Wanted to be sure before spending time with the old folks this Thanksgiving so got a saliva test on Thursday and again on Sunday.

Thursday results came in on Monday as negative.

Sunday results came in just now as positive.

No close contact with anyone other than my gf since Thursday (and her Thursday test came back negative - she did not get a second test).

So with both of these tests saying less than a 1% false-positive and less than a 1% false-negative, one of you math whizzes tell me what this means.

Best of three?

ORAggieFan said:

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Best of three?

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That was my plan, but with Thanksgiving tomorrow I basically have to wait until Friday or Saturday to get results. Bah.

Interesting article regarding saliva testing

Duncan Idaho said:

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It is also possible that you had a false positive on the second test.

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Or a false negative on the first test for that matter. If the false negative/postive of the test you took is less than < 1%. Statistically speaking, the most likely scenario is: the first test was too early in your infection to pick it up and the second test it wasn't.

OP are you in BCS? The kiosks on campus are open today and are open to the public. I got my results in less than 24 hours.

As said above, there are tests available with less than 24 hour turnaround. And some for free

i know there are some places with rapid PCR capability; you can get a PCR result in a couple of hours

from what i've seen, you've got to pay for that luxury though

would you consider a rapid antigen test as a tiebreaker?

Yeah I looked into the antigen, but with the false negative %'s honestly I'd probably only feel comfortable with 2 or 3 negatives in a row. Normal everyday life I wouldn't sweat it as much, but with both my parents having significant underlyings (dad diabetes, mom recent breast cancer and colon removed) I don't think I'd enjoy myself with that lingering thought in the back of my head.

Good news is we're all within a 5 minute drive from one another, so I can just see them another day. Just hate it for my Mom because Thanksgiving is "her" holiday.

And Friday results are... negative.

Will know Saturday (test #4) results by Mon/Tues.

On my way to a full house or three of a kind!

I believe there are a lot more false positives than anybody acknowledges. I don't believe anyone wants to discuss that because too many people would ignore valid positive tests if it was acknowledged. It would be interesting to know if a study of the tests has been conducted. For instance, testing the same "infected persons, day after day after day for an extended period. Best of luck to you and if you are truly sick hopefully it will be mild..

No doubt, but then it brings up the other side of the equation - how many people have received false positives, isolated for 10 days and then from that point on assumed they had it already and been much more lackadaisical around others?

Will be interesting to see my next test result. I mean, maybe I'm one of the < 1% of false positives on the antigen tests, but sure seems like you said that % is greater than 1%.

When even folks like Elon musk can't get a reliable test you know the rest of aren't either.