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Comment by ct0 | Hacker News Reader

By the time you think you need one, and the delay in shipping, its already too late. But its something, I guess. My wife needed a test, 3 weeks ago and I believe she is still waiting for them to arrive from the State.

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Rapid tests need to be on-hand prior to the time that you need them.

I figured this out last time I wanted one and had to search all over several towns to finally find just one single box left. At that point, I ordered a bunch for my company and let my employees know we've got them so that they can have one pretty quickly when they need one without them all having to stockpile them personally. Helps them, and hopefully helps me keep sick employees away from the factory.

> By the time you think you need one, and the delay in shipping, its already too late.

You will need these for the next wave, and no, getting COVID doesn't prevent getting it again in the future - reinfections of already infected are rife with Omicron.

Why? It’s endemic. Unless your treatment depends on knowing which specific respiratory virus you have, getting tested doesn’t really tell you anything new. You are sick. Stay home. Get rest.

Too bad they couldn’t partner with Amazon and have a “get it by tomorrow” option.

As long as the current COVID protocols stay in place (people needing or feeling they need to get tested after every possible COVID exposure, testing young children any time they have a runny nose so they can go to daycare, etc), I doubt that the supply chain will ever be able to support the number of tests demanded. If you run the numbers it's pretty insane how many of those test-kits would be needed.

It's a crying shame that we didn't have two years of warning to get production up to meet demand.

I mean without understanding the material constraints behind manufacturing of the tests it would be hard to say what the upper limit of our ability to manufacture them really is. We make lots of things in large quantities if we really need them.

Logistically speaking, I wonder how partnering with Amazon was not the cheapest and fastest solution.

Or even Walmart. Most of my BinaxNow tests shipped via Walmart within a week.

In a sense, that's what happened for three months last year. The government worked w/ Walmart (and, I think Amazon and another retailer) to sell the BinaxNow tests at cost and ship them to consumers.

* Yes, "at cost" != free - but the idea was to leverage the retailers' distribution capabilities.

Amazon's own private (in stock) Covid PCR test collection kits take at least 3 days to deliver. There's no "get it by tomorrow" option. That may end up being faster delivery than covidtests.gov, but let's not pretend that Amazon is the one to save us.

In an ideal setup they’d have sufficient tests stored in Post Offices for next day delivery.

I ordered two more on Amazon and they won't be here until February.

> By the time you think you need one, and the delay in shipping, its already too late.

As you've observed, it's been too late three weeks ago, where I ordered one from a private provider. They took the money, but, uh, have not fulfilled the order.

Who could have possibly foreseen that in year three of an ongoing pandemic, there might be a demand for... COVID Tests?

Is the problem with ordering them when you don't yet need them that they expire quickly?

That's why you order your tests before you actually need them.

At this point its just handy to have a few on hand

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