Deaths toll is more solid target of analysis but it's too extreme to say no. of confirmed cases is useless.
You can check the trend of increase at least.(but noisy i admit)
No. of cases are skyrocketing now so the limitation of scale of testing is more crucial in coming days. https://twitter.com/rjgeller/status/1248532216780427264

so deaths toll will be more important.
that's true.
but the no. of true cases will increase much faster than the scale of testing. then if you check the trend of confirmed cases you can tell testing capacity is saturating or not.(very roughly though)

but the actual no. of confirmed cases in different countries are not comparable.

and the effect of NPIs and the lag of developing more severe symptoms can make this trend very complicated.
but i believe Dr Nishiura and other epidemiologists or experts are very familiar with this matter.

and of course to some extent the strategy of testing will affect this trend.
not sure but i cannot believe this effect is so large.
more tests capacity is of course more preferable.

but at the same time saying "isolation" is easy but isolation means admission to the hospitals or isolate patients in some facility. easier said than done.

in early phase, you must prepare these isolation system if you tests more. there are so many false positives.

but the no. of true cases are increasing and false positives is getting relatively small.

and this sheer scale of infection is/will be much larger than the initial wave.

so in that sense more tests capacity and more tests and more isolation was ideal tactics.
but we didn't have such system.

and this disease is apparently very difficult to detect all of them. complete asymptomatic patients exists.
and such thing was discussed in January by many epidemiologists.

and Dr Nishiura was a prominent one.

stop discussing the tests strategies.

unless you're prominent theoretical epidemiologist or understand many papers or theories which are written by them. and consider submitting your theory.

oops.
testing strategy thing has nothing to do with the first tweet that i retweeted.

i might delete this thread because this is completely my own view and have little evidence.(because i don't understand theoretical epidemiology at all)