Just curious if OzBargainers had to be Covid tested to date?
Have You Been Covid Tested?
Poor Ass on 23/12/2020 - 07:37
Last edited 24/12/2020 - 10:51 by 1 other user
Last edited 24/12/2020 - 10:51 by 1 other user
Poll Options
- 91Yes - NSW
- 81Yes - VIC
- 19Yes - QLD
- 9Yes - WA
- 15Yes - SA
- 1Yes - TAS
- 4Yes - ACT
- 2Yes - NT
- 71No - NSW
- 53No - VIC
- 32No - QLD
- 21No - WA
- 12No - SA
- 7No - TAS
- 9No - ACT
- 2No - NT
Comments
The OzBargainer in you couldnt resist the free testing signs?..
4 times for me too. Healthcare worker with a young kid in childcare. Every time another daycare bug goes through the family, to protect my patients and their families.
I’m surprised/not surprised the proportion of Queenslanders who haven’t been tested. Have all those people who voted no, not had any cold or flu like symptoms at all since testing was widely available?
Yes once. I now have an extra nostril.
More is better
I've escaped the gauntlet thus far…..work does random PCR testing but haven't been hit up.
Wife and daughter have both been testedDYOR
Why do I need to do research on the accuracy of a test that my work does randomly? If I felt sick, I'd go get a proper test. These are random, daily tests not unlike D&A screening so their accuracy does not concern me….The company obviously puts some level of faith in it but that's their call to make.
So what will they do to you if you get a 'positive' result but feel fine?
@EightImmortals: If you milked it, yeah….had one guy do pretty much that, claimed he was allergic to the cleaning chemicals. Our role requires us to be in the office but he got to "work from home"…which he couldn't do anything related to our job. Did it for about 3 months!
I don't know why you still bother. In the eyes of most people on this website, your username basically invalidates any comment that comes after it.
I'm not saying that I hope you get COVID. But then again, it's not real right?
Whatever. I don't know why I bother most time either. But how about you attempt to address what I wrote? Easier to neg I guess?
BTW the guy who invented the PCR machine agrees with me.
@EightImmortals: Sure.
What you are referring to is the sensitivity of the PCR, which is set at a certain value. The results that come out are then passed through an arbitrary set of criteria. The criteria is set at best practice, to raise sensitivity, possibly at the cost of lowered specificity. It basically says, you have a higher than normal chance of having this disease. Your reference to a vague "setting of 35" makes me think you don't even know what the principles of the test are. The 35 refers to amplification cycles.
So it brings me to my point: What is your point? You act as if you have uncovered a deep dark secret with your post. You have only stumbled upon the time tested and high school taught principles of selectivity and sensitivity.
It is hard for me to address your point when you basically came out and said something similar to "The PCR can sometimes be too accurate, therefore producing spurious results." So what? I'd rather it be too accurate than not accurate enough.
What is your scientific background by the way?
P.S. As I get older, I have learnt that there are certain people who will go against all scientific principle and evidence. Instead, they rely on dubious journal articles in third rate journals, facebook posts, Pete Evens and the like. I have found that arguing against them is pointless, which is why I did not bother
@Tech5: So you jumped to a bunch of conclusions instead?
My point is that the PCR machine is not an accurate test for the positivity (or not) of the sars-cov-2 virus. That is all.
Here is a sciency explaination: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04651413
"Currently, in the United Kingdom, the recommended method for diagnostic testing and screening for COVID-19 is quantitative (real-time) reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of viral RNA extracted from upper respiratory tract samples. A positive result indicates that SARS-CoV-2 RNA has been detected with a cycle threshold (Ct) value of less than 38 cycles of amplification (n.b. this is a locally agreed value, which is based on analysis of proficiency testing performance and other local testing data. Cycle threshold (Ct) values inversely correlate to the amount of target nucleic acid in the sample. Thus, a lower cycle threshold (Ct) value indicates a greater amount of target nucleic acid in a sample i.e. a higher viral load.
A recent scoping literature review has revealed only a handful of published studies to date that explore an association between cycle threshold (Ct) values and disease severity or clinical outcome in patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The majority of these studies have been conducted in China with small patient sample sizes. Thus, a larger-scale study which explores the relationship between viral load and disease severity is required; indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently highlighted this as an area which needs further research."
Which tells me 2 things, 1) they are using a cycle threshold (In the U.K.) of 38 cycles and
2) There are not many studies that have proven the link between a positive PCR test and the severity of a sars-cov-2 infection.And yet in the U.S. we have Fauci himself saying the PCR is useless and misleading when the test is run at 35 cycles of higher? So which of them are wrong? Both of them?
