COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)
Pool testing is an interesting idea, but I'd like to see more information from virologists and epidemiologists on how well it works when compared to traditional testing. I mean, the guy that wrote the thread is a Professor of Economics at NYU. I'm sure he is a very good economist, but I'm not sure whether he understands the medical and epidemiological issues involved with pool testing. Maybe he does, but I'd like to hear from experts in other fields more closely related to containing viruses.
One concern I have is if contact tracing isn't working, then how are they planning to track down all the people who were in the testing pool to test them again? I guess if they all go to a single school it works, but probably does not work for the general public. My other concern would be that it might not actually save money depending on how wide spread the virus is. And, even if it does save money, is it really the best way to do it? Is it just being pushed because the Feds refuse to spend the money necessary to do individual testing and/or didn't ramp up production of test kits fast enough? Is this just the next best thing we can do because we messed up so bad not making more tests and the Feds won't fund testing?
What I found concerning was the idea that we know that contact tracing isn't working. It was supposed to be one of the big pillars to build on to get the economy back open and now we are learning that it's basically impossible to carry out.