Realtime PCR isn't sequencing. It increases the concentration of the targeted sequence exponentially, so it "should" take only logarithmically more temperature

Realtime PCR isn't sequencing. It increases the concentration of the targeted sequence exponentially, so it "should" take only logarithmically more temperature cycles to handle a smaller concentration of virus . If that is actually a big contributor to the testing cost, it would make the log in my analysis into a log^2.