Widespread testing might not work in America. We love our ‘freedom’ too much.

Public health professionals are focused on expanding coronavirus infection testing nationwide. “Testing is outbreak control 101, because what testing lets you do is figure out who’s infected and who’s not, and that lets you separate out the infected people from the noninfected people and bring the disease under control,” Harvard professor Ashish Jha says. As Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Washington Post, “Our ability to get to the new normal depends to a great extent on our ability to test, isolate, contact trace and quarantine.” Public health leaders are essentially unanimous: This is, they believe, America’s most viable escape route from the pandemic. It’s what has largely contained the virus in multiple countries, including Germany, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.