I interpreted your original statement as "testing not good, not needed". I'll try to bridge the gap here, because I get your point now. I appreciate a thoughtful response.

Where I'm coming from, I want to get rid of this disease, so do you. I'm approaching it not as someone who works inside the system, but as someone who walks up and says "we don't have to do things that way".

It seems you're very focused on treating the individual. That's great. That's not my frame of mind. I don't know squat about that. I absolutely would depend on the hardworking men and women that staff our hospitals and doctors offices to determine what to do with that. My train of thought is to try and let doctors sick to what they are good at, treating patients. Let the doctors do their thing and help people get well.

I'm advocating for extensive testing, not so much for doctors directly (though the idea would be to slow the spread early identification of infected, so that would help doctors later on). It's more to help politicians and civic leaders. If we weren't directly killing the economy right now, I wouldn't worry about it. Think of it more along the lines of fighting a war. Tactics vs strategy. For an individual patient, a doctor needs to be able to order appropriate tests to diagnose, develop a plan to treat the patient, and help the individual get better. Consider that a battle. Data on the larger scale helps keep the leadership informed on how to win the war. We're losing the war right now because our leadership doesn't have good information. We need to change that, and the only way to change that is through better knowledge of the disease and how it spreads.

I don't think that there's any issue with you caring about individuals. There needs to be people who do. I'm not intentionally asking for an individual person's care to diminish so that I get test results. I am advocating that we try to get testing done in such a way that frees doctors to do what they do best, but gives leaders the right information to minimize losses to our economy. I think if we found a middle ground where testing wasn't detrimental to the patient or doctor, but provided large quantities of useful information, we could both support that, right? I think that space exists. It would be expensive, but I think it would be far less than the trillion dollar bailout that Congress is putting together right now.