Thanks to the repeal of masking mandates in our schools, our youngest already brought home a head cold. When it was at its worst for him, we took him to urgent care and they tested for a sinus infection, strep, and COVID. All negative. Probably just a run-of-the mill rhinovirus.
We initially suspected tree pollen, but my wife and I got increasing symptom levels as he was on the downward slope which makes a cold more likely. Plus the sinus drip has started me coughing. Not often or hard, just very much in line with a standard moderate head cold that leaves a few weeks of chest crud in its wake. But still, once coughing entered the picture, I thought I should test just for good measure.
When I was at LivePerson, they mailed rapid at-home tests to remote employees considering going in when they re-opened the Seattle office. I got a few, but never used them because I had an temporary dip in serum protein that also caused a mild deficiency in the proteins used to make antibodies. I stayed home out of an abundance of caution.
Today, I opened one of the Quidel QuickVue two packs. There was next to no test solution in the vials. Unusable. Another, dry vials. Another, one vial had enough. That’s THREE PACKS, SIX vials, and ONE usable. In other words, Quidel had an EIGHTY-THREE PERCENT DEFECT RATE across multiple packages. The lot on all of them was #706809 with a manufacture date of 5/19/21 and an expiration of 4/18/22. They were not kept in any sort of extreme conditions and showed no signs of tampering.
This level of quality control is abhorrent.