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Comment by ncallaway | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if you're quoting something or paraphrasing a position you disagree with.

If it's a paraphrase, I'm not so sure it's a fair one.

In the United States, for example, we are urging people not to be tested unless they have severe symptoms. The reason for that is not to save money, but it's for a lack of testing capacity. As a policy we would much prefer to be testing even the mild suspected cases. But we don't (currently) have the testing capacity to do so.

So I think the lack of testing of mild cases (at least in the United States, and I suspect in other countries) is more a reflection of our rationing priorities than it is a reflection of our spending priorities.

If the testing capacity becomes unconstrained and we (or other countries) still fail to test mild cases.

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> it's for a lack of testing capacity

I feel compelled to point out that it's purely a lack of _authorized_ testing capacity, although things seem to have improved recently. The test itself is relatively trivial from a scientific perspective.

The fact that our bureaucratic apparatuses were so ill prepared for such an event I find highly concerning.

The lack of testing capacity was a choice.

Yes, absolutely. The lack of testing capacity was a total failure of the government.

After the acute phase of the crisis, we should investigate what happened in great detail.

But the advice about who should get a test is based on the testing capacity we have now. If we hadn't failed at testing capacity, we would be recommending more users get tested.

So, if the critique is: "we failed to produce adequate testing capacity", then I absolutely agree. If the critique is instead: "The recommendation of who gets a test is bad", then I disagree. The recommendation is correct given the test capacity failing.

The solution is not to recommend everyone gets tests, because they can't! Those tests are being rationed. The solution is to rapidly improve out testing capacity.

Yes, we are 3 months late. These wasted last 3 months were critical after the December outbreak in China. I don't think it is the U.S. problem, Europeans didn't move a finger until the beginning of March either. Literally everyone watched China as if they could contain it properly. They didn't even tell people until it was very late.

> In the United States, for example, we are urging people not to be tested unless they have severe symptoms.

They should test randomly: e.g. use a hash of the person’s name.

Otherwise there is a huge risk of missing cases that matter...

Testing randomly gets us a better picture of how widespread it is then testing to confirm severe cases. I'd much rather know that X% of the population has it with an error of Y than Z% of severe cases are due to this virus.

Yes from the research/understanding perspective but a lot of the testing is also to provide healthcare to those most in need. You test the most severe to make sure you can treat them effectively.

100% agree with you, but would also supplement "test the most severe" to be "test the most severe and healthcare workers".

Getting healthcare workers out of quarantine if they aren't infected is also super important.

Both of those come as a priority before surveillance.

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