Yeah, I’ve heard the same as @Marcie. False negatives are pretty common with the home tests, partly from user error, but mostly because you can be infected without having a lot of virus in your nose at the moment you swabbed it. But false positives are very rare. If your rapid test is positive, you have covid growing in your nose.
Don’t bring the kid into your house unless someone in your house also tests positive. No reason to spread it.
I was able to mail-order tests from Walmart a couple days ago. Surprised your can’t find them.
Hopefully whichever of your kids are infected get over it quickly, and don’t get very sick. And hopefully you don’t catch it.
There are tests in stores, or at least in our store. We had a bunch and used them all, have more in the mail. Curbside isn’t a thing at our grocery store and once there was a positive test, we didn’t feel ok going to the store to pick them up. Should have 4 more tests arriving today.
It’s the rapid test appointments that have been impossible to find around here. I don’t know how stepson’s mom even got one, honestly, because I was looking for a long time last night and didn’t find anything. I’m wondering if she got a PCR appointment and just assumes it’s a rapid one…
Stepson is feeling much better today. I’m thinking he has two or three different bugs, because this stomach bug has hit all the kids; he’s the last to get it and it definitely originated with foster placement. So did the cold symptoms, because he came here with a snotty nose and a cough.
But stepson is the only one to test positive for covid despite being sick with the same things. He got it worse than the others, but that’s typical for him.
We will just keep testing everyone and hope it goes by quickly and without serious illness in any of them.
A few weeks ago daycare spread COVID around. Wife and baby outdoorman tested positive. I never got tested since I assumed I had it and getting testing appointments is hard around here. Baby had a cough for about two weeks but nothing too bad. Wife lost taste and smell for three days otherwise no other symptoms. I had a sore throat and a stuffy nose for 2 days. Wife and I are both vaccinated but have different shots. Glad we were vaccinated. More of a inconvenience not being able to go anywhere for 2 weeks than being sick
Same for me last winter. Short period of taste and smell loss, but it recovered. My wife, who tested negative, suffered more, since she banned me from the rest of the house, couldn’t go to work (at a school), and had to make all my meals.
Had the sweetest blackberries (out of season here, from New Zealand), though my wife said they were extremely tart.
In the ongoing saga, the pharmacy test came back negative, and a PCR test is out. We’re operating as though the initial positive was correct, since a false positive is more rare than a false negative. Hoping this means he’s on the mend…
so, this new variant, is it gonna evade the vaccines?
my father is going back to a nursing home for at least a week. he had an incident, that led to other incidents and now needs rehab. so, this scary new variant will either hopefully stay put in south africa for a few weeks, or if not, doesn’t evade the vaccines. he hasn’t had the booster yet. we weren’t sure what to do in that regard. finally decided he should get it after consulting with his doctor, then an incident happened and he wound up in the hospital and now needs rehab and only has the vaccine from february, and his previous bout with covid as protection. we are planning to maybe get him the booster while there.
Yikes… hope he recovers quickly and is home before the new variant hits NYC.
Did he have both doses of Moderna plus Covid? That’s better protection than just the two doses. But it sounds like he’d benefit from getting the booster as soon as his doctors think he’s up for it.
He is definitely on the up and up. It’s a relief that it wasn’t a significant event for him, or anyone else in our family. Everyone else is still negative so far.
There’s like < 100 cases, isn’t there? We don’t know what it’ll do in the real world yet. It has some of the mutations for vaccine resistance and reinfection likelihood.
They found it because there were a few thousand more cases (total) than expected in part of South Africa, so they sequenced a few. And it’s been found in Israel, Belgium, and Hong Kong. So I’m sure it’s more then a few hundred cases.
It’s also unlikely there is much of it in the US, yet.
And no one knows if it will take off or not. Beta had genes to evade vaccines and reinfect, but never really traveled much outside of South Africa, because Delta outcompeted it. (And it was moderately susceptible to antibodies from the vaccine and prior infection, just not as much as the Wuhan strain.)
Beta was scary enough that Moderna already developed a vaccine against it, which they are testing against omicron.
But if he’s going to the nursing home right now, and won’t be there long, it probably won’t have spread much before he gets home. Good luck.
Possibly too early, or sample too small, to say with much certainty, but word out of South Africa is that Omicron results in milder symptoms than previous strains:
thanks. yes, both doses of moderna, plus covid, but the moderna 2nd dose was in february, and the covid was in late march/early april, 2020. he was scheduled to get a booster on december 1, but we had to cancel it due to this incident that put him in the nursing home.
that would be great news if correct and if it takes over from delta as a more mild form.
