SamirD

imo, it's still that way everywhere and will be until the normal 3yr run of a pandemic. We've only passed the midpoint...17 months to go

gudugan

I've been visiting the US recently and it feels exactly like 2019. Only difference is that Uber is ridiculously expensive and there is a bit less traffic.
Many companies are targeting Labor Day for return to office so hopefully Uber becomes cheaper but traffic will increase again. Oh bother.

VCURamFan

Definitely wasn't that way in Vegas this week, never seen it as packed as it was in 30+ visits. That includes maskless concert with 70,000 people and perhaps the biggest UFC fight in history w 17,000 unmasked. There was nothing 2020 about it.

michael1023

that this silly rule of testing before coming back to usa blah blah is still in effect...

enviroian

Hi Dallas here.

What pandemic?

SamirD

Yep, people are acting like there isn't a pandemic going on...and that is exactly what will spread whatever variants are here. It's the same foolishness as the early pandemic, and sadly people will die because of it.

SamirD

The rule isn't silly imo, but the validation of the testing is imo as ANYONE can fake a test easily and then bring variants, etc here. If preventing the spread was important, flights would be grounded or everyone entering would pass a rapid test before be released in the wild...

SamirD

Yep, same in other places too, but it's still there waiting to pounce again. I hope I'm wrong, but MT is already showing what can happen.

gudugan

Yeah but how do you actually validate a test?
I am looking at a test that I did in the US and it's just a bunch of words on a paper. No QR code or anything. My impression is that they take a sample, send it to the lab, and the lab sends back a result in whatever format they want. Standardizing lab results across every lab in the world is much harder than building a vaccine passport, which we also don't have.

A test I did in Costa Rica has a QR code which links to a PDF of the test on their website. Pretty nifty but it's not a government system or anything, you still have to trust that a random PDF on a random website is accurate.

Before we had QR codes and computers and all this stuff we just trusted a handwritten version of the carte jaune.

Xyzzy

A QR code isn't some sort of magic bullet. ne can easily have it point at a PDF URL for a "result" on one's own web site...

SamirD

Well, the way I would have done it was to have a code that is on the report that is unique to that report that can be easily validated via a portal and very difficult to break the algorithm (aes1024). You could even have taken it back to the paper days with a hologram/watermark on a physical certificate that would have a phone number with the same validation number. Technology doesn't create solutions--it only streamlines them. In this case, technology has done nothing but really made it easier to skirt stuff.

My Kaiser NAAT test is valid for travel, but United needs to see 'RT-PCR' on the paper. Instead of spending $100/ea for another RT-PCR test, I was truly tempted to just put an RT-PCR on the report and let it pass. I'm sure people with less ethical convictions have done just that. It's that hard to swap a positive to a negative either.

OSSYULYYZ

To which country are you travelling as United specifically okays NAATs for entry?

https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...ml#ustravelers

gudugan

I get the point but it's a lot of effort that won't be useful. Someone can still print out a CDC card and fill it out themselves. And there's probably spurious labs out there that will provide negative samples if paid. Even if such a code existed, they would get a legitimate negative code.

Since this says Kaiser (a US healthcare company) this test is being used to exit the US, not to enter the US.

OSSYULYYZ

That is weird. The US has not imposed exit requirements. The title of this forum does say 'international arrivals'.

gudugan

yes yes, i think it was just an off topic remark
a test is required to go from US to many other countries