I discovered an interesting waste of tax dollars this morning. Back when USPS was shipping out free covid tests, I signed up for them, just because after having the OG covid*, I wanted to see if I would get it again and what the severity would be. The few times I've had sniffles or other signs of a cold/flu/covid coming on, I've used the tests and come up negative.
This morning, I woke up with a cough and sniffles, which usually means the onset of a cold, but again I took a covid test. Negative. Anyway, it had been a while since the last time I did it, so I got curious if the USPS tests can pick up current covid variants. Apparently they can, but the tangent was to check the expiration date on your kit, as that is somewhat critical. All mine expired in July, 2022. So if the interwebz medical sites are to be believed, and given when the USPS was sending those kits out, all of them are well past the expiration date now. I had eight boxes (two tests per box). If a bunch of other people all ordered the max, I wonder how many millions were spent on kits that are now well past expiration and potentially worthless?
EDIT: I don't know how much the tests cost the gov, but they sell the exact same one on Amazon for 18 ducats per box.
*Interestingly, the OG (pre-vaccine) covid somewhat gave me superpowers. While it screwed up my olfactory senses, since I have had it, I rarely feel sick. I used to, like clockwork, get sick with a cold or whatever once or twice a year, and it would always knock me on my ass for 3-5 days, guaranteed. Since the covid, I have not gotten sick. I've had the start of cold symptoms - sore throat, sniffles, etc., but I just take an Airborne/Emergen-C cocktail for the B & C vitamins, and the next morning am back to normal. More of a short irritation than an illness. Maybe this will be beneficial when the zombie apocalypse virus hits.
