Here, we evaluated the economic return on investment of this plan had we started in June - Dec 2020.

The version described above is shown in panel C

Costs (all included) $28B
Would have increased GDP by $395B!
Would have saved >100,000 lives in 2020!

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.22.20217984v2.full.pdf

Here is a news report on the efforts in Slovakia to drop incidence by 50% through widescale testing of their population in a short amount of time. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-11-09/slovakia-says-covid-double-testing-cut-number-of-infections-by-more-than-half

And here is a paper we wrote describing why, for a program like this, we needn't worry about low analytical sensitivity and instead must prioritize sensitivity to detect infectious people.... https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2025631

If worrying that rapid tests miss a lot of people at start of infection - This paper tracked regular people over time to see if they turn positive. Note incredibly fast upswing in virus titers! Frequency, not sensitivity at the limit of PCR is needed.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.21.20217042v1.full.pdf

In other words, the time difference is minimal between when ppl 1st turn PCR pos and when they turn rapid antigen positive.

It is MUCH better to prioritize frequency and turnaround time over PCR type sensitivity b/c within hours of PCR turning pos, the viral load is sky high.

Oh. Also recognize that that plot of virus titers is a log scale. Every 3.3 Ct values is a 10-fold change. So 40-30 is a 1000x increase in virus titers.