My Contribution to Big Pharma

What they think of Covid in another galaxy.

Feeling crummy with a slight cough and a headache, and having had dinner last night with someone who seemed pretty sick although he said it was a reaction to a shingles shot he got the day before (even though his wife just got over Covid a week ago), this morning my husband and I took home Covid tests. It was my first, so I was pretty nervous about it. But after reading the accompanying literature I realized there was nothing to worry about since no matter what, it was almost certain to be wrong. 

For example, if you didn't stick it up your nose far enough, it could give you no information. And if you didn't twirl the swab around for exactly 15 seconds inside each nostril, you could get a false negative. (Or a false positive.) Then you had to put the swab into a tube and do some more twirling around while squeezing it, or was it swirling? Yes, it was definitely twirling inside the nostril and swirling in the tube. Then you had to flick it. With all the squeezing and twirling and swirling and flicking, I became quite rattled.

Then there was the part where you had to put in exactly four drops of the liquid, no more and no less, into the test kit well. Any less would give you a false negative. Or maybe positive, I forget. And if you read the results sooner than 15 minutes or later than 30 minutes, it could result in a false positive. (Or was it a negative.)

If you drank too much coffee beforehand, or not enough, the results could be invalid. If the phone rang during the test, you'd have to start over. And if you coughed during the procedure, all bets were off. 

Mitch and I both turned out to be negative. Maybe. But to be certain, we should take another test. Not sure why we would since it says right on the box that the test has not been FDA approved. Anyway, somebody made a cool twenty bucks on us today.