The bad news is that "two weeks to the day" is the proper quarantine time, to give a healthy and potentially exposed person time to develop symptoms. It has nothing to do with when my father stops being contagious.
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So the nursing home is sending him home to two healthy, non-exposed daughters, without knowing whether he's still infectious. His house, designed for "coastal living", is basically impossible to seal off.
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Okay, fine, we'll arrange a test. There's a rapid testing facility in Lowell, Massachusetts that uses the Abbott Labs rapid assay. Gives results in half an hour. I go so far as to call a pathologist who was quoted in an article I read to investigate the assay's reliability.
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Problem: thanks to RomneyCare, his primary care physician has to refer him. Problem: she is only allowed to refer to a facility that uses a different, slower test that takes 3-5 days to give results.
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3-5 days during which my Dad would have to huddle upstairs, in a bed that doesn't fit him (he's 6'7, the guest-room beds assume normal sized people). And still might be giving his hypertensive daughter covid.
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So we ask the nurse practicioner at the nursing home to prescribe the rapid assay for him. No. She doesn't think he needs it. Why doesn't she think so? Who knows?
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I cannot discuss the literature with her, because I have to go through the social worker, who is not equipped to discuss the literature. Also, thanks to RomneyCare, without a referral, there is no way for us to get the faster test. Even if I want to pay out of pocket.
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I understand why they want to release him. He doesn't need intensive nursing care, he's better off at home, and why should they take a risk I'm not willing to? But for god's sake, why would they block me from getting a test that could help me assess my risk?
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And why does the system make everything so damn hard? What the hell happens to people who are way less up on this stuff, and willing to make trouble, than the average bear?
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Replying to @asymmetricinfo
someone (
@patio11 ?@Meaningness ?) had a big thread a month or a year back about how the health care system is inherently unnavigable, even by insiders - a bureaucratic system that isn't even legible to itself3 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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