@eniko here’s a reply where Trendless explains a little more, in case the thread didn’t federate properly to you 😊 https://zeroes.ca/@trendless/111365249511141108 basically they’re sadly discontinued because we can’t have nice things in this world, but sometimes you can find deadstock in places; and they’re in between lateral flow tests and PCRs (maybe closer to PCRs?) in terms of accuracy.
(Edit: just noticed the thread is followers-only!! Hope my summary is okay!)
@trendless
I have so many questions. For a start, what do you mean by "pooled"? Almost sounds like you put all the samples together, doing one pooled test on the roomful of people.
@BlueDot yes, that's right -- multiple people's swabs run through a single test. If anyone is positive, the test will flag it, but won't know who. For this use-case, doesn't matter who, if there's any pos the gathering is called off.
@trendless
Exactly. I don't need to know if it was one of my grandchildren or one of their parents or the dog or the cat. I just know I won't be making the trip for Christmas.
Phizer says they will have some on Amazon in "the coming weeks" but can't narrow it down.
@PacificNic supposedly. Different tech. A few more false positives, a bunch less false negatives. This brand is discontinued, though there's still some old stock in 🇨🇦. There's another brand, but it's currently only available in 🇺🇲.
@steven@jmcrookston@PacificNic as far as I know, that's correct; the benefits are need fewer tests ergo cheaper. Especially with LAMP, that's a significant consideration. When testing to get together with people, I can't think of a reason not to pool... maybe someone else can?
@steven@jmcrookston@PacificNic even non-pooled LAMP is reputed to have higher false pos. Be interesting to know if that's increased by pooling and how significantly. iirc, pooled PCR was how China did population-wide testing until they gave up on ZC, so it's not without precedent.
@trendless@jmcrookston@PacificNic I am mostly still grumpy that we went with a relatively small number of individual PCR tests, instead of geometrically more pooled PCR tests through matrixing.
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