covid-19 stock photos are, without fail, the worst. here is what the actual media for any covid testing looks like, utm in a red top tube with a minitip swab. swab goes in the nose, swab gets broken in half, swab goes in the tube, we test the juice.

now a bunch that I've cribbed from reddit/various new articles. this one helpfully came pre-labeled positive, and they've got the basic IDEA right, but that's straight up a blood tube that they put some liquid and a q-tip in.

again with the blood, and of course we write the results directly on the label, no patient information required. also, that tube is... nothing. it's just a screw cap tube. you can't do anything with that

again with the random screw cap tube!!!

this is fun because it shows them plating for bacteria. they had the right department, ish, and kudos for the creativity, but god damn you're not gonna get a virus to grow on sba

this is my personal favorite bc that's a sodium citrate tube, also known as "the tube you use for coagulation and literally nothing else." it doesn't even look like it's full to the line so you couldn't even use it for that. how useless

now I'm just entertaining myself. this is an edta tube. you use those pretty much exclusively for hematology. covid is not, as you may already know, a hematological disease

oh come ON!!!!!!!!! that is a single drop of blood in a coag tube. this is the kind of shit i would gleefully run around and show all my coworkers

another serum tube but this one's kinda cute I like it

this thread is useless and probably incorrect pedantry bc i know there's blood tests for covid but that is, 99% of the time, not what these articles are referring to, which is Where I Get Off