The worst part about the lack of testing is that it is possible that the strategy we are currently deploying is the opposite of what we should be doing, and we might never know it.
Because we don’t have widespread population test, we have neither a good idea of the contagiousness of the virus nor it’s lethality. And it is likely that these two factors are highly negatively correlated with each other.
If it turns out the virus is both much more contagious and much less lethal than our original estimates (as the little bit of recent evidence tends to point to), we should not be doing general lockdowns. We should be aiming for herd immunity in a controlled way that limits restrictions to vulnerable populations and places where the health care system, while encouraging the spread of the virus among the young and healthy.
This is further suggested by the fact that while our models seem to be doing a decent job projecting the upward trajectory of case and death rates, they are failing with respect to two other factors. First, they dramatically overestimated the need for hospital capacity at peak levels. And second, they dramatically overestimated the rate of decline once the peak is reached. These failures indicate that the general lockdowns are both less necessary and less effective than initially anticipated.
This is slightly misguided by your central argument of lack of testing. The media is going nuts about
'testing'.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-april-17-2020/Most of what you are asking for will be in the datasets from testing already underway and completed. In terms of spot-testing, Dr Birx has a program of getting data from the broader community now which is already underway.
Dr Fauci said that testing is not the issue yesterday:
"the emphasis that we’ve been hearing is essentially, “testing is everything,” and it isn’t."He went on to say (in the nicest possible way) that people are imagining that this is the real issue when it is purely in their head.
And Dr Birx has reiterated many times at the Daily Briefing that the current testing levels correlate well with hospitalisation and mortality rates in areas where it is being conducted. That is, she is saying that lack of testing is not the problem here.
Dr Anthony Fauci went on to say that:
"we will have and there will be enough tests to allow us to take this country safely through phase one."Both Dr Fauci and Dr Birx gave the distinct feeling that the testing coverage is appropriate now, and that a lot of people, fueled by the media, feel as though testing is underneath where it should be.
In fact, the opposite of
"not enough testing" is true based on comments made by the Admiral GIROIR at the same briefing:
"This is, sort of, the radar — the weather radar that it would be out there — that we’re not testing people who are symptomatic. We want to do testing on people who are asymptomatic because you can have asymptomatic carriage. You know, you could have this virus and shed it, and not have symptoms or only mild symptoms.""We have 200,000 people who need a diagnosis. To make that diagnosis, we want to test 2 million. Okay? So that’s 2 million. We’re going to contact trace with a million. And let’s just throw you a fudge factor of about 25 percent on that; so that’s 4 million. And we have this background testing of about 400 — of about 400,000 per month."And I want to tell you that’s really how it adds up, and that’s where we are. Right now, we’re doing about 1 million to 1.2 million per week.So the Admiral is saying that the current testing regime covers all the necessary diagnosis of infected patients, the contract traces of those 200,000 people to 5 friends each.
Then there is more than enough community spot testing or background testing over over 400,000 people per month.
4.8 million tests per month are being performed for a total required capacity of only around 2-3 million.
