Do not abuse test kits
With many Taiwanese desperate to obtain COVID-19 rapid antigen test kits through the name-based rationing scheme, pharmacists throughout the nation are working hard to make sure they can get the kits into people’s hands.
However, pharmacists are being confronted by irritable customers and subjected to verbal abuse. They are being criticized simply for trying to do their job.
In the face this hostility, the vast majority of pharmacists are carrying out their duties and trying to deal with difficult situations as best they can.
In the short amount of time that the name-based rationing system has been in place, there have been endless lines of people waiting to receive their kits.
Many of them travel from pharmacy to pharmacy, beseeching the pharmacist to sell them any spares or samples that they might have in stock.
The entire process is exhausting for all concerned, and the pharmacists working in the stores that have run out of the kits are feeling extremely stressed.
I cannot help but wonder: As millions of people are desperately searching for these kits, they have descended into a form of mass hysteria, but how many of them actually need these kits, and how many of them know how to use them correctly?
These kits will not help their symptoms; they are not a treatment for the disease. Using the kits is not going to reduce the severity of anyone’s symptoms once they have been infected, or make the symptoms go away. Nor can they protect anyone from being infected in the first place.
How do people think they would use the tests once they have them? Will they test themselves on a daily basis? Once every second day? Every week? Will people use a test when symptoms are present, or at any time, even if they have no symptoms at all? What symptoms would prompt people to use a test? A sore throat, or only if they have a combination of symptoms? Will they use a test if they start sneezing? And will they test the entire family, or just themselves?
Finally, would a negative test result bring any reassurance? After all, false results are possible. What if the test is negative, but a person continues to feel ill? Should that person take another test as a safeguard? Should a doctor be seen?
How about if a test result is positive? Should a person hide at home or go see a doctor?
If you have not thought all these problems through, please do not line up outside a pharmacy for a test they might not have. Think before you act.
Liu Yu-chi
Taipei
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