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Do-it-yourself tests that you get at the pharmacy and carry out in the privacy of your own home: surely that's not such a radical idea these days? I mean, where would we be without home pregnancy tests, for example? So why not self-testing for COVID-19?

Once kids go back to school, it will fall to the students and their parents to decide each day whether they are well enough to go to school each morning. They've been advised to err on the side of caution. It seems to me that giving them one more tool to aid in this crucial decision-making process is eminently sensible. Many doctors and other health care professionals would agree but not, it seems, our federal health authority.

Tests currently exist that enable you to spit into a tube or swab your nose, wait a few minutes, and get a positive or negative result. Some of these rapid tests are designed to detect viral proteins, others to detect viral RNA. While they are not as sensitive, and therefore not as reliable as RT-PCR testing (the kind that's much more expensive, that you have to line up for 4 hours to get, and for which you need to wait several days for results), they're great for providing the kind of quick preliminary diagnosis that parents are going to be expected to make on a regular basis, whether or not they have much health care expertise!

One of the doctors making an urgent plea to the feds to reconsider is Dr. Andrew Morris of the Sinai Health System and University Health Network in Toronto. He points out that without a vaccine or reliable treatment or cure, our best bet is to keep infected people out of buildings where they will unknowingly spreading the virus. "Which is why he finds it 'absurd' that Heath Canada [sic] says the risks of home or self-testing kits outweigh the benefits."

The official Health Canada position is that if we let the great unwashed use these kits, they won't use them properly, they'll misinterpret the results, there'll be too many false negatives and it won't be possible to collect all the results, which are crucial to shaping public policy. Hmmm. That sounds a lot like the reasons they initially touted for NOT wearing masks! Rather paternalistic if you ask me. Moreover, in their excess of spit and vinegar, it seems to me that they may actually be INCREASING our potential risk of exposure.

So here's a link to the article I read:

https://nationalpost.com/health/home-covid-19-tests-could-help-find-people-while-they-are-contagious-experts-say-health-canada-isnt-convinced

The perfect test doesn't exist and there are still lots of things we need to get a handle on. For instance:

We need a more complete list of possible symptoms - better still if we can pinpoint a few reliable symptoms that are not also symptomatic of dozens of other common illness.

When people are asymptomatic but test positive, how often should they be re-tested?

How long is the incubation period, when a person is contagious but showing no symptoms? And how long do they remain contagious after they have apparently recovered?

How long does immunity last after the patient is fully recovered? We need to know this even once we have a vaccine, in order to plan the timing of booster shots.

These things have assumed an even greater urgency just lately, as the new cases being identified increasingly involve young people. Moreover, young people - youth and young adults - tend to be precisely the ones who do not have the luxury of staying home and isolating. They need to be getting an education and holding down a job, establishing themselves in a career, meeting people, perhaps travelling too - not all of which can be accomplished in a strictly online environment.

I'll be following this story closely.

Do I think our kids deserve to grow up in a safe environment? Of course. Would I phone 911 to object to an AMBER alert? Of course not. But I do think our AMBER alert system is seriously flawed.

Canadians already pay some of the highest cell phone rates in the world. I was a reluctant convert to the cellular revolution and I still don't own a "smart" phone. But somewhere in the mid-1990s, with a daughter in her teens and parents who were both dealing with significant health issues, I decided that I wanted to be reachable in the event of an emergency. I still avoid giving out my cell number to anyone other than friends or family. Most of the time, the phone is turned off. But in any case, the phone is a service that I pay for, that is there for my convenience, and ought not to be used by people I don't want to hear from. Isn't that the whole point of Phonebusters and "Do not call" lists?

But enough about me and my problems. The important question to ask here is: Does the AMBER alert system serve the purpose for which it is intended? In my opinion, no.

Most people receiving these alerts can do nothing about the missing child or children, even if they want to. And supposing they are indeed out on the road somewhere in the vicinity of where the child was last seen. Distracted driving is already such a huge problem since the advent of smartphones. We have signs on the roadway that read "Leave the phone alone!" since a lot of collisions are caused by people talking and even TEXTING while driving! Even if they have a hands-free setup, getting bombarded with AMBER Alerts will at best lead to anxiety, stress and feelings of helplessness on the part of drivers.

The second major problem is the "boy who cried wolf" effect. Too many of these alerts and we cease to believe them. Does anyone remember the e-mail or user-group posting from the little boy who supposedly had some serious illness and wanted to get as many well-wishers as possible sending him messages, cards and letters of encouragement? From what I can gather, he did eventually get better but the cards, letters and other messages still kept pouring in for years to come! Or those messages with photos of kids who had supposedly gone missing, urging you to please forward this to EVERYONE you know - I'd rather get this message 100 times than not get it at all and if it were MY child, I'd want the message spread as far and wide as possible?? And not so very long ago in Hawaii, when they were testing their emergency system, they sent out code red messages insisting that THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Except that it was, and it had been sent out by mistake!

I wonder how long it will take before scammers start capitalizing on AMBER Alerts by claiming that they have the child that's gone missing and that by paying a ransom of a few thousand or million dollars, the seriously frazzled parent can get the child back?

Or maybe that's already happened?