(Needless to say, pretty much all the problems with false positives, inadequate technology, the diffculty of scaling up, etc would have been much bigger problem

(Needless to say, pretty much all the problems with false positives, inadequate technology, the diffculty of scaling up, etc would have been much bigger problems in the US a few months ago given the much larger population and the improvements in Covid-19 testing technology since then.) But had we initiated aggressive testing earlier, the population needing to be tested would've been much, much smaller. A single test now, with the virus widespread in the population, is worth much, much less than a test back in February. Testing effectiveness should not be measured in tests/population, but in tests/active infections. We had a great deal more leverage back in February and March, and a little testing back them would've been equivalent in effectiveness to massive amounts of testing now. It's a moving goal post, not for political reasons, but for clear epidemiological ones.