Received a religious exemption from employer 2 months ago, they are now wanting employees to return to the office and have just released "updated" guidelines requiring all non-vaccinated employees to be tested once a week. I pushed further on their requirements and they want us to do the rapid test at walgreens which is the BinaxNow test.
I have a ton of info on PCR tests, but not much on antigen. Anyone here have actual info on this test? trying to find ingredients but have not been able to. Neither Abbot (the manufacturer) or the FDA site showing the EUA list the contents/ingredients of this test.
I am pushing back on my employer to not take the test, but I need actual data and information to do that. Any help or direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
PubMed is a good place to go: The BinaxNOW returns back a lot (50%) of false negatives in asymptomatic individuals; people with a high viral load tend to test positive on both BinaxNOW and the PCR.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33509809/
Thank you, that is a great source. lot more reading to do now.
The high rate of false negatives for asymptomatics sound to me as though a questionnaire on whether someone has COVID symptoms would be just as good. Saves a lot of money!
The kits are super basic. Basically, you take the swab out of their packaging, swab the insides of both nostrils (you DO NOT have to jab it far back into your sinus cavity).
Once you've swabbed your nostrils, you insert the tip of the swab into the solution that comes with it. 15 min later you check for the purple line.
I'm sure you could substitute a Q-tip for their swab if you don't trust it. You could also source sterile swabs on your own I would imagine.
My wife and I tested ourselves several times when we had Covid. We also tested our children. Our children who had no symptoms always tested negative, while my wife and I tested positive. After about 8-10 days when we felt better, we retested and both tested negative.
From our little experiment, I'd say they’re reasonably accurate. I'm guessing they would give you a positive result if you just had a regular cold or flu, but that's a different matter.
Thank you! my biggest concern with it is the swab. the different sites / images / videos I've seen of the PCR swab show that it is clearly designed to leave material behind instead of collect viral samples. The few video's I've looked at so far of this binax test looks like it is a regular sterile swap, but I haven't seen any close up images of it.
also with many sources showing the PCR test has EO in it, I wanted to find out if this type of test also has that ingredient.
About your first sentence… you didn’t receive a religious exemption from your employer; you invoked your First Amendment right to free exercise of religion and your employer wisely did not fight you on it. I think it’s a fair debate as to whether or not the weekly testing is a reasonable accommodation, but they didn’t “give” you anything by not forcing the shot on you. I don’t want to sound like one of “those guys,” but if we’re going to win this fight we need to use the right terminology.