<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>slg</author><text>The steps we are taking to reduce COVID spread also reduce the spread of the cold.  I would be absolutely shocked if we don&amp;#x27;t end up having our lowest impact cold and flu season in decades this year.  That isn&amp;#x27;t to say the grandparent comment is correct, just that you can&amp;#x27;t really use a comparison from prior years as an indication of how many people will get a cold this year.</text><parent_chain><item><author>timr</author><text>&amp;gt; The USA currently has nine million active cases. I actually think at this point if you have cold symptoms it may be more likely you have covid than a common cold.&lt;p&gt;Your intuition is wildly off-base here. Nearly all of us catch &lt;i&gt;at least&lt;/i&gt; one cold a year, mostly during the winter months. There are, quite literally, hundreds of millions of colds a year. There&amp;#x27;s also ~half a dozen viruses in circulation at any given time that cause cold-like symptoms, vs. one for SARS-CoV2.</text></item><item><author>mxcrossb</author><text>The USA currently has nine million active cases. I actually think at this point if you have cold symptoms it may be more likely you have covid than a common cold.&lt;p&gt;(Though maybe someone has data in cold cases to clarify the cross over point)</text></item><item><author>bigiain</author><text>&amp;gt; There was no indication at that time of anything that wasn&amp;#x27;t completely consistent with and expected from a cold&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I think these days symptoms of &amp;quot;just a cold&amp;quot; are enough reason to self isolate for long enough to reliably get through the Covid incubation period - which locally (Sydney .au) has been reported to occasionally be as long as 10 days or more.</text></item><item><author>nilkn</author><text>To be clear, the order of events was such that I did not have loss of smell&amp;#x2F;taste at the time of the rapid tests. There was no indication at that time of anything that wasn&amp;#x27;t completely consistent with and expected from a cold, and I even encountered resistance when I tried to get tested prior to the tell-tale loss-of-smell symptom appearing (hence the rapid tests only at that point). I had a mildly uncomfortable phone call with an urgent care center where they discouraged me from pursuing testing because they didn&amp;#x27;t think I had enough symptoms.&lt;p&gt;I knew exactly from whom I had contracted whatever illness I had, and that person had also tested negative for COVID (upon further questioning, their test had also been a rapid one, and they too had not been informed of its unreliability for any negative determination).</text></item><item><author>Osmium</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad the OP made the correct decision in this case and hope they get well soon.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; the assumption I had a minor cold
&amp;gt; the loss of smell was total&lt;p&gt;Since there does seem to be a messaging problem about the reliability of testing, I think it&amp;#x27;s worth emphasizing: if someone has symptoms of COVID, they should proceed as-if they have COVID. CDC guidance[1] is to isolate if you have a positive test OR if you have symptoms.&lt;p&gt;To do otherwise is to gamble with the health and lives of the people they meet, and the people those people meet, and so on. It may prove almost impossible to show who caught COVID from whom, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that ignoring guidance won&amp;#x27;t lead to deaths. A statistical death is still the death of a real person, even if we can&amp;#x27;t put a name to them.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;coronavirus&amp;#x2F;2019-ncov&amp;#x2F;if-you-are-sick&amp;#x2F;isolation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;coronavirus&amp;#x2F;2019-ncov&amp;#x2F;if-you-are-sick&amp;#x2F;is...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>nilkn</author><text>I have an interesting anecdote related to this.&lt;p&gt;As it happens, I currently have COVID. When I first noticed I was getting sick, I was scheduled to fly in the near future, so I got a rapid COVID test that delivers results in 15 minutes.&lt;p&gt;It was negative. I got another one, and it was negative too. I had thus intended to go ahead with the trip under the assumption I had a minor cold.&lt;p&gt;Later, a few days before I was to fly, I lost all smell and taste. Now I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t particularly congested, and the loss of smell was total. I’d never experienced this before. Could both tests have been false negatives?&lt;p&gt;I delayed the flight (free of charge luckily, so no big deal) and got a test that had to be sent to a lab for analysis. A week later, the positive test result came back.&lt;p&gt;Take from this what you will. I&amp;#x27;m not a scientist or a doctor and frankly there&amp;#x27;s nothing remotely intelligent I can say about the various tests out there for COVID. But if the rapid tests are as unreliable in general as they were for me, it’s sort of no wonder COVID is spreading like wildfire. I was very, very close to boarding a plane with an active case of COVID, and I would have if I hadn’t acted out of an abundance of caution.