I feel like I'm hearing this a lot, so I'm going to try to explain why it doesn't work to get tested Tuesday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving and then be good to go for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. Don't use that test to decide you're safe!

So say I'm infected by someone anytime between tomorrow and this weekend. Then, in anticipation of Thanksgiving and seeing people, I get tested on on Tuesday, two days before the holiday. If my test comes back negative, that doesn't mean much

The test is basically telling me how much virus is in my body at that very moment. And usually, it takes between 5 and 9 days for the virus to show up on a test. So on that Tuesday before Thanksgiving, maybe the levels weren't quite high enough to show up on the test, but ...

The virus is already in my body, and it keeps replicating, and by the next day or Thanksgiving itself I could be a lot more sick and infectious. So my negative test didn't stop me from getting anyone else sick, and in fact it probably gave me a false sense of security

To truly be virus-free, you would need to strictly isolate for 14 days. And then you could get a test to confirm you're truly virus-free. But we're already more than 14 days out from Thanksgiving, so it's too late to do this now. And it's so hard to strictly isolate anyway

This is important to remember for all high-risk activities you might do! You can't get off a plane and get a COVID test that day and find out if you got infected on the plane. A test won't tell you anything for certain about your exposure on that flight for at least a week

I understand that this is incredibly frustrating, but that's kind of the point. COVID spreads so much *because* of that long incubation period (ie the fact that it takes so long for the virus to show up on a test or to have symptoms)

It's hard for people to wrap their heads around the fact that testing negative today doesn't mean you won't test positive tomorrow. Or that having no symptoms doesn't mean you can't spread the virus. But that's unfortunately the way COVID works, and partly why we're in this mess

if you’re going to gather regardless, just eat outdoors! my qualm is specifically with people thinking a negative test result is sufficient to eat indoors like normal. it’s not!