but as a layman I share your concern. From lay reading it seems that the large organisations were hoping that situations like this could be arrested at source or in the early stages.
To double down on my earlier comment; the inefficiencies the disease cause are not strictly the testing etc.
Look at the regular flu [1] [2] it has been "measured" as costing economies some pretty significant sums every year ($87bn USA, £1.35bn UK, different standards used); of course this could be said to pale against the size of these leading economies [3] landing at less than 1%. An annual flu tax is certianly not ideal.
Additional diseases will have different "tax rates", and I have no idea to the way in which they will interact.
You have to bear in mind that a tax rate is a form of inhibitive cost, and the burden of disease could be holding other economies back.
[1] https://www.cdcfoundation.org/pr/flu-costs-United-States-87-...
[2] https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/flu-costs-the-b...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
If COVID-19 is in the latter category, it will be difficult to control and we'll probably have to learn to live with it, as we have learned to live with the flu causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year worldwide.
1: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/how-long-do-vaccines...
I wonder if even influenza could be erraticated in the coming years with mass testing and contact tracing. The lockdowns ended flu season early this year.
In particular, from Mexico. There's too much travel between the US and Mexico to prevent it from crossing the border, and there are 50,000 confirmed cases in Mexico already, with roughly 2000 more being found every day.
The same can be probably done for SARS-CoV-2, although we'll have to wait for specific drugs to reach better efficiency.
And I add, we don't need to make this virus disappear (it would be better, but even with a very efficient vaccine it is unlikely). If we can prevent hospitalizations (and possibly deaths), we can likely live with it like we did with many other pathogens.