[war1025]

I guess to clarify, it has been my impression that the healthcare industry are the people telling us we are not doing enough testing.

We attempted to get tested and they said no, not worth the bother.

That seems contradictory to me.

[hcknwscommenter]

The healthcare industry (and the CDC) and (almost?) every qualified expert is arguing that we are not doing enough testing. And we aren't. Part of the reason we are not doing enough testing is that we simply don't have the capacity and Dr.s' are being told that capacity is restricted and tests should be carefully considered on a case by case basis. The above is non-uniformly distributed in that there are some areas of the country where there is sufficient capacity and others where capacity is woefully deficient. Some sort of competent federal leadership on testing capacity/distribution would help tremendously.

[nradov]

If we had more testing capacity what would that change? What would it allow us to do that we aren't doing now?

Japan did very little testing and has a relatively low death rate so far.

[hcknwscommenter]

We could basically live a normal life with massive testing and tracing in place. Korea and Taiwan have strong testing and tracing measures and life there is basically back to pre-pandemic behaviors except you need to scan a code on your phone (to enable tracing if a later detected infection is traced to that location) before you enter a bar/restaurant/night club, etc. China had an outbreak in Qingdao (6 total cases), so they tested all 9 million people in 5 days. That's isn't even that hard to do.

[learc83]

It depends on where you are. If you have a low enough case count and a well functioning health department that is doing contact tracing, then it's helpful to confirm that your kid is positive.

If you're in an area where neither of those things apply then, for a child a test isn't going to change anything. It's not going to change their treatment. If it's positive they'll tell you to isolate, but if it's negative, there's a high enough false negative rate, and there are enough cases that it's still very likely they have it, so you'll still want to treat it like they do.

[reallydontask]

>That seems contradictory to me.

Not necessarily, it could mean that the people that need to get tested aren't all getting tested.

[watwut]

The epidemiologists and some in healthcare industry are saying that.

The reason is not that some people are not willing to get test. The reason is also capacity, aldo policies on who is allowed to get test etc. Your case is literally someone who should be tested and was not, hence "not enough testing".

Here, I can get comertial test if I am willing to pay. No one will send me home. And if I was in contact with covid infected person, I get test for free (it is mandatory). And if I live in household with sick person, I have mandatory quarantine.

Sounds like where you live is no contract tracing and thus not enough testing.

[maxerickson]

Healthcare is not a monolithic entity, so different parts of it saying different things is coherent. It probably isn't the case, but it could even be that doctor deciding the test wasn't worth doing.

It can also be the case that insufficient testing is available in your area.

I know a group of people that were tested because of potential exposure (they were tested based on 1 person reporting symptoms; the additional tests were done prior to that result coming back).