Not long ago it was reported that there were 2 million requests for COVID tests a day. That wasn’t a broken system, it was a broken public. People knew they needed a test – they had been in touch with somebody that had probably got the virus. They needed the tests so they could carry on with “normal” life.
One of the things I found fascinating about the Trump infection is that a lot of the people involved get tested on a daily basis. If this is true it suggests that you can be infectious before you test positive. Or to put this another way, you need to have had the virus a couple of days before you can be tested positive.
So if those 2 million people had been tested then they would have come back negative – even if they were positive. But they all knew they needed to be tested. They knew better than the triage system that was stopping them getting tests.
I’ve watched this attitude grow over the years – it isn’t something new, but the certainty without basis is growing. Almost like a religion.