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