Good update on pooled testing; dreadful headline. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/health/coronavirus-pool-te.html

The thing is, pooled testing *is* working in many places, as the story clearly explains.

The story addresses how pooled testing doesn't work when the positive rates are on the order of 10%. That's totally fair—at that point benefits are marginal.

But what isn't stressed is that the positive rate is function of two things:

1) prevalence
2) testing strategy

Much of the potential value of pooled testing is that it makes it possible to use testing to screen asymptomatic people without known exposures. These 10+ percent positive rates come from testing suspected cases.

So if we started to use pooled testing to screen asymptomatic people, we would be getting the kinds of positive rates that make pooled testing worthwhile.

In that situation, we are also less concerned about the occasional false negative due to dilution.