomorrow and then Christmas morning. My cousins are making everyone test before coming into their house for Christmas so I’ll end up taking two Christmas tests. One at home so if I’m negative I don’t leave and one when I get to their place.

 

Not sure if you're joking, but sneezing is a symptom of the Omicron variant

 

Yeah that’s true. Unfortunate that with the amount of people getting tested you probably have to wait days to get a PCR test and then wait days to get the results. Not ideal if you need it in order to travel or go to some event.

Personally I am not going to spend money to take an at-home test when I don’t have symptoms or have reason to believe I have COVID, but if I did, then yeah an at-home test is certainly convenient for a fast initial diagnosis instead of having to wait days for results not knowing.