[majormajor]

> After two video appointments with separate providers I was able to get tested yesterday and the result came back negative about 22 hours later. It took me about 8 hours of effort and time to get that done, a luxury many people do not have.

Is there any value in people self-selecting into personal choice testing? You could get infected tomorrow, for instance...

If we wanted a full picture of community spread we'd need a top-down random sample, not self-selection, no?

[colechristensen]

Aren't there ways of turning self-selection populations into random sample populations for statistical purposes? (It has just been a while since I have had to think of these things).

But really we want more than just accurate statistics, we want to minimize damage. Any increase in testing is good testing, and triaging testing to highest risk individuals makes sense when your capacity is limited.

The consequences though are that reported statistics are often just wrong. Skewed towards higher negative outcomes and comparisons between dates are flawed without much additional information.