And with pregnancy the results are much more definitive - yup, she had a baby.
With C19 - well maybe it was the flu or RSV.
With known infectious diseases, the nucleic acid lab tests can be very good 90+%. Some, like C. diff testing, almost aren't worth using in my opinion.
There is always the case that it was covid, plus flu, plus... docs don't find very many because they don't often test for all at the same time because insurance companies hate paying for "unneeded" tests. (Well, you didn't know it was unneeded until you know what it is..., so it is a bit, but not entirely chicken and egg.) When people look carefully, patients often have a number of infections at the same time. I remember one patient who came in for something unrelated like a broken arm, and her blood had 42 different parasites in it.
Hollywood is not real life.
No, it is not.
But acidosis and alkalosis are know to affect the course of many diseases. Michael Crichton, who wrote the book the movie is based on, was educated at and had an MD degree from Harvard medical school. So, he had a pretty good grounding in science and medicine.
en.wikipedia.org
I've often wondered if his time in medical school traumatized him, and he decided to write about scientists as being villains as a result. Generally, I think the books are well crafted, and often scientifically and medically quite accurate, except of course for the plot idea, e.g. alien life form, time travel...
All the best,
Peter
