Change in LFT Packs

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Gfamily
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Change in LFT Packs

Post by Gfamily » Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:01 pm

I've just ordered a new pack of LFTs, and with this lot there's no swabbing of the back of the throat - it's 5 turns up each nostril instead.

This is very good news for me - I hate the gag reflex.
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by snoozeofreason » Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:48 pm

We managed to get some of those a few weeks ago, but all the packs we have had since then are the usual throat-and-nose ones. I think the ones you got are a bit like the Wonka bars with the golden ticket.
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discovolante
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by discovolante » Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:09 pm

I've got through loads of the new packs, get with the times! :p
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by Trinucleus » Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:17 pm

Our £25 a pop ones for holiday use were nose only. Can't make paying customers gag

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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by Fishnut » Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:18 pm

I've only done the nose and throat swabs a couple of times (the benefits of being a hermit). The first time was very early on when we had to send them off for analysis. I have a ridiculously strong gag reflex and couldn't even get the swab near the appropriate area without almost throwing up. In the end I gave up and just did my nose. The second time with the at-home LFT I just went straight up my nose and ignored my throat. I remember seeing some study that said you don't need to sample your throat so I just figured a good nose sample would be better than a contaminated nose and somewhere-vaguely-around-the-back-of-the-mouth sample.
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by Gfamily » Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:28 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:18 pm
... I just figured a good nose sample would be better than a contaminated nose and somewhere-vaguely-around-the-back-of-the-mouth sample.
I did notice that the written instructions for our last 'throat and nose' pack said 'if you've not swabbed your throat, you should swab both nostrils', but only at the end after you're very likely to have already swabbed your throat.

Mind you, when we were tested in France before being allowed back into UK, the 'nose only' pharmacy tests went about 10cm up the nose - twice as far as we expected! That made the eyes water.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by Fishnut » Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:34 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:28 pm
Mind you, when we were tested in France before being allowed back into UK, the 'nose only' pharmacy tests went about 10cm up the nose - twice as far as we expected! That made the eyes water.
I remember Sawbones doing an episode on covid testing and talking about how awkward it was for even trained people to take swabs up people's noses, how you had to go far higher than you thought possible, and how uncomfortable it is. It made me wonder how many people were ever actually going to swab themselves properly if that's the case and what the false negative rate was as a result. Though given that people are clearly getting positive results through these methods I also wonder if maybe we don't actually need to be pushing them quite as far up as originally thought.
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by Gfamily » Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:08 am

Fishnut wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:34 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:28 pm
Mind you, when we were tested in France before being allowed back into UK, the 'nose only' pharmacy tests went about 10cm up the nose - twice as far as we expected! That made the eyes water.
I remember Sawbones doing an episode on covid testing and talking about how awkward it was for even trained people to take swabs up people's noses, how you had to go far higher than you thought possible, and how uncomfortable it is. It made me wonder how many people were ever actually going to swab themselves properly if that's the case and what the false negative rate was as a result. Though given that people are clearly getting positive results through these methods I also wonder if maybe we don't actually need to be pushing them quite as far up as originally thought.
It made your eyes water, but it was neither painful nor terribly uncomfortable. I accept though, that it could be tricky to self-administer without holding back.
If compared to a throat swab; I had a pharmacy give me one of those before leaving UK, and that provoked a gag reaction no less than a self-administered one.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by headshot » Fri Nov 05, 2021 7:04 am

They changed them back in August.

I actually prefer the swabs in the old packs. I don’t gag using them and they were thinner so I could more comfortably get them up my nose (especially after they were lubricated by throat juice). I would usually get the swab up my nose to the break point on the stick.

The new swabs are thicker and shorter, so I only get them in to the point where I can keep hold of them. The thick, dry swab is much harder to get in.

I’ve been doing about two per week since April.

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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by Brightonian » Fri Nov 05, 2021 8:02 am

Gfamily wrote:
Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:08 am
Fishnut wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:34 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:28 pm
Mind you, when we were tested in France before being allowed back into UK, the 'nose only' pharmacy tests went about 10cm up the nose - twice as far as we expected! That made the eyes water.
I remember Sawbones doing an episode on covid testing and talking about how awkward it was for even trained people to take swabs up people's noses, how you had to go far higher than you thought possible, and how uncomfortable it is. It made me wonder how many people were ever actually going to swab themselves properly if that's the case and what the false negative rate was as a result. Though given that people are clearly getting positive results through these methods I also wonder if maybe we don't actually need to be pushing them quite as far up as originally thought.
It made your eyes water, but it was neither painful nor terribly uncomfortable. I accept though, that it could be tricky to self-administer without holding back.
If compared to a throat swab; I had a pharmacy give me one of those before leaving UK, and that provoked a gag reaction no less than a self-administered one.
I also had a test in France (late September) and they also only did the nose. I think they only did one nostril, but managed to get enough gunk out of it (I had runny nose). Even so I still found it very difficult, leaving with streaming eyes as well as a streaming nose.

