Whether it was flip-flops on the effectiveness of masks, seemingly inane restrictions on certain activities, or crass politicization of the use of ineffective drugs, the past 20 months have provided numerous reasons to question what we were told. Significant numbers of people are resisting employer mandates to get the COVID-19 vaccine and thereby jeopardizing their jobs.

Still, there is a useful but misunderstood and underused mitigation tool — rapid-result antigen tests, which detect pieces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s proteins — that can slow the spread of infections.