I've been struggling for some time with two questions relating to testing to which I haven't heard a satisfactory answer yet:
1 If you are tested and it's negative why does that mean all of a sudden that it is safe for you to return to normal life? I would have thought that simply means you are still at risk. My stepbrother eventually got a negative result after 15 days and having recovered. He's not convinced but has gone back to work to risk his life again or be blamed for using ppe incorrectly.
2 If you are tested and it is positive why the assumption that you can go about your normal life after a period of time? I thought the second question is easier- we don't know and everything we are being advised to do is simply based on assumption but until we get a reliable antibody test it seems to me you might as well flip a coin in deciding what you have or want to do. In the USA they can play Russian Roulette with all the guns they've bought .
It's probably been raised before elsewhere but if so it must have passed me by.
Not sure I can fully answer this but will try a bit.
1. The people they are trying to test in this way (with the viral antigen test) , is the front line worker, who comes in contact with a Covid19 person and then feels a "bit iffy" then self isolates for a week, taking them off the work force. They can be tested and told " you are positive you are off work for 2 weeks.. or negative:- get back to work".
This also works for relatives of known Covid19 people, like 999s. It is very useful, but means frontline workers will need to be tested regularly, as any teperature or cough or super-tiredness may mean CoVid19 ...or it may not.
2. There is a tenet that if you have a viral infection and then naturally recover, the reason is that you have made antibodies to quell that infection. That is the reason you have got better. So the next time you get splattered by CoVid19 by someone , your antibodies rush to attack the virus before they multiple and you do not get sick again. It is the basis of vaccination (sort of natural vaccination). There are rumours from China that some people who have had it once are getting it a second time, which ruins the theory....a little bit. But there are reasons 1) They may not have had CoVid in the first place 2) even with vaccinations (such as flu) the protection in a few people is incomplete and some people get a mild dose.
It is becoming clearer and clearer to me, that we have to have the antibody test and contact tracing ( possibly through the apps that are working already in S.Korea, Japan and Germany...by the way ...why do we need to develop our own? ) as soon as possible. Then we need to have a vaccine in place by the start of next year.