[acdha]

If you deliberately waste the tests, yes, you'll see little benefit. On the other hand, you could be more grownup and use them in ways which do benefit other people such as:

1. Testing yourself before meeting friends or family because as a responsible member of society you don't want to risk infecting them. Since spread is possible before being sick and some people, especially when vaccinated, never have strong symptoms, and people can get infected between taking a sample for a PCR test and showing up in-person, this is a great move for peace of mind.

2. Test whether or not that runny nose your kid has right now are in fact allergies before sending them to school. Smarter school districts require this (“test to stay”) so improved test availability is great for parents.

3. Get a result faster than a PCR test when you're deciding how seriously to take symptoms you currently have. A negative test doesn't mean you're in the clear but a positive result does at least mean that you can stop wondering and start making disruptive changes to your plans.

[nradov]

Should we also distribute influenza tests to everyone for use every time they meet friends or family? If not, why not? Seasonal influenza has a somewhat lower fatality rate but it still kills thousands every year and can be spread by asymptomatic carriers.

[acdha]

We arguably should be taking influenza more seriously but influenza is not sending people to the hospitals at levels sufficient to cause overload, or increasing the death rates substantially. We also still have some gaps — for example, the COVID vaccines are more effective than the influenza vaccines (it is a famously mutagenic virus) but the flu vaccines are available to even very young children whereas children under 5 cannot be vaccinated.

Don't forget, this is not a permanent forever program but a reaction to a raging pandemic. If we had high enough vaccination rates to keep COVID patients from overwhelming the medical system, that would drive the stress down to something like influenza levels and we could relax measures accordingly.

[nradov]

In prior years hospitals were routinely overloaded during the winter by influenza and other respiratory viruses.

https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8

[acdha]

Yes, but this is worse and global. Again, I’m talking about the current problem, not saying that we shouldn’t take precautions for the flu — we should be doing easy precautionary measures like mask mandates anytime things are getting overloaded, including improving capacity. The American health system being designed for profit maximization means we have less resilience even under non-pandemic conditions.

[spookthesunset]

You’ll never get a good answer to this. All this testing does is further propel the panic and hysteria.

All these people who want this testing should be asking themselves what changes in the treatment of their viral infection if they know it was Covid instead of some other common respiratory virus? For the vast majority of the public the difference in treatment for Covid is the exact same as any other respiratory illness: stay home, get rest, and drink lots of liquid.