So why aren’t we testing for the cold and the flu? Those are just as endemic as Covid and they mutate every year too. Why test specifically for Covid?
What useful information does knowing you have Covid instead of the myriad of other respiratory viruses actually provide? The treatment for all of them is gonna be basically the same for like 99% of all cases.
If we know we have Covid we can avoid spreading it, and we avoid spreading it because it threatens our healthcare capacity. That is why we test. The common cold and flu do not spread nearly as easily and don't result in such frequent hospitalization. Yes, taking extra mitigation efforts to prevent the spread of the flu, such as widespread testing, may spare us a few hospital beds. But the return on investment is very low. With Covid, it is very high, since each case of Covid stands to spread more readily than a case of the flu, and each case is more likely to result in hospitalization. It's the hospitalizations that matter ultimately, the same now as when the pandemic began, and all mitigation efforts serve that end.
What useful information does knowing you have Covid instead of the myriad of other respiratory viruses actually provide? The treatment for all of them is gonna be basically the same for like 99% of all cases.