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TAFKAsoveda
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by TAFKAsoveda » Fri Nov 05, 2021 8:34 am

We were always told to only do the nose swabbing - NHS infection control team advice.

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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by discovolante » Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:16 am

headshot wrote:
Fri Nov 05, 2021 7:04 am
They changed them back in August.

I actually prefer the swabs in the old packs. I don’t gag using them and they were thinner so I could more comfortably get them up my nose (especially after they were lubricated by throat juice). I would usually get the swab up my nose to the break point on the stick.

The new swabs are thicker and shorter, so I only get them in to the point where I can keep hold of them. The thick, dry swab is much harder to get in.

I’ve been doing about two per week since April.
I'm nearly the same, I find the new ones too big and dry and scratchy and I can't get them as far up my nose. I did gag though, but I just kind of got used to it? It bothered me at first but I got over it.

Anyway my general view on LFTs, which is entirely unevidenced beyond personal anecdote and observation, is: on an individual level it would be great if they were much more accurate and easy to use, but even though they aren't that isn't really a reason not to use them if you are doing them to say, go to an event or something. If you were going to go anyway, the only change in behaviour is likely to be that a positive LFT will stop you from going. OK it might lead to more risky behaviour but not necessarily. Also I think perhaps there is something to be said for viral load - if you do an LFT OK but not quite perfectly, and it's negative, then could it be that your viral load is relatively low anyway so you're less likely to be actively infectious? I dunno about that one.

However on a more general level I'm a bit concerned that people are using them as 'pre-PCRs' - so they get what seems to be a Covid symptom, do an LFT and if it's positive, then do a PCR - even though the advice is to go straight to PCR and not do an LFT. I kind of think this is maybe in part because the prescribed symptoms you must have to get a PCR (cough, temp, loss/change of taste or smell) is too narrow given that possible Covid symptoms seems to have increased, especially since Delta, so it can be tempting to do an LFT if you get a sore throat or a sniffle even if you haven't got the 3 main symptoms; and in part because seems to me that the only Covidy symptom that is really fairly uniquely Covidy is the loss of taste/smell, so until that's happened there's a whole range of bugs you could have and it might feel unnecessary to go for a PCR unless you get a positive LFT. I did two PCRs a couple of weeks ago because I felt f.cking awful, both negative. The closest one to me is a drive away and it was only by chance that Senor von Late wasn't out at work so could take me. The second one he was away for a couple of days so I did a postal one and it took 5 days in all from order to result. Much easier than it was last year but still not hugely convenient. Again I'm not saying any of this is correct, I'm just kind of surmising.

you/they/we/me are all kind of interchangeable here, I'm not really judging or anything. And like I say I'm just speculating, could be totally wrong of course.
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by bagpuss » Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:59 am

discovolante wrote:
Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:16 am
headshot wrote:
Fri Nov 05, 2021 7:04 am
They changed them back in August.

I actually prefer the swabs in the old packs. I don’t gag using them and they were thinner so I could more comfortably get them up my nose (especially after they were lubricated by throat juice). I would usually get the swab up my nose to the break point on the stick.

The new swabs are thicker and shorter, so I only get them in to the point where I can keep hold of them. The thick, dry swab is much harder to get in.

I’ve been doing about two per week since April.
I'm nearly the same, I find the new ones too big and dry and scratchy and I can't get them as far up my nose. I did gag though, but I just kind of got used to it? It bothered me at first but I got over it.

Anyway my general view on LFTs, which is entirely unevidenced beyond personal anecdote and observation, is: on an individual level it would be great if they were much more accurate and easy to use, but even though they aren't that isn't really a reason not to use them if you are doing them to say, go to an event or something. If you were going to go anyway, the only change in behaviour is likely to be that a positive LFT will stop you from going. OK it might lead to more risky behaviour but not necessarily. Also I think perhaps there is something to be said for viral load - if you do an LFT OK but not quite perfectly, and it's negative, then could it be that your viral load is relatively low anyway so you're less likely to be actively infectious? I dunno about that one.

