The simple reality is that unless you have a large proportion of your population immune (either due to infection or vaccine) you will NOT be able to reverse the lockdown successfully without seeing a surge in infections and deaths shortly after. So you can test as much as you want, but this whole pandemic started from ONE person in China so as long as there is 1 or 5 or more likely 100s or 1000s of cases in any country then as soon as restrictions are loosened the infection rate will exponentially go up again.
You can play the game of opening/closing schools/shops every couple weeks for about 2 years until everyone either got eventually infected or we might see a vaccine hitting the public. Even if a vaccine might be available at the end of 2020, it won't be available to the public across the globe for yet another year if not longer. That is just simple maths on manufacturing and distribution, anyone who thinks differently is completely dillusional.
So my question remains, what is the end goal with all of the testing? Calling testing as a way out of the lockdown is either a dumb assertion, because more testing won't stop the spread (contact tracing and isolation will only slow the exponential outbreak by days or couple weeks), or it is a lie to give the public false hope.
There is only two ways out:
- Now, by lifting all lockdown restrictions, target, shield and isolate the most vulnerable in our society (old & fragile, people with diabetes, cancer, HIV, etc.), ramp up hospital capacity and let the virus rage through the remaining population, hoping that everyone else will mostly experience mild or no symptoms and only very few people who need hospitalisation and who will die given that the most vulnerable remain in isolation...
or
- stay in lockdown for 24 months at a minimum until there's the capacity to manufacture and supply a vaccine to roughly 60% of the population with a pointless ping pong exercise of easing and tightening the restrictions
I'm honestly not sure which one is better, but there is literally NO OTHER OPTION.
Most of Europe is currently going down the second option and Sweden is mostly leading on the first option. I predict that if in ~ 6 months time countries will see that there's little difference in the death rate between countries with tright restrictinos and those with lax restrictions (because tight restrictions only delay the deaths, but don't prevent) then everyone will change to a more Swedish model probably.
Only time will tell the truth.