Yeah, the false positive and false negative rates are utterly atrocious - there's so many things that can cause raised body temperatures, a lot of people with C

Yeah, the false positive and false negative rates are utterly atrocious - there's so many things that can cause raised body temperatures, a lot of people with Covid don't actually have fevers, and the thermometers used often aren't that accurate anyway. The problem is that the US media have quite consistently only reported on the fact that they're useless when talking about them being implemented in the US. When China and the WHO claimed they were the basis for China's success in containing the virus, pretty much everyone - including publications like the New York Times - uncritically regurgitated that claim. Same with places like (if I remember rightly) Taiwan using it for airport screening. Anyone who got their beliefs from the mainstream media would be left convinced that America was failing because it hadn't adopted these successful measures from places like China.