Hacker News Reader

And also this.

>Positive results may be due to past or present infection with non-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strains, such as coronavirus HKU1, NL63, OC43, or 229E.

View on HN

I feel like false positives are less damaging than false negatives at this point. Unnecessarily putting people into self quarantine is not the worst, as opposed to giving false security to potentially infectious people.

Not so great if people are using to test to see if they're "immune"

Testing should perhaps not be done at home, at all.

True positives could be sent for PCR testing to confirm whether they are infected or already cleared.

Negatives that show symptoms could likewise be sent for PCR testing.

This way, you'd massively reduce the strain on PCR testing resources.

But this is an antibody test, for people who have already recovered from the virus. False positives in this case are precisely what would give people a false sense of security.

Antibodies are present as soon as there are symptoms or soon after, so these tests are designed to be taken by sick people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com