Earlier this week we took my son in because:
1. Our neighbors have recently recovered from Coronavirus
2. Our son had a cold / fever around the same time lasting several days
3. He had several days of diarrhea after the cold symptoms subsided
I talked to my coworker whose wife is a doctor and he relayed the symptoms to her and she said it very well could be a mild coronavirus infection.
We weren't concerned for his health because he's handled it just fine, but we figured it would be good to know in terms of avoiding spreading it to other people.
So we called and set up an appointment. They got us in like an hour and half after we called.
Got there and the doctor said, "Nope, no need for a test."
At this point I'm extremely skeptical that the number counts are in any way accurate. Also I've lost faith in the "we're not doing enough testing" argument since we went and tried to get tested and they turned us away.
That does not imply that there is enough testing. That just implies that your doctor or health care system is unwilling to test someone in your circumstances. "Not doing enough testing" is not referring to just test kids not being available, it is also referring to health system policies and willingness/unwilingness to test people.
We attempted to get tested and they said no, not worth the bother.
That seems contradictory to me.
If you're not sick enough to require hospitalization, and especially if you're un-insured and poor and don't want to pay a couple-hundred bucks out of pocket, then you'll probably just ride it out and never get tested. I'm sure this is the state of things for tens of millions of Americans.
That's because the test won't change anything. If it's positive, they'll tell you to isolate your kid. If it's negative, there's a high enough false negative rate that you'll still need to basically treat them like they have COVID (stay home and isolate).
