Comment Re: It's happening elsewhere too (Score 1) 309
You're wrong about it not being part of the treatment. Testing is essential to knowing which interventions to take, anywhere from "send you home with antibiotics and Albuterol" to "get this person on supplemental O2 and definitely don't send them home". It's also important for monitoring the patient's progress and determining relapse risk. It is an absolutely necessary, though not sufficient, part of treating a patient.
You're also wrong about it not reducing the amount of illness. Testing is vital for effective contact tracing, and for determining appropriate quarantine procedures for a sick person. Both of these measures are on the critical path to reducing the total illness in the population. Again, it's necessary - though not sufficient - to medium- and large-scale disease control.
Claiming that testing isn't part of treating a disease is like claiming using a computer isn't part of programming. Yes, technically it's possible to write code with pencil-and-paper, but you're both going to be much less effective with a real editor that can detect errors in real time, and you're never going to actually achieve anything if you don't get that code into a digital form. Similarly, blindly treating symptoms is a terrible way to handle a life-threatening illness, and you can't practically control its spread if you don't know who has it.