Considering that the Pfizer vaccine is the one used in Israel, and it stimulates mostly antibodies (but not as much as Moderna) which decline back to lower levels sometime afterward and are not well matched to Omicron, that seems hardly surprising. A vaccine matched to Omicron may do better at long term immunity without needing frequent boosters.
I was catching up on our local newspapers yesterday reading an article quoting Geisinger health folks who said they just lost both members of a young, unvaxxed, married couple who came to the hospital and refused typical treatment protocols. I believe it was in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area (if my memory is correct). It didnāt say how āyoungā the young couple was.
What hit me was their going to a hospital and refusing treatment. Why go? If you know you donāt want what the hospital is going to suggest, why not just stay at home and let nature/God decide there? It would have freed up two beds. The article was about how overfull the hospitals are due to Covid, unvaxxed people taking up so many of them and then thereās all the typical stroke, heart, whatever people who need them too.
This is the thing the FDA and CDC failed to recognize. The antigen tests are pretty specific, but have slightly reduced sensitivity. They cast them off for this reason early on. False negatives can be countered by sequential brute force though. Itās far better to have an 80% sensitivity where 1/5 of the tests are false negatives, but test everyday, than to demand higher accuracy and not test at all. The latter is 0% sensitive, 100% false negative. Of course you know this well. Iām just amplifying (not with polymerase chain reaction 
) your point.
Tongue sadly in cheek, God doesnāt home deliver Ivermectin. 
How there arenāt people in jail for this gross misinformation is mind boggling!
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Agree with most everything in your post, but CDC has dropped the recommendation to follow up a confirmatory PCR test after a positive antigen test in a symptomatic person (both in congregate and community settings) because the antigen tests are highly accurate in identifying contagious/infectious people. See charts here: Considerations for SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Testing for Healthcare Providers Testing Individuals in the Community | CDC
This continues to be among the biggest failures of the FDA and CDCā¦not approving more rapid tests. There are nearly 200 on the market in the EU and UKā¦all inexpensive (free to residents), and accurate in detecting an infectious person, which is an important part of stopping spread.
In the US, the limited number of rapid tests on the market, and the current shortage of the all of these, mean people canāt test before they gather or go to work. Nor can the US adopt a test to get out of isolation strategy if we donāt have adequate supply of rapid tests. SMH
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I said rapid test NEGATIVE, not positive. 
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Now Fauci suggests vax for domestic air travel? This could have been done in Januaryā¦
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Oops, my bad!! 
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Respect. 
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Personally tired of the āCovid-19 Briefingsā nothing new, no leadership, just posturing.
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Hard to lead when a substantial portion of the populace doesnāt want to or wonāt be led. Just sayinā.
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How could this be done, when in January most people werenāt approved for vaccination AND vaccines werenāt readily available everywhere?
Seriouslyā¦letās not be so anxious to point fingers without acknowledging reality. The logistics for vaccine distribution, documentation and enforcement was and continues to be challenging. Letās not rewrite history to āscore pointsā.
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I agree with everything youāve said. I just wish we didnāt use the word āfalse negativeā with the rapid tests if people are just testing on the early side. FN to me implies that the test made a mistake; I donāt consider it a mistake but just a timing issue. If someone is exposed on Monday and doesnāt test positive until Friday, but takes a test on Wednesday and itās negativeāto me thatās not āfalseā and there isnāt necessarily anything wrong with the test; itās just too early. But thereās still valuable information gained that day which is that you probably arenāt infectious that day, but cannot assume that will be the case in future days. Maybe we can come up with better terminology which doesnāt unnecessarily malign the rapid tests when used early on after exposure and showing negative.
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Many other countries, including Canada, imposed travel vax requirements early on in the pandemic.
I think that semantically, it is a mistake. An infected person without the viral load to pop an antigen test, means the test isnāt sensitive enough, and thus wrong. Like I said though, semantics. The term negative is, wellā¦negative. 
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You are correct that in that situation, it is not the fault of the test. False negative is more of a catch-all to explain to someone why it was negative one day but the patient actually had the disease. In your example, there isnāt another term however. Other than the fault lies with the anxiety level of the test taker.
Patients need better instructions when to take the test, but with everything in flux, since we are learning as we go, this is also a moving target.
The rapid tests are flying off the shelves in part because people are using them to be careful before gatherings to not spread the disease. But a negative test could also be a āfalse negativeā and the person unknowingly spreading the disease, though they did everything right. Part of the problem with the test - not sensitive enough to pick up the disease in early stages.
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Vaccination rates will most likely not increase from where it is unless something like requiring them for domestic flights is put in place. Might have been a great idea pre-holidays but less impactful now.
Leaving vaccinations aside, testing policy is clearly a major fail. Every briefing for over a year has mentioned testing and yet availability is nowhere close to where it should be.
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Should have been done here. No leadership.
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One day last week our hospitalās lab did over 4,000 PCR tests of employees and outpatients. We received an email asking for volunteers to help with swabbing. You used to be able to walk in and get a test, but not now. Yes, we need more testing, more testing sites, more personnel. More information. More rapid tests. You see lines of people waiting for tests all over the news. But that is only a fraction of the people needing tests. Many people see those lines and think āforget it - Iām not waiting in thatā and many more who are doing testing at home and we have no idea of the positivity rates of those.
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Personally, I have no issue with mandating vaccines for domestic travelers, but make sure to include trains and busses. That said, I disagree that mandating vaccines for air travelers will move the needle on vax rates. (Iād guess that 70+% of non-holiday air travelers are already vaxxed.)
If 70% are vaxxed, at least weād have a chance of getting the other 30%. And, yes, trains and busses should be included.
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