Quote:
Originally Posted by birdiebill
If you get tested for the virus, and test positive, you can isolate for the 14 days or more assuming you develop symptoms.
If you test negative for the virus, that means you do not have it at the time of the test. How many days will you wait before you go and get tested again, "just in case you pick it up."
With symptoms, test makes sense; without symptoms test for virus makes less sense unless you are testing for antibodies, or you know you have recently been around a person who is/was tested positive.
Again a negative test for antibodies only means you are negative at the time of the test. Positive means you were exposed, but does not prove immunity--at least yet.
I had labs done for a regular follow-up and asked the lab tech at my doctor's office if she could also get me an antibody test. She said she could do it if the doctor ordered it, but he was not in that day.
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Check the history for Typhoid Mary.
It is relevant to this discussion.
I am EXPOSED to this virus, I would imagine, every single day. I spend much of the day wondering if I will, at some point, get symptoms. Working retail in the front of the store means I'm exposed to people not wearing masks who refuse to social distance, going the wrong way down one-way aisle so their breath is within sneeze-distance to my eyes. It means I am helping people in those scooter-buggies who are coughing because they've been sick with "oh just a cold" for a week, who refuse to wear a mask. I'm exposed to co-workers who might call out sick tomorrow and have been hiding their sickness out of fear of losing their income.
I have no idea what sickness these people have, but the risk of it being COVID-19 is pretty significant.
Because I have no symptoms, I *could* be an asymptomatic carrier. For all anyone knows, any one, or two, or three or more employees of "essential jobs" that deal with the public, could be the next Typhoid Mary.
For that reason, it'd be nice to be able to test once a week. As I harp on in every post about these things - it's all about risk reduction. Not risk elimination.