This is also why lower analytical sensitivity tests, when performed frequently, are MUCH more sensitive than very high sensitivity tests performed infrequently or w slow return of results
If infectious, you will be detected by rapid Ag tests. And that’s what matters.
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But if you aren’t testing frequently, you are VERY likely to miss getting a swab in your nose before or when you are at peak infectivity (bc peak is reached VERY fast and diminishes fast).
So a test that takes a long time to return or is infrequent, simply doesn’t help much.
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Put another way, most people who are infected will pass through the “super-carrier” state, as @EricTopol called it.
It’s not a characteristic of the person getting infected nearly as much as it is the stage that the virus is at, within each person, at the cross section in time.
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Here we go again with this asinine cautious approach to testing for H5N1
CDC is NOT recommending that people with no symptoms - but who have had contact w infected animals - be tested at all… and certainly are not recommending a swab w any frequency.
Though we should have learned it in 2020, Here’s why this doesnt make sense:
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Firstly, tests are our eyes for viruses. It’s literally how we see where viruses are
If we wait until people are getting sick, we may have missed a major opportunity to find viruses jumping into humans before they learn to become so efficient in us that they cause disease
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So waiting until we actually have highly pathogenic strains harming humans - when we have a pretty discreet population at the moment to survey - is short sighted
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A particularly deadly consequence of measles is its erasure of previously acquired immune memory - setting kids and adults up for infections that they shouldn’t be at risk from!
We found for example that measles can eliminate as much as 80% of someone’s previously acquired immunity to other pathogens! science.org/doi/full/10.11…