1/ There's a lot of debate about the accuracy of #COVID tests right now. But the real question is, how accurate do you need? There seem to be main two main use cases for testing:

2/ First, individual care - "I want to know what care I need, as such it helps to know if I have it?" - Accuracy and speed matter a lot here - you don't want to wait days to start treatment, and you don't want to start the wrong treatment.

3/ Second, preventing community spread in our country - "I want to know who has it so we can ensure we're isolating them and they're not spreading the virus" - Price and availability matter a lot here, accuracy does not.

4/ You want a world where everyone in the country tests themselves daily so we know who to isolate, allowing us to re-open society. You do not need extremely good accuracy. Remember, viruses can't "go viral" if the R0 is less than one. This should be our only goal.

5/ If you contain the majority of the virus, combined with other precautions (i.e., contact tracing, face-masks, etc.), you can re-open the country without substantial viral spread, even if some virus slips through the cracks. Similar principal to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

6/ Why does this matter? Many people are arguing the antibody tests (IgG/IgM) are less accurate than the PCR tests. It's not clear that's true - see http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/resources/COVID-19/Serology-based-tests-for-COVID-19.html

7/ But pretend it is, it's still smart to allow nation-wide less-accurate testing because they're so much cheaper (~$10 vs $150-200), so much more accessible (no medical professional required), and so much more available (it's possible to buy millions from China this week).

8/ You can always follow-up positive tests with a more accurate, more expensive test. Even with antibody tests being less sensitive in the first days of infection, they’ll still accomplish the goal.

9/ The FDA currently only allows antibody tests if a doctor is present AND the doctor also orders the expensive PCR test as well.

10/ This is limiting our country’s ability to do broad-scale testing today. Why is the FDA not pushing these tests out as aggressively as possible? Why are we not working on strategies to re-open this country?