Re:The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER...
by azimuth11 on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @05:49PM
(#22551149)
It is not always obvious (e.g. strep throat is similar, but one or the other sicknesses may or may not need medicine) and doing things on a hunch is not how scientific fields should do things when there are simple tests.
Testing also provides safety for doctors against medical malpractice lawsuits.
Once I was on a date with a younger girl and she was going on about how she'd like to live in the US, and I, being kind of a nerd had a Sheldon type of moment told her how awful it is, and she said "thanks, you ruined my dream". And she was talking about how she spent a summer as a barmaid there, got tonsilitis, visited a doctor who made her take a test for tonsilitis and got billed for it. Here where I live.. you can see that when someone has 1) a high fever 2) inflammation in their tonsils 3) has a swollen throat and white stuff there because of it then they have tonsilitis and you don't need to make additional lab tests, because it's 100% obvious, you don't need to waste time and money on useless stuff.