virusduck

It's true. This boot has no disk

There is no "since 2022"--they have performed at relatively the same level to date. They just are not perfect and are unlikely to prevent the kind of non-symptomatic exposures people have, but in most cases, they are good to quickly differentiate a random sore throat from a COVID-related one.

Hello, System 7!

Reminds me of that age old question... We find all these dinosaur fossils in mines for metals and fuel. It makes you wonder if they were just another bunch of animals, what were they all doing mining for industrial materials?

I think they’ve improved since 2021, but back then when someone sent me a webex invitation I’d feel secondhand embarrassment for them. It was BY FAR the worst of the videoconferencing platforms despite having a huge head start.

Oh man, I totally forgot about the Star Wars plugin. What an awesome game EV was. I regret never paying for it.

Total off topic, but I followed the link to read about the Coconut Effect. Not looking at the URL, I ended up about 10 tabs deep before I realized it was friggin tvtropes!! I haven't been over there in a while, but I'm glad to see that site still has that effect on people.

What world are you living in?

Whether or not this happened in reality, it is still a good learning experience.

I've got a Laserjet from the 90's still kicking. It's wireless too with a RPi Zero W and a USB<->Parallel cable. Generic toner cartridges are cheap and available everywhere. Only issue is that the rubber on the runners need a refresh.

Don't forget to tip, Mulder!

No. qPCR is, well, quantitative, so it gives more information. Additionally, it requires less pipetting, and the data is easier to report. All of these things make it more desirable for diagnostics.

That is correct.

False negative rate maybe?

In general, titers of the virus in NP swabs should be high enough to withstand 10, maybe 20-plex pooling. However, as you allude to, there are plenty of other effects that can influence PCR. If there is one sample, for example, that contains a PCR inhibitor, like heme, it may then inhibit all the samples it is pooled with.

Additionally, swabs are not just swabs of virus, they also pull of highly variant amounts of bacteria and human material. These things may also affect the efficiency of PCR.