That this study has found several brands with inadequate sensitivity is no surprise at all.
Hence my warning. My daughters school supplied a couple of packages of "Roche" tests for home testing, which are on the really expensive side. However these tests are far away from being the best available, not even "good".
Our local discounters (including Aldi and Lidl) also only offer brands with very limited testing reliability. As most people are already vaccinated a 3rd time, infected people will likely show only very low numbers of virii, and a lot of tests will simply not detect these levels. So these folks unknowingly spread the virus - and with a more reliable test they might have avoided this.
If someone tests negative, their viral load is normally low enough to mean it's unlikely they'll transmit the virus to all, but really close contacts, i.e. their family.
It's getting silly now. The virus is endemic, like the other respiratory viruses we have. In the UK, the all cause mortality rate is below the 5 year average and patients in intensive care, with COVID-19, are still falling. The only purpose of testing should be to diagnose sick people, to determine the course of treatment. There is no point in continuing mass testing and isolating mild cases. It's a massive waste of money.
Vaccines have helped a lot, but there's no point in immunizing healthy children and boosters for healthy adults under 60. The risk vs benefit ratio doesn't justify it, especially against Omicron, which is milder than Delta. There's data to suggest, that in males under 40, the risks of myocarditis due to some vaccines, exceeds that of SARS-Cov-2. What's worse is the number of infections is under-reported, yet the number of vaccinations is known, making the ratio of excess myocarditis due to vaccination higher. Vaccinating young men made sense when Delta was prevalent, as there are other complications of infection, such as pneumonia, but it makes less sense for Omicron and boosters probably do more harm than good.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v1.full.pdfEDIT:
For those who don't have time to read the study. Here's a graph showing the excess myocarditis events, per million, in men under 40, for different doses of the vaccines used in the UK and SARS-Cov-2 infection. I've added the manufacturers of the vaccines, for those unfamiliar with them.
It's obvious that:
- For the second dose of all vaccines used, excess events of myocarditis exceed those following infection.
- The risk of myocarditis, following the third dose of Pfizer also exceeds SARS-Cov-2.
- The third dose of the AstraZeneca and Moderna, have a lower risk of myocarditis, compared to SARS-Cov-2.
Notes:
AstraZeneca isn't widely used for the third dose and I believe it's no longer used in under 40s, unless the person can't have any of the other vaccines, which might explain why the excess myocarditis events don't show up on the third dose.
A half dose of the Moderna is used for the third dose in the UK, which could explain why there are no excess myocarditis events, following it.
Moderna is no longer routinely used for the first and second doses, in under 40s in the UK, due to the unacceptably high risk of myocarditis.
Conclusion:
Why the heck are they still giving booster doses of Pfizer to men <40?
They should look into using AstraZeneca for the first dose, in men <40 (blood clots were almost exclusively reported in women) and a half dose of Moderna for the second and third/booster doses.