The idea of regular testing with cheap/inaccurate #COVID19 (‘dipsticks’) tests may sound appealing, but as with most simple ideas, there are problems. I won't go into the economic, or logistic issues but will comment on the key problem to me, false positives. (1/4) https://twitter.com/jeanerichardson/status/1294922355077271560

The false positive/negative rates may be ~30% and ~20% respectively for cheap #COVID19 tests (it may be worse). If say 0.1% of the population were infected, ~375x more people would be wrongly notified they were infected, than infected people getting the right answer. (2/4)

If everyone in the US (328M inhabitants) were tested daily, this would lead to ~100 million people being incorrectly diagnosed positive with #COVID19, every day, and this as long as the scheme were in place, irrespectively of the state of the epidemic. (3/4)

100 million incorrect daily #COVID19 diagnoses in the US alone would lead to further fear, confusion and overall disruption of daily life. Thus, I do not believe such mass testing would help go back to normal. If anything, it would reinforce the current 'End-Times' climate. (4/4)