However on a more general level I'm a bit concerned that people are using them as 'pre-PCRs' - so they get what seems to be a Covid symptom, do an LFT and if it's positive, then do a PCR - even though the advice is to go straight to PCR and not do an LFT. I kind of think this is maybe in part because the prescribed symptoms you must have to get a PCR (cough, temp, loss/change of taste or smell) is too narrow given that possible Covid symptoms seems to have increased, especially since Delta, so it can be tempting to do an LFT if you get a sore throat or a sniffle even if you haven't got the 3 main symptoms; and in part because seems to me that the only Covidy symptom that is really fairly uniquely Covidy is the loss of taste/smell, so until that's happened there's a whole range of bugs you could have and it might feel unnecessary to go for a PCR unless you get a positive LFT. I did two PCRs a couple of weeks ago because I felt f.cking awful, both negative. The closest one to me is a drive away and it was only by chance that Senor von Late wasn't out at work so could take me. The second one he was away for a couple of days so I did a postal one and it took 5 days in all from order to result. Much easier than it was last year but still not hugely convenient. Again I'm not saying any of this is correct, I'm just kind of surmising.

you/they/we/me are all kind of interchangeable here, I'm not really judging or anything. And like I say I'm just speculating, could be totally wrong of course.
I'm quite certain that you are right that people are using them as pre-PCRs - not least because we've been doing that ourselves. No-one in our household has had any of the symptoms required to get a PCR test at any point since the start of Covid, but we've all had any number of colds thanks to the joy of school-based germ spreading. So we've been doing LFTs when cold symptoms hit, because we wouldn't qualify for PCRs and we'd rather have some chance of picking up Covid than none. Same when I felt rubbish the day after my flu jab last weekend. Given the timing of that, the probability was extremely high that it was reaction to the jab, but since it was Halloween and Trick or Treating was going to be happening, I took an LFT just in case. If the symptoms had gone on past that day, I'd have probably lied to get a PCR as it was definitely not a cold, but I was fine by bedtime.

I'm actually pretty OK with this (obviously, since I'm doing it!) because I think it's probably a good pragmatic approach on a population level. We saw in September 2020 that when people went to get PCRs for colds*, the system just couldn't cope. I know we have better testing capacity now than we did then but if everyone was getting PCRs for cold symptoms I suspect it would still overwhelm the testing facilities. And I'd rather they were able to do a speedy and proper job on the tests with a higher likelihood of proving positive than be swamped by a whole load of almost-certainly-negative tests to process. As long as people are only doing it where the probability is high that the symptoms are due to a non-Covid cause then I think it's a sensible approach. What would be less good is if people are taking an LFT when they have much more high-risk symptoms and then not going for a PCR if the LFT is negative. I know of at least one sensible and cautious person who went straight to LFT when his smell/taste disappeared and then booked a PCR when the LFT was positive. I hope and think that he'd still have gone for a PCR if it was negative but I don't know for sure - and if so, then why do the LFT?




*And, in fact, all the people I know of who took their kids for PCRs then did so due to high temps - not something the bagkitten had so we didn't/couldn't - so although it was a cold, there was still a PCR-requiring symptom.

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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by headshot » Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:11 am

I've had a terrible cold this week and filled in the symptoms on the Zoe app.

I've been taking LFTs as part of a regular schedule for meeting up with friends and other commitments. All negative.

The Zoe folk requested I do a PCR as I had the cold symptoms and the PCR came back negative too. I booked an appointment at 10.30am and was in and out of the local test centre by 11.30am - results sent through before I woke up the following day. There were hundreds of appointment slots available at multiple venues, and it was really quiet at the test centre. So either LFTs are taking the pressure off, or people aren't getting tested as much, or there aren't as many cases needing to be tested - compared to Sept 2020.

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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by discovolante » Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:24 am

Yes I agree that there doesn't *seem* to be much of an issue with testing capacity at the moment although not sure why. I'm sure that info is readily available but as usual I'm too lazy to look for it...
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Re: Change in LFT Packs

Post by Brightonian » Mon Dec 27, 2021 8:41 pm

Suggestion that one ought to do the throat as well as the nose:
https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/sta ... 9933490179

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