I have not posted on slashdot since 2005 when I was in college. 16 years later, I am a radiologist in practice in the US and can speak to this a bit. In brief, this article is wrong. Most COVID patients with a cough and aches have a normal to near-normal chest radiograph -- i.e. no dense airspace disease or consolidation: - this is in part because the pattern of airspace disease seen in COVID is called "ground glass" which is less dense and therefore less apparent on chest radiographs than the typical dense airspace disease seen with a bacterial pneumonia. And this airspace disease is due to inflammation in the acute phase NOT SCARRING. - those with bad chest radiographs probably have a higher disease burden, more inflammation, and therefore more symptomatic. And only the most symptomatic patients are being admitted into hospitals where this surgeon would be seeing patients -- so it goes to reason there is a sampling bias here, where this trauma surgeon is only seeing those who are most ill and therefore have worse chest radiographs. - most people have mild cases. I see plenty of CXRs for COVID+ patients from out-patient facilities, and these radiographs often incredibly mild to normal. The majority of people will have an unremarkable chest radiograph, and her statement otherwise is fear-mongering ("Those who experienced COVID-19 symptoms have shown a severe chest X-ray every single time."). Please note that these COVID+ patients are often symptomatic despite an unremarkable CXR, and you can have pneumonia clinically without a radiographic correlate (treat the patient, not the pictures). She also mentions scarring regularly. This is something that happens with most all pneumonias/pneumonitis, infectious or otherwise. The degree of scarring varies tremendously and is dependent on many factors including the etiology of the inflammation, how many times the lungs are inflamed, the length of time of each insult, etc. It is certainly possible that those with COVID scar more readily than other pneumonias, but talking in near absolutes is always wrong, including with COVID: "She said it's a rare occurrence when any of her patients' X-rays come back clear of dense scarring" and "I don’t know who needs to hear this, but 'post-Covid' lungs look worse than ANY type of terrible smoker’s lungs we’ve ever seen". Heavy smokers/COPD lungs look terrible. I am sure a bad case of COVID will scar too, but I have not personally seen one as bad as a heavy smoker.

Testing people for HIV in in first world countries is a two-step process.

An ELISA test, which looks for anti-HIV antibodies, is the first test. It is simple, low cost, standardized, and with high reproducibility and rapid results. The downfall is that people must be producing anti-HIV antibodies, which only begins 6-18 weeks post-infection and stops at the end-stage.

If someone tests positive on an ELISA, the are then given a western blot, which looks for HIV proteins. If used properly, this test approaches 100% certainty.

PCR detects the nucleic acids of HIV. It is more cost prohibitive, though is very sensitive, being able to detect and amplify as few as 6 molecules of proviral DNA. It is the test of choice for screening people who are not actively producing HIV-antibodies(newborns, end-stage infections, etc.).