Will I be back from covid, at school in person, on Wed May 17, a week after first testing positive? [M$500 subsidy]
32
372
1.1K
resolved May 17
Resolved
NO

I currently have covid. Some details:

  • I started having symptoms this past Tuesday afternoon (May 9) and tested positive on Wednesday morning (May 10).

  • School policy is to quarantine 5 days (until Monday, May 15) and then come back once you test negative, or if 11 days have elapsed from the beginning (that'd be Sunday, May 21). So I could potentially be in person as early as Tuesday, May 16.

  • My biggest symptom has probably been fatigue, and I'm definitely behind on work, but I've been energized enough to go to all my classes remotely, post puzzles, make the ultimate taylor swift playlist, etc.

  • I had a major sore throat on Wednesday and Thursday but that's mostly better now. I have been blowing my nose so much. Also some headaches here and there, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Anyway, I'm not that knowledgeable about covid, so I'm hoping the prediction markets will provide some clarity as to whether I can expect to be at school in person on Wednesday! (It's okay if I have to miss it, but there's an event I'd be excited for on Wednesday...)

General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.

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predicted NO

For those playing along at home, I finally tested negative this afternoon (Saturday)

predicted NO

@Conflux Congrats!

bought Ṁ3,500 of NO

Well, I guess the market predicted my scenario well in the end, although badly in the beginning. I got a faint-line positive. This test was iHealth, which is a brand I haven’t used during this covid case.

I genuinely don’t think I’d be endangering people by returning to school, given that I’ve barely have symptoms for days. (Although I was coughing a bit last night.) Also, I think you’re less infectious toward the end anyway. However, I understand why they have the negative test rule in place. I’m staying positive, in more ways than one.

@Conflux are you going to zoom into the event?

predicted NO

@cloe I think so!

bought Ṁ200 of NO

Looked into this back when I had covid - this was the most useful chart I found on the subject, low sample size but all the reading I did back then indicated that 7 days is optimistic for N-antigen tests.

If you're curious - here's what my tests looked like when I had Covid where test line darkness is normalized against the white area of the test and plotted over time:

Definitely making a bit of a bet that your faint line was a bad sample/test/etc here :) And also depends on which brand of test you'll be using in the future. But my experience and reading I've done makes me think that 40% is a lot closer than 50% for the odds that your test tomorrow is negative.

sold Ṁ64 of NO

Links to markets for Thursday and Friday:

bought Ṁ50 of NO

So the test I took this morning was also pretty clearly positive - the line definitely appeared quickly and is not faint.

Maybe worth noting that this test and the other test that gave me a clear negative two days ago was BinaxNow brand, whereas the test with the faint line yesterday afternoon was iHealth. I don't really know if I should expect that to be a coincidence.

Still no symptoms anymore basically.

sold Ṁ30 of YES

@Conflux Edit: It wasn’t iHealth, it was InteliSwab. Still a different brand

bought Ṁ200 of YES

Took another test. Positive, but the line’s pretty faint! Not sure about tomorrow, optimistic for Wednesday.

bought Ṁ200 of YES

I might take a test later today. I’m feeling basically back to normal. I felt weirdly in the mood to do household chores this morning, so I did various household chores and also made myself an omelette (didn’t end up pretty, but still functional).

predicted YES

@Conflux Alas, I’m still testing positive.

bought Ṁ50 of YES

I feel like I’m continuing to recover and regain energy. Went on a ~45m walk today

predicted YES

@Conflux also have been blowing my nose less

sold Ṁ8 of NO

I added a subsidy of M$500 since I’m curious about the answer obviously. Might subsidize more

bought Ṁ10 of NO

I ran a similar question when I got covid and here's a link to my research, which is admittedly nearly a year old and may not be the most accurate/current. Based on it, I would guesstimate 70% probability for your question.

Some articles/studies I found say duration of Omicron infection (counting from first detection) is about 10 days mean, 5 days median. Which would suggest a distribution with a fairly long right tail. (Although I don't fully trust the reporting, I could not actually find where in the study the numbers came from and the study is looking at a couple different groups and metrics).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2022/01/19/new-data-suggests-that-50-of-omicron-infections-in-healthy-young-men-remain-transmissible-after-five-days/?sh=1dc8a45d1fa9 and paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.13.22269257v2.full-text

This article https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o922 says Omicron symptoms lasted 7 days on average.

https://manifold.markets/jack/how-many-days-will-my-covid-infecti#EURz4PrlBGs8QAVTe5Fy

bought Ṁ5 of NO

@jack 10 days mean?? wow

predicted NO

@Conflux Yeah, surprised me too. Note that the second study above found a mean of 7 days, so it's probably in between.

predicted YES

@jack that would probably be affected by age though, right?

predicted NO

@DylanSlagh Yeah, quite possibly. I didn't have any data on that though.

feel better covid sucks

bought Ṁ10 of YES

Bro you better