Today is literally the first day that I'm free from quarantine. Not because I got my test results back, but because the latency in testing has gotten so drawn out that even if that test eventually comes back positive, I already meet the CDC guidelines for ending quarantine. That test was completely useless for me and only serves to add some data to the statistics around the pandemic. Right now, if you want to get tested and you're not a high priority case (i.e. hospitalized), at least in my area, you can't even do that for all practical purposes. It would be arguably better if they just randomly tested only 50% and had a more reasonable backlog than testing 100% with a backlog so long that all but the high priority tests are useless by the time the results are available.
We've had literally months of time to ramp up testing nationwide. This pandemic is far from over and it's already killed 145,000 Americans. This is inexcusable incompetence by the legislative and executive branch.
There are only few locations that actually run the assays the logistics of getting the sample to a location is significant. Not to mention regent and other resource shortages mean some locations are off and can’t process anyone . Your sample gets moved somewhere else
Also testing is many times done like binary searches. Some 96 samples are combined and tested , if it is are negative no further tests required , if they come positive breakdown and so on . While even in the worst case you may will not need 96 separate tests, the steps are sequential, tests will take more time if more people on average become positive.