Hi Chuck, I've been checking this thread on and off for a while, certainly appreciate all the help you've provided. I finally have a few basic questions, apologies if they are repeats but I hope you can understand given the size of the thread.
I've been participating in voluntary twice-weekly at-home/mail-in testing (Quest) offered by my company for a few months now, and my test sample from Monday tested positive for the first time (Monday and Thursday samples from last week were negative). I started to show symptoms late Saturday, but the progression of symptoms has been exactly like every cold I can remember, first day just sore throat, second day sniffles and coughing/irritated throat, third & fourth day congestion and only light throat irritation/coughing. I have been without taste & smell the past 2 days, though honestly that's happened to me before with colds before when I've been this stuffed-up, so nothing seemed unusual about this, I continued to test as normal but fully expected it would come up negative, so I was quite surprised to get the news this morning.
My understanding is that the test confidence levels are pretty high for a positive result (i.e. it found what it's looking for), where confidence isn't as high in a negative result (many reasons why it could fail to detect what it's looking for). Yet I've heard cases of "I tested positive, but re-tested and it was negative so everything's fine", but I don't think it really works that way?? Is there any chance that a regular cold (or perhaps flu) could lead to a positive result? The portal website that gave me the positive result suggested I shouldn't test again for 90 days, which seemed like a pretty bizarre statement to me.
Realizing the negative caveat I just mentioned, between the two negative results last week and the onset of first symptom late Saturday, there's no real way of knowing when I might have picked this up, is there? Unfortunately if there was a week this was going to happen I'm not surprised it's this past week, normally it's just home (I live alone) and at the office (where I have my own office and everybody's good about masking), but this past week I was cross-country 5 days for a wedding and spending a few extra days with family in the area, plus the flights to get there and Lyfts to/from the airports, a day and a half at home, then this past weekend I was at a 3-day launch, so mostly outdoors all day, but I did eat at a restaurant Friday night and stayed in a motel room Friday/Saturday night. Just wondering if getting a sore throat Saturday suggests I got it before Friday (or if it could show symptoms that fast), or if the negative sample from Thursday suggests I more likely got it after then (presumably there's a minimum time from exposure until the test can pick it up?). I did stay away from the office this week since I didn't feel well, but now I have to stay away for at least 10 days, joy.
I did get my 2 Pfizer doses back in April/May, though my parents were pushing me to lie and get the 3rd jab I really didn't have any justifiable reason to do so, I'm mid-40's, work in a regular office environment and no health conditions other than being overweight (5'8"/205lbs). So hoping this will subside like any cold has, I basically had all the same symptoms after returning from a cross-country trip over the 4th of July, but all my testing at that time came back negative, including a set of BinaxNOW tests I took on my own since some symptoms lasted for a while and I was getting concerned it might have been more than just a cold.
Happy times for sure, not. Customers are really ticked off when they find out that she can't yet give them a booster.
