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For comparison here in Montana the authorities actively solicit people (by email, fb posts) with no symptoms who feel fine to come in for a test (free), in order to improve the quality of their data. They're also performing waste water testing and publishing its results.

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That is really interesting and on its face something that should definitely be done at random...however, its sad to say I wouldn't be at all surprised if such a system of solicitations could easily be used to manipulate the date for political purposes.

In other words if you jurisdiction has a high positive test rate, you may want to bring that % down for optics and the way to do that would be to use contact tracing (tracking tools) to solicit people who have properly been isolating and their exposure would have been minimized.

ummm. i just called the health department in Flathead County MT and there's no free asymptomatic testing available.

Getting called up for a random sample is not the same as "Anyone who wants a test can get it" It also doesn't necessarily mean that MT has enough tests to go around

I heard that we're (as of today) seeing so many cases in Park County that surveillance testing has been suspended.

Article about surveillance testing in Montana: https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/coronavirus/as-covid-o...

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