I've taken a PCR test every time I've gotten sniffly since 2020 and I have never gotten positive.

I suppose asymptomatic is possible but I also just don't go into crowded places much.

I was reading the other day that the standard tests give some absurdly high rate of false negatives.

Certainly anecdotally you hear of people who tested for multiple days after they think they may have been exposed and only get a positive result after five days or something like that.

What do you mean by standard tests? PCR? Antigen? Antibody?

I assume the standard rapid home antigen tests that the US government was giving out like candy.

The boxed tests, the take-home ones. In particular, the ones available in the United States (I think other countries were using other rapid tests than the US).

I cannot find the link, but the rate was something ridiculous, way north of 50%. I take it with a grain of salt, I can't easily tell if it's just more propaganda from the covid-ain't-real people.

Anecdotally: both of the times I had Covid, I tested negative for a couple of days with two different brands of rapid antigen tests until I had really overt symptoms (bad headache, raging sore throat, fever).

To expound on NoMoreNicksLeft: "Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36708301

"Asymptomatic spread of coronavirus is ‘very rare,’ WHO says": https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-pat...

Are those scare quotes or irony that isn't clear? Why link a CNBC article from 2020?

Here's a paper from last year: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9321237/

Yes, it's Omicron, but 32.4% asymptomatic infection is not very rare.

Asymptomatic carriers are 75% as infectious as symptomatic individuals: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

I don't put a huge amount of stock in much of the supposed science from June 2020. Also, as in my case, people definitely got mild symptoms of something, tested (if they could), got a negative result, and went on with life--when it's entirely possible they had it.

I have never gotten it or at least not to my knowledge. I would sure hope that there is a genetic or even T-Cell immunity that could snuff the virus out before it takes a foothold since it could lead to better vaccines/treatments. IMO I think we need to explore vaccines that can develop T-Cell immunity over B-Cells. Antibodies fade and may no longer work as well if the virus mutates, but T-Cells do not have this problem and can actually kill the virus as opposed to creating obstacles for the spread.

An antibody test isn't going to prove an old infection hasn't happened. I probably got it in early 2020 before testing was available. I had my first ever antibody test a couple of months ago for a hospitalization. It was, predictably, negative.

"COVID" or "COVID-19" is the disease. I might have had an aborted or asymptomatic infection due to exposure to SARS-CoV-2 but I've never had COVID.