After ~2 yrs of uphill battle to get CDC to recognize rapid Ag tests are sensitive enough to answer the question “Am I Infectious?”…
It is astounding that CDC is now pretending rapid Ag tests are too sensitive to answer this question - bc they wont support a test-to-exit policy
It feels like a serious twilight zone whiplash to hear Rochelle, Fauci, and a small cadre of physicians who want to support them saying “we don’t know if rapid antigen tests correlate w culturable/infectious virus”
Yes - we do know this. We’ve known it for over a year!
CDC telling America masks didn’t work, just because we didn’t have enough, didn’t exactly go over well and was one of the most destructive decisions in the pandemic.
It’s unclear to me why they feel that repeating that same mistake today w rapid tests makes sense.
Instead, it would be better to simply say:
“Rapid Ag tests are the best indicator we have for whether someone remains infectious”
“the USG is doing everything it can to bring in an adequate supply of tests”
Here’s a nice simple graphic from a recent @NEJM article showing the overlap of infectious virus with antigen test positivity. There is a lot of real world data to back this up. Antigen tests are both SENSITIVE & SPECIFIC to the infectious period.
nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
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