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If the virus is endemic, what even is the point of all this testing? What does is accomplish besides telling you “yup, this test says you have a virus”? I never

If the virus is endemic, what even is the point of all this testing? What does is accomplish besides telling you “yup, this test says you have a virus”? I never got tested for respiratory viruses before when I got sick. Why this one? We cannot move on until we eliminate all this mass testing. Yes test for confirmation before administering something specific to Covid but testing somebody whose only medical issue is something that can be bought over the counter… what is the point? All this testing is just causing chaos in peoples lives.

standardUser 5y ago
Testing is so you know if you have COVID and you don't go and spread it. And the reason you don't go and spread it is because hospitals have limited capacity - and healthcare workers haver limited energy - so we want to avoid people dying due to lack of proper medical care. This has been the entire point of mitigation efforts from day one.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  So why aren’t we testing for the cold and the flu? Those are just as endemic as Covid and they mutate every year too. Why test specifically for Covid? What useful information does knowing you have Covid instead of the myriad of other respiratory viruses actually provide? The treatment for all of them is gonna be basically the same for like 99% of all cases.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    If we know we have Covid we can avoid spreading it, and we avoid spreading it because it threatens our healthcare capacity. That is why we test. The common cold and flu do not spread nearly as easily and don't result in such frequent hospitalization. Yes, taking extra mitigation efforts to prevent the spread of the flu, such as widespread testing, may spare us a few hospital beds. But the return on investment is very low. With Covid, it is very high, since each case of Covid stands to spread more readily than a case of the flu, and each case is more likely to result in hospitalization. It's the hospitalizations that matter ultimately, the same now as when the pandemic began, and all mitigation efforts serve that end.

standardUser 5y ago

Testing is so you know if you have COVID and you don't go and spread it. And the reason you don't go and spread it is because hospitals have limited capacity - and healthcare workers haver limited energy - so we want to avoid people dying due to lack of proper medical care. This has been the entire point of mitigation efforts from day one.

spookthesunset 5y ago
So why aren’t we testing for the cold and the flu? Those are just as endemic as Covid and they mutate every year too. Why test specifically for Covid? What useful information does knowing you have Covid instead of the myriad of other respiratory viruses actually provide? The treatment for all of them is gonna be basically the same for like 99% of all cases.
- standardUser 5y ago
  If we know we have Covid we can avoid spreading it, and we avoid spreading it because it threatens our healthcare capacity. That is why we test. The common cold and flu do not spread nearly as easily and don't result in such frequent hospitalization. Yes, taking extra mitigation efforts to prevent the spread of the flu, such as widespread testing, may spare us a few hospital beds. But the return on investment is very low. With Covid, it is very high, since each case of Covid stands to spread more readily than a case of the flu, and each case is more likely to result in hospitalization. It's the hospitalizations that matter ultimately, the same now as when the pandemic began, and all mitigation efforts serve that end.