Editing Talk:2558: Rapid Test Results

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As a Brit, I had to go away look up College Ruled, which I thought might be more exotic than it actually turns out to be, but a nice set on the whole. Someone is doubtless on top of the Explanation editing already (despite being unusually early, on the clock, as published!) so I'll let them have the fun. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.71|172.70.90.71]] 16:59, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
:As a fellow Brit, I share your pain at these revolting colonials mangling our mother tongue.  Why not just call it "narrow ruled" like us? [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 19:23, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
::As an American, I can say that the reason that medium (or "college") ruled paper is not known as "narrow ruled" is because they are two different things. College ruled paper had lines spaced 9/32" (~7.1 mm) apart. Narrow ruled paper has those lines only 1/4" (6.35 mm) apart. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.35.70|172.70.35.70]] 19:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
::Narrow''er'', or ''less'' narrow, you can have better descriptions of line separation than "college". Like picas or other measurements (fractuons of inches or metric, as now given).
::My first thought was that "College Ruled" was an inconstant ruling (e.g. alternating wide and narrow spacings, perhaps for handwriting guides to appropriately constrain ascender and descender strokes) or some variation akin to 'blank' sheet-music paper with staves*. If it's just comparatively narrower (than..? ...all lined paper that is wider-spaced?) then it was not obvious without knowing the 'local' naming convention.
::Whatever the standards we have here (I'm sure it's measurement-based, or possibly how many lines the sheets have crammed onto them) the presence or absence of a left-hand margin was the obvious big difference at some point between Primary/Secondary ('school') education and Tertiary ('college'). I think when young we had to rule our own margins, then at some point the books became preruled, but maybe it wasn't that way at all. By university, you just bought a pad of whatever paper you wanted/was on sale, though, for everything but lab-books. ;)
::(* - One variation of that we had in school was alternating 'normal' exercise-book lining with stave-marked paper, but I only had that in music classes where (because it was heavy on 'foundation' history of music stuff) we hardly did anything on the stave-ruled paper and instead were committed to writing out dictations of how monks developed notations to codify their religious chantings, etc, etc. It was ''not'' a very memorable class, for any of the good reasons you'd hope, but the 'special exercise books' (as also the mathematics ones with one page standard-lined, the next graph-papered, though the latter were at least usefully used more, and not just for doodling!) were one of the things I can still recall after 40-or-more years...) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.22|172.70.86.22]] 20:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


I thought the joke in the title text was that while COVID-19 infects nearby people, COVID+19 does the opposite, uninfecting people. If it annihilates COVID-19 like antimatter, that will release enormous amounts of energy, likely destroying the people involved. If you're disintegrated, it's of little help that you've been "cured". [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
:Hmmm ... infected person is supposed to have up to 100 billion of virions ... that's still less than 0.1mg ... but that would be about 9GJ or 2 ton of TNT ... yeah, I don't think it would matter they are cured. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 22:34, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
::2 tons of TNT easily explain the "curing everybody in close contact", though [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.101|162.158.92.101]] 08:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)


Would Covid+19 maybe have a positive Effect on health, because it is positive instead of negative? And would a Covid+-0 be neutral? In any case it is not stated that it has a negative effect or that it gets annihilated when meeting Covid-19, so I changed the last paragraph a bit. -- [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 08:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Jeez, why is Randall so afraid to say "coronavirus"? If I didn't read the last line I would have thought this was about pregnancy tests! I've never seen a covid test before...- [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.113|172.70.178.113]] 09:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
:a) Subtle humour that creeps up on you? (N.B., the following points suggest not, but YMMV.)
:b) Didn't think it necessary. I've not seen a Covid LFT, either, but it seemed obvious from topicality, and if the last line would have been riffing on pregnancy I'd have been even more surprised...
:b).i.: Actually, if it had been a pregnancy-tester joke, I'd expect it to be a sort of "conception reveal party" moment, and maybe congratulating Randall and his partner!
:c) He actually does say Covid (more than he ever did in the infection-to-stop-infection comic!) and I don't think he's scared of saying it, but perhaps at ''some'' level (though he's probably failing to do this) he's just not wanting to BE IN THE FACE of some people who can't handle it.
:c).i.: Though not making comics even vaguely related to viruses ''or'' testing would be the solution to that. Which is clearly not his chosen path as he still is pushing what ''some'' (not me!) would call a blue-pill agenda.
:...it's all eye-of-the-beholder. I've had other comics bewilder me (or at least I wandered off down the wrong garden-path at first), and looks like that happened to you. Congratulations, you're (presumably) only human! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.11|162.158.159.11]] 10:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
:: Apart from the title text, this comic actually could apply equally to pregnancy tests (up until now the most commonly available type of lateral flow test kit) or any other single-reaction lateral flow test kit. I presume CoVID rapid antigen test kits are in the news where Randall is, because of the announcement that they would soon be made available free of charge in the US, on the day the comic was published (Citation needed). In the future when they fall out of circulation or other types of tests become more common, the joke will still stand. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.15|108.162.249.15]] 12:35, 23 December 2021 (UTC) edit: and I missed the fact that the last panel actually has the word COVID. Ahh well. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.182|108.162.250.182]] 12:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
:::First of all so many comics have been about covid-19 (this was no. 87 and the second this week, hope we get a corona free x-mas comic tomorrow!). Secondly the word Covid is used in the main comic, not just the title text, just as the original poster says: "Click to expand COVID menu". So no issue for Randall to mention Corona/covid. He just did not mention it specifically in the previous. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:22, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
: Yes the image is more familiar from pregnancy tests, but the repeated title says "Rapid Test". Around here that's what we call the at-home Covid tests that a LOT of people are learning to use right now before their holiday travel. It's in contrast with PCR tests, which take hours to days and require special laboratory equipment. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.171|172.70.110.171]] 22:43, 23 December 2021 (UTC)


Am I the only one, who is missing at least two more test results? Like:
* ≠ not positive
* ± positive and negative
--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.148|162.158.91.148]] 11:06, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I concur, maybe expand to 
* Constructive/Deconstructive interference from the approximately positive results
* Taking a rapid test 14 hours after submission of a college module provides a digital read out of your grade
* {{w|White Lines}} plays when you move within 2 metres of a covid-infected individual
* {{w|Blurred Lines}} plays when an antivaxxer gets a vaccine   [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 21:40, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

The third panel refers to the mathematical symbol for "approximately" (≈). The long-winded explanation in the table misses the point.{{unsigned|172.68.234.233}}
:The third panel is ''literally'' written up (first column) as "2 wavy lines resembling the approximately equal sign" (with wikilink). The long-windedness that follows in the third column is over-analysing, maybe, but the 'core' point isn't missed at all. You are of course free to edit, so long as you're aware that so are others.
:PS, it is polite to sign Talk-page additions (with the four tildes, or two dashes and four tildes if clicking the right button above)) when adding a comment. HTH, HAND. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.147|172.70.162.147]] 15:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)