@Scott F posted:Medicine seems uniquely positioned to give us genuinely crappy great news sometimes. I once had kidney surgery to remove a “suspicious mass” found incidentally on a CT scan. The mass turned out to be benign, which of course was great news (except for the surgery I’d have been better off without).
A friend of mine had his gall bladder unnecessarily removed for the same reason, a suspicious mass that later turned out to be benign on biopsy. He was furious and wanted to bring a malpractice lawsuit, although he never did.
In my case, no unwanted surgery, but I was out of work for a day and a half and did not get as much accomplished as I wanted to, and about 20 friends, family and coworkers went and got needless Covid tests, all of which were negative. I suppose that if I had been positive and had infected any of the 20, especially my 85 year old father, it would have been more upsetting, but that is very little consolation to soothing my irritation for having colossal amounts of my time wasted, not to mention all of the others.