Some additional details in here. It’s not meant to change your mind. And I know it won’t. Just providing some quotes. Feel free to read through. I really don’t have a firm position on the matter.
A Trump administration official said Wednesday that controversial changes to coronavirus testing guidelines were determined by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House task force and not commanded by political figures.
www.washingtontimes.com
The quote in the article doesn't explain anything. (Not your fault, it's what was presented, it was just bad by itself.)
“There was no weight on the scales by the president or the vice president,” Admiral Brett Giroir, the U.S. coronavirus testing “czar,” told reporters.Previous CDC guidance said people who thought they were exposed to the virus but didn’t show symptoms should get tested, as public health officials try to root out hidden infections and break up chains of transmission.
That changed this week.
For asymptomatic people who have been within six feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more, the guidelines now say: “You do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or state or local public health officials recommend you take one.”
Two things jump out at me from this. First the quote at the end, it's qualified with "necessarily, some, and whatever state and local say". Which is a way of saying they don't stand behind it at all and are just passing the buck to someone else. Second, the old guideline was to "try to root out hidden infections and break up chains of transmission". Which presumably means the new guideline is not longer trying to achieve this. Which means we're still on slow the spread and nowhere near contain it. What a poor policy to not try and contain the spread.
We still don’t have enough testing, like it or not.
Can we go "not". How are we this many months into it and still don't have enough testing? Testing that's fast enough to be useful. The more time that goes by, the more testing we'll need to get anywhere near containment as the problem will be larger.
I guess it depends where you are. Our health board said we're only testing about a third of our capacity on a daily basis. In Texas I think they said demand was dropping like crazy, which was resulting in lower numbers. Many people just aren't bothering to get tested.
Here in south Florida i have def seen first hand a decline in people getting tested.
What's the turn around in testing results? And, can anyone show up at those sites or do they need an appointment/referral of some type? When it takes a long time from need discovered to result, people don't bother because they still need to quarantine for the same period since the result is so slow.
Combine that with a lack of contact tracing (say, we're not testing enough, so there isn't tracing, which isn't leading to people who need a test), and that would push demand down too.
In both cases, it's not a good sign that demand is down, it's just a reflection of a broken system.