Mass testing will not solve any problem. You need to understand who to test, how to test, when to test, how to household with the tests you have, how to interpret the tests, how to act on the tests, and how to communicate the test results. This is a matter of protocol and policy. https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1249117279499010049

Just to give one simple example. You don't want to overrun your hospitals. You want as many patients as possible to self-quarantine at home. But that leaves only a very narrow time window for testing self-quarantined patients to determine if they to be moved to in-hospital care.

For this you have to stockpile tests. And it's not enough to stockpile in one central location, you have to stockpile on premise, bc mailing tests on demand wastes critical time. This creates considerable logistical challenges with high demographic divergence.

And you have to withhold tests from many of those who ask for it, since you will always be overrun with test requests, that's just human nature. This might indeed be the most difficult task, bc it inevitably increases the incidence of patients dying without getting tested.

But this is necessary bc you have to perform the near-impossible task of routing as many patients to the hospitals while holding up the 1st priority that hospital resources cannot be overstretched. And "hospital resources" means the scarsest resource determines capacity.

We have seen how even the most prepared countries have struggled with this task, since it requires continuous dynamic balancing based on data that is incomplete, out of time and out of location. But it's telling that Mr. Romer's home country is doing the worst on all these tasks.