We’re not going to keep cases low but there’s a lot between low case totals and hospital overload and we need to do what we can to push it towards the lower end.
We messed up the response the first time around. There’s lots of blame to go around for that but a lot that was unavoidable. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t do much better the second time around and testing is absolutely a part of a better response.
You can protect the high risk people and I completely agree with you on the need to do that, but if you’re not testing and contact tracing on a large scale, it’s impossible to fully protect them. You might be able to isolate yourself from the high risk people but will everyone you come in contact with do the same? If you become an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, how confident can you be that you don’t end up passing it onto someone else? With ramped up testing and contact tracing, you can at least know when you’re at high risk and change your behavior for a bit.
We can’t sustain society or the economy if we are forced to assume that anyone and everyone might be spreading the virus. That’s where we sit right now. A vaccine isn’t going to save us, herd immunity isn’t going to save us and treatments aren’t likely to save us. Massive testing won’t save us either but it will put us in a much better position to do better when the next wave comes.
But okay, I’ll try it.
At this point, it's a matter of which one gets him first.
