A lot has been said about testing for COVID-19. Many people have suggested that we have been late in getting mass testing started. In fact, even without a test we did the prudent tasks of social distancing and essentially instituting a quarantine on anyone from affected areas (travel ban from Asia). It is always better to begin isolating potential contacts who can spread the infection even before you know exactly who is infected. As I will outline in a further post, initiating a test for millions of people is not an easy task. In addition, the test will not identify all individuals with the infection. Thus, regardless of the availability of testing social distancing is always the first action that should be done in a pandemic.
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Pandemic Pondering 
Thanks for all this helpful information.
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Thank you Jim.
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You have commented on the limitations of swab testing in that it only is relevant to shedding.
Can one have a blood test that directly measure antibodies in the blood stream, and would this not have the limitation of swab testing. If one were to do a blood sample, would it should a positive for COVID when a swab sample would not.
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yes. I presume an antibody test is in development but is not currently in use.
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