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You test the kid so that you can then warn all the kid's contacts! The ONLY reason we test is to control community spread. Covid doesn't really have any speci

You test the kid so that you can then warn all the kid's contacts! The ONLY reason we test is to control community spread. Covid doesn't really have any specific treatments, it gets managed the same way you manage a flu patient. There's near zero value in the individual information about an infection. In an idea situation (i.e. where the pandemic hasn't outstripped test bandwidth, which is true now in almost all of asia, most of europe, and some areas of the US like NYC) you test everyone who gets sick with covid-like symptoms, and for every positive you then go and test everyone who had meaningful contact with them. You absolutely don't skip tests because you can reasonably assume a positive. That's missing the point entirely.

graeme 6y ago
> There's near zero value in the individual information about an infection. At present. There are lots of reports about lingering effects. And large portions of asymptomatics studied have penumonia. You don’t feel tis pneumonia as a symptoms, and if covid damages vascular or brain tissue, you won’t feel that directly either. But it could well be an issue down the road, and knowing if you or your kid had coronavirus could help future treatments.
vharuck 6y ago
Exactly. This is why there's a goal for percentage of positive tests. We want to see a high proportion of negatives, because that means the virus is rarer but more likely to be caught in that population.