Our family doesn't eat indoors, doesn't go into buildings unmasked, wears masks in dense outdoor situations, wears a full elastomeric mask when flying.

For the past few weeks, even when outdoors, I've seen a few friends coughing, and I immediately put my mask on. They then say, "No dude, relax, it's not Covid, I tested this morning!" And I said, "🙅🏿‍♂️ Sure! That's what 'Rona *wants* me to think! 😷" 4 friends this happened with, and all 4 tested positive the day after their little coughs.

Mitigations that worked last time:

* Positive person moved to the remote room in our house with its own sliding door to the patio

* Masking tape and rolled up towel put around the door to seal them in.

* AC run on not heat, not cool, but "move air" through the hypoallergenic filter.

* Feed the infected person by wearing a mask and leaving trays of food on the patio, like feeding Hannibal lecter!

* Me spending a week outnumbered by my toddlers, while my wife watches SpongeBob and relaxes

At first I couldn't figure out why the same mitigations didn't work this time, but then I noticed the pattern of who was getting infected and when.

6 people drove back on a 4 hrs road trip after 4th of July. The front passenger had sniffles, but tested negative. They tested multiple times in a row to be sure.

A theory: front passenger caught Covid during the trip and were on their "day zero, negative results" day.

Driver and passenger directly behind them had their "day 0," two days later.

On the "day 0: no symptoms, negative test" day, and "day 1: slight symptoms, negative test" day, I tried out another theory, and it kind of worked.

My hypothesis was that if you're able to spread covid, but your test is showing negative, then you're either testing wrong, or you're testing right, but the right method is not showing the right result.

We usually do the nasal and cheek and tongue swab.

So we burned a bunch of tests on everyone testing everyone multiple ways.

We tested:

* Nasal only
* Nasal, and tongue and cheek swab
* Nasal, tongue and cheek, and hold swab in air near back of throat and cough
* Nasal, and cough
* Just cough

Adding the cough turned "day 0 negative" into a slight positive test, and "day 2 positive" into a super dark purple line positive test. Darker than we've ever seen. 😬

My totally unscientific understanding of this, is that this is a "throat Covid," not a "nose Covid." And that the false negative rate is higher for this wave.

@mekkaokereke

That’s super interesting, thanks for sharing with the rest of us… maybe some good can come from your misfortune.
Can I ask where you are? <as he listens for coughs around him>

@DavidM_yeg @mekkaokereke I believe Mekka is still in the SF Bay area. Which yeah, is showing definite uptick in community levels in the wastwater. Below is Palo Alto, from the Cal-SuWers dashboard:

Here in Edmonton, the Covid wastewater levels are still at the lowest-since-Omicron started levels. But I'll be keeping an eye out for a post-Stampede surge in Calgary (although they're still high enough anyway that early cases from an imported variant won't be obvious).

@AmeliasBrain @IPEdmonton @mekkaokereke

Edmonton and Calgary have had such different patterns over the last year. Noticed as I’m looking around the province that High River appears to have stopped monitoring at the end of 2022…?

@DavidM_yeg @IPEdmonton Yeah, that one has given me a start a few times as I've clicked over the map, suddenly seeing that "recent" spike. I wish they'd more clearly indicate it was archived.

I mean, I wish a lot of details of that mapping page were different. The animations are more confusing than helpful, given the shifting scales between maps. But still: I'm glad it's still there & getting updated!