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international air passengers</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-airlines/u-s-to-require-negative-covid-19-tests-for-international-air-passengers-sources-idUSKBN29H2KD</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ryandrake</author><text>I catch colds roughly 7-8 times per year. It sometimes feels like I have cold symptoms more days than I don’t. I currently have cold symptoms. If I had to isolate every day I had a cough, sore throat, congestion, or sneezing, I’d be under house arrest most of the year. I think it’s vitally important that we have accurate COVID tests that can definitively distinguish a case of the cold from a case of COVID.</text><parent_chain><item><author>timr</author><text>&amp;gt; The USA currently has nine million active cases. I actually think at this point if you have cold symptoms it may be more likely you have covid than a common cold.&lt;p&gt;Your intuition is wildly off-base here. Nearly all of us catch &lt;i&gt;at least&lt;/i&gt; one cold a year, mostly during the winter months. There are, quite literally, hundreds of millions of colds a year. There&amp;#x27;s also ~half a dozen viruses in circulation at any given time that cause cold-like symptoms, vs. one for SARS-CoV2.</text></item><item><author>mxcrossb</author><text>The USA currently has nine million active cases. I actually think at this point if you have cold symptoms it may be more likely you have covid than a common cold.&lt;p&gt;(Though maybe someone has data in cold cases to clarify the cross over point)</text></item><item><author>bigiain</author><text>&amp;gt; There was no indication at that time of anything that wasn&amp;#x27;t completely consistent with and expected from a cold&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I think these days symptoms of &amp;quot;just a cold&amp;quot; are enough reason to self isolate for long enough to reliably get through the Covid incubation period - which locally (Sydney .au) has been reported to occasionally be as long as 10 days or more.</text></item><item><author>nilkn</author><text>To be clear, the order of events was such that I did not have loss of smell&amp;#x2F;taste at the time of the rapid tests. There was no indication at that time of anything that wasn&amp;#x27;t completely consistent with and expected from a cold, and I even encountered resistance when I tried to get tested prior to the tell-tale loss-of-smell symptom appearing (hence the rapid tests only at that point). I had a mildly uncomfortable phone call with an urgent care center where they discouraged me from pursuing testing because they didn&amp;#x27;t think I had enough symptoms.&lt;p&gt;I knew exactly from whom I had contracted whatever illness I had, and that person had also tested negative for COVID (upon further questioning, their test had also been a rapid one, and they too had not been informed of its unreliability for any negative determination).</text></item><item><author>Osmium</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad the OP made the correct decision in this case and hope they get well soon.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; the assumption I had a minor cold
&amp;gt; the loss of smell was total&lt;p&gt;Since there does seem to be a messaging problem about the reliability of testing, I think it&amp;#x27;s worth emphasizing: if someone has symptoms of COVID, they should proceed as-if they have COVID. CDC guidance[1] is to isolate if you have a positive test OR if you have symptoms.&lt;p&gt;To do otherwise is to gamble with the health and lives of the people they meet, and the people those people meet, and so on. It may prove almost impossible to show who caught COVID from whom, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that ignoring guidance won&amp;#x27;t lead to deaths. A statistical death is still the death of a real person, even if we can&amp;#x27;t put a name to them.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;coronavirus&amp;#x2F;2019-ncov&amp;#x2F;if-you-are-sick&amp;#x2F;isolation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;coronavirus&amp;#x2F;2019-ncov&amp;#x2F;if-you-are-sick&amp;#x2F;is...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>nilkn</author><text>I have an interesting anecdote related to this.&lt;p&gt;As it happens, I currently have COVID. When I first noticed I was getting sick, I was scheduled to fly in the near future, so I got a rapid COVID test that delivers results in 15 minutes.&lt;p&gt;It was negative. I got another one, and it was negative too. I had thus intended to go ahead with the trip under the assumption I had a minor cold.&lt;p&gt;Later, a few days before I was to fly, I lost all smell and taste. Now I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t particularly congested, and the loss of smell was total. I’d never experienced this before. Could both tests have been false negatives?&lt;p&gt;I delayed the flight (free of charge luckily, so no big deal) and got a test that had to be sent to a lab for analysis. A week later, the positive test result came back.&lt;p&gt;Take from this what you will. I&amp;#x27;m not a scientist or a doctor and frankly there&amp;#x27;s nothing remotely intelligent I can say about the various tests out there for COVID. But if the rapid tests are as unreliable in general as they were for me, it’s sort of no wonder COVID is spreading like wildfire. I was very, very close to boarding a plane with an active case of COVID, and I would have if I hadn’t acted out of an abundance of caution.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>U.S. to require negative Covid-19 tests for international air passengers</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-airlines/u-s-to-require-negative-covid-19-tests-for-international-air-passengers-sources-idUSKBN29H2KD</url></story>