Here it is, at the 4.21 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=260&v=a_Vy6fgaBPE&feature=yo…
Therefore at this point I stand by my comment that a positive PCR is meaningless in a person that is otherwise feeling fine. If the 'experts' are so confused and the process so arbitrary then why would anyone put any faith in what's being fed to them at the moment? "Because the TV people and politicians said so" is not good enough for me. Each to their own though.
@EightImmortals: It’s not clear if you think the PCR test is missing infections, or reporting false positives.
In any case, this is not happening in Australia.
Victoria did 100k+ pcr tests last month with nil positives, so our testing methods are not generating false positives.
Sewage testing (which admittedly also uses pcr) detected no VIC positives either, so I suggest it isn’t missing cases either.So do you think the testing is inaccurate one way, or the other, or both? Because the facts don’t support you at all for Australian testing.
A Brisbane virologist gives an explanation that may help. https://virologydownunder.com/the-false-positive-pcr-problem…
I’d suggest you think a bit harder about what you are trying to say, because saying “it isn’t accurate” is meaningless when it is clearly detecting cases in Australia with provably few false positives.
How can people vote more than once according to the State/Territory they were in?
Yes. Had to wait 4 days for results back a few months ago.
Wuhan needs to lift its game.
White House needs to lift its game.
I agree, most places do. But the guy is from wuhan not White House.
@cloudy: Never said he wasn't. WH has mismanaged it the point that 5% of the US population has tested positive for it.
@cloudy: From worldometer,
True, US is not the highest percentage of population that have positive case.
Current US rank is 7.
But the first 6 countries are quite small, the largest one is only Czechia which 5.9% of 10.M population are infected.
Compared to US that has 5.6% of 331M population infected.
Mine was in September and return around in NSW was 19 hours. Pretty impressive I though.
I have been tested once, my daughter has been tested three times. It is uncomfortable and inconvenient but necessary.
Woke up with the mildest of symptoms on Saturday morning, testing clinic established a few minutes away from me (living in Sydney) so I decided to go get tested.
Half an hour door to door, received a negative result 6 hours later and was able to go about the rest of my weekend with peace of mind.
Still a bit crook but I can rest easy knowing it's nothing more than a cold.
It could be lupus
Or angina or scoliosis!
Why no option for Christmas Island ?
Or Australian Antarctic Territory?
Probably because there is COVID there now…
There is no COVID-19 in the Australian Antarctic Territory.
@jv: You just can't admit being wrong, can you?
Also, the COVID-19 cases reported on Antarctica were literally on the opposite side of Antarctica to the AAT.
No. I have permanently many of the symptoms (cough, sore throat, fatigue) and have overcome the breathlessness c/o 3 yrs speech therapy exercises only this year. Unfortunately they are not disease. The loss of taste from Covid would also seriously impact myself and others with swallowing difficulty as we are dependent on it to trigger a swallow. Water is tasteless, and I cannot drink it.
But, manager has stated only to get tested if exposed or sick. No work from home available. - The new training facilities built during Covid would have been tight by pre-Covid standards.
But, strict hand washing regime, on arrival to work and home, with gel at other times, changed to private transport. No social life due Covid (or perhaps marriage).
What for…. why should a healthy individual be subjected to testing, injections, and carry a "green card" when they are as healthy as an ox
Because there are plenty of people testing positive with No symptoms and you may unknowingly be spreading to people in our community with compromised immune symptoms who don't do so well with this virus. It's not always about you.! Personally I have now been tested over 12 times as I work directly in Acute Healthcare and it's no biggie. I mostly self swab at work but have been through drive through as well. All negative thank goodness!
I haven't in Vic, and kind of feel like I missed out on a unique 2020 experience!
I find the concept of testing for COVID useless. Given how easy it is to catch it, every hour that goes by presents more uncertainty over your results. You could've tested negative this morning and then gotten the virus from a random encounter 2 minutes later.
It's not like teating for cancer where the results can put your mind at ease for at least a few years. While I can see the benefit for healthcare workers, I'm finding that a lot of people are just getting tested because the media said so without actually thinking what benefit it offers them. I've even heard people at work come one step shy of saying they're heroes for getting tested lol
Only once.
Been tested 3 times now - all negative, but it sucks waiting for the results thinking what if… .
For some reason NSW Health in my area seem to think it's ok to close the collection centres at Liverpool and Fairfield Hospitals totally (according to the NSW Health site). The private pathology companies also seem to think it's not worth paying penalty rates so most are closed over the weekends.
4 times