[adrinavarro]

> "Then later on it was discovered that a lot of positive tests are asymptomatic and asymptomatic people don't transmit the disease, so this just hurt healthcare capacity for no reason"

I think it makes sense to isolate anyone who tests PCR positive for coronavirus, right?

Also, is it 100% sure that asymptomatic people will not transmit the disease? What if they are just pre-symptomatic? Where do you establish the cut-off?

[thu2111]

No. Why would it? Given how mild almost all infections are, and that doctors/nurses can routinely save lives from much more serious conditions, it's a strange cost/benefit analysis that assumes it's better to lose huge chunks of healthcare capacity than for some people to get COVID.

Asymptomatic is being used as a different classification than pre-symptomatic in the literature. Asymptomatic means you never develop symptoms. Pre-symptomatic means you haven't yet but will. Pre-symptomatic phase is not long though. Typically just 1-3 days, I think, from the latest literature.

Given the tiny window of time that exists when people are infectious and might not know it, and given the very low likelyhood of a PCR test being done in exactly that time, and given that PCR testing has a lot of problems (e.g. triggers even if your body has destroyed the virus), and given that nurses and doctors are pretty important, I can't see it being useful to actively test in hospitals. It's everywhere by now anyway.