TX tested 330k of which 28k positive. So that's 300k who thought they had it?

[Igel]

9. COVID symptoms are very often just flu and allergy symptoms.

Even in NYC the negative rate was 60%. Because if you have a fever, a cough, etc., you might have COVID, you might have the flu, you might have non-COVID pneumonia, etc. That's how it goes with non-specific symptoms. A large number of flu tests in any given year also come back negative. (And we can't overlook false negatives, either.)

Yes, a lot of people were turned away who had symptoms. Test shortages do that. The positive rate is as a result necessarily higher than the positive rate for the population as a whole.

That means they missed a lot of infected people--but the serious cases would usually be hospitalized.

Recently, at least around Houston, they've set up drive-through testing where you self-screened and made an appt. Even more recently they removed the self-screening part, so you can be symptom free and get tested.

"So what?" you might ask. That last bit means that the number of tests being given is getting close to exceeding the number of people with symptoms. It's limited by location and transportation and the willingness on the part of the sick to get tested. The number of positives will still be higher the prevalence in the general position because it's still mostly those with symptoms who are getting tested.

Front-line workers, EMTs, police, healthcare workers, also got tested, but that's not going to account for most of the false positives.