I have two family members that just received a positive PCR test. One tested positive back in November. The other had a clear case in January but didn't get a test, but had positive antibody test in February.

They both just tested prior to a summer camp, and got a positive result.

What the heck is that? I did some googlerizing and there are lots of articles about "post COVID positive PCR result" but most are talking weeks, not months. I found one that was an older woman in Italy and she tested positive for 6 months, and the article said that was the longest known duration for positive testing... uh, we just beat that.

Our patient zero was a nursing home resident in a memory care unit that tested positive for 8 weeks back in March of 2020. We had to hold onto her at our hospital for nearly 5 weeks because it was so new in the pandemic timeline and we did not know much about how the transmission occurs and no SNF or nursing home would take her with cognitive impairments.

We were unsure if she continued to test positive because the family ended up just taking her home after the 8 week mark from first positive and she wasn't tested anymore as far as we know.

PCR tests are typically extremely sensitive on the scale of sensitivity versus a rapid test that is not as sensitive

My daughters room mate had COVID in Dec, tested negative in early March but positive after my daughter and other friends were positive later in March.

Keep in mind PCR is awesome technology but a lot of the medical community (ahem, like Fauci) have no idea how it really works or what the results I should say mean.

Just as an internal combustion engine can be done well or not, for various purposes (such as, oh, a Yugo vs. a UPS delivery truck), so can PCR testing. Real scientific illiteracy, and in particular statistical ignorance, is common in the medical community, covid-19 has demonstrated.

Problem is that there are a lot of organizations that have decided that PCR tests are the gold standard and will only accept results from them, and will not accept a rapid test result. If pressed, I'm sure that they cannot explain why the PCR is the only test they will accept.

Which puts us in a position of telling our kids they can not go to camp which they have been looking forward to for months, or lying to the camp. But we are certain that they are not contagious or even infected.

Stupid.

Hop a cheap flight down to Cancun for the weekend, get your negative test before returning to the US, and you're golden. We all know the Mexican government won't give you a positive. Hell, they probably have millions of pre-made "COVID Negative" cards on hand at the airport and they just fill in your name and date, then you're on your way.

The experimental injection does not guarantee immunity.

One of the most difficult things to do is to accurately assess the evidence of a positive test. Suppose a guy showing no symptoms tests positive for a disease effecting 5% of the population, and suppose the test is 99% sensitive, or only returns 1 positive outcome in 100 negative patients. People assume that means the man is 99% sure to have the disease, but that is not even close to accurate. I can't remember the details of figuring conditional probability (Baye's theorem), but it actually only means the man is something like 50/50 to have the disease. You hsve to account for BOTH the prior probability that the man has the disease AND the positive test.

Testing any asymptomatic people is stupidity of the highest order, especially people who have previously had Covid or been vaccinated.

TarponChaser said:

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Some of these PCR tests are pretty worthless. I forget the technical terminology but they run the cycles so excessively that people who have no chance of actually having it test positive.

If they need a negative test for camp go find someplace that does rapid tests. Those are much less sensitive.

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This is the correct answer.

Additionally:

• According to the creator of the PCR test it was never designed to be a diagnostic tool
• According to Dr Fauci's July 2020 interview on the Virology Podcast any PCR test with a cycle count over ~24 is unreliable due to false positives.

Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, who invented the PCR said it should never be used as a diagnostic tool.



"With PCR if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody ... it doesn't tell you that you're sick"

This has been known for awhile.